How can I sell my products online?
We are the largest producers of chocolate in the Caribbean, Cortes Hermanos, LLC. We would like to begin selling our products online. We don't have either the people or the capacity to do this ourselves. Our company handles the whole chocolate process, from bean to bar. We sell cocoa beans, industrial chocolate mixes, and finished chocolate products. We also own a retail operation where we sell our products.
Hi Elaine,
That's quite a delicious question (pun intended). Selling online is becoming the need of the hour and it's a great step for your business expansion. However, you must be clear with a few pointers before selling online such as what is the region you wish to sell in, where you're put up, etc. Once you are clear, there are many ways to sell your products online. Some of the major ones have been listed below:
-Create your online store
-Become a seller on online marketplaces
-Feature your products on marketplaces via integration process
1. The first way that you can opt is to create your own e-commerce website or your online store. Once you have created your own website with a shopping cart, you can start reaching out to your target audience through marketing and promotions and can start accepting the online payments from your customers securely.
2. Becoming a seller on a marketplace of your choice in accordance with your own region and the region you wish to sell in, is the second way to sell your products online. By registering yourself on the marketplace and creating your seller account on it, you may become a seller of that marketplace and start listing your products on the website. From your seller panel, you may list your products and handle the product(s) quantity, order, payment, etc. efficiently.
3. The next easy process to opt is to feature your products on the marketplace(s) of your choice through marketplace integration. For doing so, many web development agencies like us provide services to help you sell online.
Now you must be wondering how would it be possible to send and feature your products in a marketplace if you do not have a store? Simple, you just need to have a server space and you may install the integration extension to your domain. By doing so, you may list your products via API(s) to the marketplace of your choice. By using the integration extension, you may handle your product(s) quantity, orders, shipment, price and many other product-related actions from the admin panel of your extension. Still finding it complex? No need to. We (CedCommerce) are flexible in extending the services to help you in creating a server space too. Once that's done, you may use the integration extension, and then ultimately sell on the marketplace of your choice.
So these were the methods you can opt to sell your products online and spread the sweetness across the globe. If you want 'our' assistance to sell online, you may go through our website www.cedcommerce.com and contact us.
I hope you found the answer useful and it would help you sell online easily and effortlessly.
Have a happy selling!
Visit my profile - I would like to talk to you as well. One thing I believe where Google has messed up is its emphasis on local search. It has made it that much harder for someone to promote themselves outside their local area. But I like some of the suggestions in this thread. But I recommend getting a web presence and e-commerce solution that will grow with your business. WordPress has that capability. And they have a great e-commerce solution called Woocommerce. Unlike some here, I strongly recommend against getting a proprietary web site or shopping cart. Therefore, I'm not a big fan of stuff such as Wix, Network Solutions, and others like them. You just won't have the freedom to grow your site. You are better off starting with a solution that is not proprietary.
Hello Elaine,
If you are having a huge database of products then definitely you need an online store to sell your products online in a managed way. I would recommend you check Yo!Kart multi vendor eCommerce solution where you can start your eCommerce website in $999. You will get following benefits from this:
Fine-grained control over commissions, including per-product custom commission
Configurable shipping
Notification system, both emailing and site messaging
Product review system
Admin approval and management of all aspects of the site
Excellent reporting system (e.g. sales, products, commission, users, etc)
Built-in affiliate system
User referral and reward points
The ability to add custom pages
FAQ management
Discount management
Easy to use email templates, along with customization tokens
Site-wide SSL
Database Backup & Restore
Live chat integration with a third-party of your choice
If you have huge list of products to sell online then I would recommend you so with customized solutions of Yo!Kart.
Find more about Pricing here: http://www.yo-kart.com/multivendor-marketplace-packages.html
Hi
I've recently gained knowledge of some websites that can help you with online sales; also known as
e-commerce. www.spotify.com
You will also have to know international shipping regulations to and from, etc.
Since, I'm very new to this. I will just say that I really liked what Jeff Kingberg had to say. It sounded very all-inclusive.
Hi Elaine
Proonto is a startup with a unique marketplace that brings together e-commerce businesses with vertically experienced sales & support associates, enabling brands and retailers to instantly staff their websites without any upfront costs and with a budget that makes sense to the size of the business
Our agents will leverage Proonto's proactive live support platform in order to converse with website visitors and help them complete a successful purchase securing a supreme customer experience.
The back-end of our platform enables us to apply our methodology of proactively supporting your online visitors, with extensive reporting which provides you with full visibility of the results
In addition, you will get real time insights and understanding of your visitors journey and possible frustrations on your website, in order to optimize the user experience
If this may be relevant, I would be happy to give you a live tour of our platform and explain our solution in more details, and discuss how this may align with your online goals
Shlomo
What is your target market? who do you wanna sell to? For selling online there are lots of strategies, there are lots of ways to promote and address different market segmentations. Based on budget and plans in hand there are ways to work around and networks to tap into. I am in the US and use to sell to south american consumers.. not in the chocolate industry though. And I have applied different strategies to get in contact with potential customers. So what is that specifically need? I would be glad to share ideas so far. Si hablas espanol me gustaria conocerles y compartir ideas .. chicos hay muchas formas para introducirte en las ventas online. He hecho pequenos negocios personales algunos han funcionado otros los hice de pruebas y bueno, me encanta el soporte online. No puedo intercambiar email por aca pero si me envian mensajes con gusto entramos en contacto. A veces lo que necesitamos es una manito. Saludos.
http://www.indiagrid.com/cgi-bin/viewpost.cgi?userid=shimona&sessionid=488xViiotaftTdegZrgLK6lMzuH53IkhTnReA&postid=629263&stq=&cat=biz&subcatid=sta
The one thing you will need is a mobile friendly presence on the web which is more crucial today than ever before SEO website and social media presence as a way of engaging your customers. I can help you in all these areas at no risk to your business and no technical expertise required checkout my profile and would be happy to assist you with growth of your business
Wow! very interesting. I love chocolate very much. Anyway, first you need to have a website, you can use a free website like webs.com, wix.com, weebly.com. If you have a budget I can help you to find the best website designer. Then, when you already have a website next thing you need is an explainer video that promotes your product. You can put the video on your site and also other social media sites like youtube, facebook, twitter and other people around the world can see your product. I can definitely help you with that. Please visit my profile for more details.
Elaine ...1.) You need to first define who your target audience is — not only B2B wholesale or direct to consumer (B2C), but where. Locally in the Caribbean islands, the United States and Caribbean, Latin America, South America, or the entire world.
2.) You need to define what products you want to sell. Is it the beans, the cocoa, the bars or everything? How many SKUs will you have? How will you sell them (pound of beans, ounces of cocoa, single bars, etc.)?
3.) Who will be the consumer for each SKU?
4.) Have to determine how you will package and ship the product? Can it all be done from your location or will you need regional distribution centers? Do you want to sell it through retail shops to consumers along with direct to consumers?
5.) Have you developed a business plan that includes SWOT analysis and marketing plan? You will need to develop one if you haven't already.
6.) Have you reviewed and benchmarked yourself against other chocolate confectioneries like Ghirardelli Chocolate, GODIVA Chocolates and others? You will need to do that. Learn what information they have on their websites, how they transact business, etc.
7.) Once you have done 1 - 6, then you can begin to build a singular or a series of websites depending on how you segment your SKUs and target audiences. You'll need photos of all your products along with nutritional information. You may also need PDF and/or printed catalogs for download or send to prospective clients.
By sell online, do you mean in a B2C ecommerce capacity or more as a wholesales capacity (that's what @Naziha is referring to ...wholesale)?
If it's B2C, you would need a website with a shopping cart and a way to accept payment securely. If that's what you are referring to, I can offer some more suggestions.
Elaine,
Nice ! I was just enjoying a piece of dark chocolate with hole hazelnut before reading you ;-) I had found one of my supplier via alibaba.com...alternatively you could check few chocolate distributor / supplier EU-US corporates for some ideas...Raw Cacao is successful in EU...Recently we had in Amsterdam our Chocolate trade fair, conference & festival organized by CHOCOA.nl...ICCO.org...Best Luck, Naziha