Every e-commerce business aspires to develop their own platform, at one point, however, this is probably not a cost-effective strategy from the very start. Until you get to your break-even point, every single dollar will make a difference, nonetheless, why even think in this direction when there are far superior alternatives. Setting your shop on Amazon is just one of them. It’s something that can be done in a matter of minutes, the costs are minimal (in some scenarios even non-existent) and the ROI is simply amazing. With that in mind, here are several tips on expanding your business through Amazon.

Set your goals

Finally, you got bored with your day job and decided to invest your time and money into an e-commerce business. These days this seems to be the trend, but before you jump learn to walk and make sure to carefully construct a business plan that will make this journey easier. There are a few key points in a good business plan, remember it does not need to be in depth and fancy as you are doing this for yourself.

• Short value proposition: This is where you need to be personal but also crisp and direct. Writing a good value proposition is very important as it’s the first thing that your future customer or a possible investor will read.

• Business Model: Understand your market, think about what you are selling and to who. Also, the source of your product is important. Is it an in-house product or do you use a third party manufacturer?

• Understand the technology you use: Write down all the products and services that you need to keep your engine running. Also, calculate the monthly and per transaction cost for each of these to keep yourself in check.

 

What road to take?

The first step on this journey lies in choosing your seller category. Here, you get to choose between professional and individual. The difference lies in the cost, seeing as how an individual pays a fee of $0.99 per sale, while a professional pays $39.99 each month. This means that the choice of professional vs. individual really comes down to the expected volume of sales that you expect to make during these first few months. If the number is substantial enough, professional seller category will save you a small fortune. Moreover, keep in mind that the Professional account still costs less than the maintenance of your own e-store.

Seller’s profile

Once you get this out of the way, it’s time to set up your seller profile. This is not only a requirement but also a part of your marketing efforts. Namely, this is the first place that your potential buyers will visit before deciding whether to make a purchase after all. What you have to do here is pick a great profile picture (preferably with your company’s logo on it), and write a short description.

Lastly, if you have any special offers or a return and refund policy, this is the place to state them. Make sure that you go step-by-step in your description. To make things easier, you could even include an Amazon refund tool into your digital arsenal. Keep in mind that all of these can be altered at any given point, which is why you shouldn’t be too timid when entering this data.

Set up your product pages

This brings us to the most important step – setting up your product pages. This, on the other hand, is a problem that every online retailer faces, regardless of if they use Amazon or have their own platform. You see, in traditional retail, a customer could physically and visually examine the item. Even if they didn’t have the technical prowess to make an accurate estimate of the product’s quality, it would be much easier for them to gain enough trust in the retailer.

Fortunately, Amazon has tools and means to tackle this issue, as well. For starters, you get to provide product information, such as dimensions, weight, characteristics, customer reviews and your audience even has the opportunity to see the Amazon best sellers rank so that they can compare the item with others in this category. You should also upload images from all angles and in high resolution. Those who feel the urge to go even further should explore the possibility of Amazon’s Enhanced Brand Content (EBC) and A+ Enhanced Marketing Content (A+ EMC). This enhanced content will help you get a much better rank by providing you with more images and additional text.

Choosing adequate keywords

Now, we come to the most pivotal of tasks you have to complete in order to expand your business through Amazon – choosing adequate keywords. First of all, you want something that people are actively looking for in the search box but, at the same time, you don’t want keywords that are too simple, due to the fact that they’re used by virtually everyone in your industry. On the other hand, being too “creative” ensures that you’ll never be found. Therefore, going for a long-tail keyword seems to be your safest bet. One of the ways you can proceed about this is by finding an adequate keyword tool.

Mistakes to avoid

At the very end, there are a couple of mistakes that you need to avoid, like forgetting to include sales tax into your price or labor costs. This is an additional service that the Amazon does provide, of course, for an additional fee. Keep in mind, however, that this is definitely the simplest way to handle this problem, seeing as how you’ll already have too much on your plate.

Aside from this, you need to understand the needs of your community, which means responding to customer inquiries as soon as possible. By ignoring them for too long you will not only stand to lose a sale but a return customer, as well. This notion alone is more than troubling.

Some final thoughts

The benefits of going with Amazon are many. It’s a low-cost-low-effort solution to one of your biggest problem in a situation where you lack both resources and time. Sure, some may see it as only a temporary solution, yet, there are online retailers who stay loyal to this practice long after they become wildly successful. In other words, you would be surprised at just how scalable this method of online retail actually is.