No sooner had Bill Gates said: "Whoever is not on the Internet is not in business," as we all rushed to conquer the vastness of the network. In an attempt to "jump" competitors, some have completely lost their common sense, not even trying to calculate and analyze the effectiveness of costs aimed at making a profit – this is the euphoria of e-commerce.
The article will be useful to anyone who sells spare parts via the Internet or plans to master this promising area.
Where is it more profitable to sell?
Actually, we have little choice. To sell online, you need a – no way without him. As a last resort – a third-party portal where we can create a kind of online store and place a pretty decent assortment. They offer different conditions: you can pay for each transition to the catalog, for the number of products placed, or for participation in the project.
The opposite – development and promotion of your own online store. Many are perceived not without skepticism. The site is large, the assortment is motley, you can’t find a good specialist in the afternoon with fire. The words "SEO-optimization" and «contextual advertising» and does cause a slight shock and a storm of indignation – How much money do you need to spend?
Pay per click
Pay per click — popular and not the most expensive solution for e-commerce. Search engines sell it to us under the guise of ads on the first pages of search results, portals charge the cost of a click under the terms of an advertising service agreement. But paying per click is not always profitable. And here's why.
This is a screenshot from Yandex.Metrica of an online store whose main source of sales is contextual advertising. No search engine optimization work has been done. 49% of potential customers visit a website by clicking on an ad.
If we pay the search engine for each click, we pay 49% of clicks if the — 100%. This increases not only the cost of the conversion, but also the number of "unnecessary" paid clicks. Under "unnecessary" click should be understood as the viewing of goods, the profit from the sale of which will not cover the cost of advertising. For example, it is rational to pay $0.1 for viewing an expensive spare part, for viewing a cheap oil seal – no.
Search engines play an order of magnitude more honestly — we can independently choose products that we don't mind paying per click, and set the maximum cost of a user's transition to our site.
Contextual advertising also has disadvantages – the more popular the spare part, the more often users search for it, the more expensive the coveted click. But we always have the right to choose – to pay or not to pay.
If there is no site, we are at a loss. The portal does not provide us with the ability to disable or limit the number of "unnecessary" transitions.
SEO optimization
Search engine optimization – a set of measures aimed at increasing the position of the site in the search results. If easier – helps the customer find your store on the Internet. It costs expensive. Takes time mercilessly. The efficiency is beyond.
It is endless to talk about the principles and effectiveness of website promotion to TOP positions in search results. But numbers speak much better than words.
This screenshot clearly shows one day in the life of an ordinary online spare parts store connected to a popular portal. 61% of users got to the site from search engines (44.8% entered the corresponding query in the search box, 21.6% — url-address of the online store), and only 15.7% (transfers from other sites) went to the store from the portal.
The number of users who came to the site from search engines is three times more than those who got there from the portal. Is it worth investing in SEO? Everyone decides for himself.
But for those who prefer to place their multimillion-dollar assortment on someone else's resource, this pleasure is not available. By refusing to promote your own website, you lose 66% of your potential customers.
Payment for assortment
Payment for the rent of the "shopping space" on the Internet, tied to the number of goods, especially in the auto business, without hesitation, can be called bondage. Business is constantly developing, the range is growing. Along with it, the fee for the number of commodity items is also growing. Reminiscent of drug addiction: the longer on the needle, the higher the dose needed to achieve the desired effect. Without realizing it, we become hostages of the situation.
The technical side is also important. We cannot influence the performance of a third-party resource in any way. If for some reason the portal does not work, we are forced to wait until ourlucky competitors serve our customers.
Other sales tools
The above lists only the most simple and popular ways to attract an interested audience. In addition, there is SMM, which allows you to attract customers from social networks, content marketing, which increases brand awareness and trust, e-mail marketing, media advertising, and other equally interesting and effective ways. But all this is available only to those who have a website and a desire to develop their business on the Internet.
The screenshot clearly shows — 34.3% of visitors came to the site absolutely free, just because they are confident in the quality of the goods, satisfied with the service and trust the seller.
The user enters the address of your online store in the search box or goes to the site using the link received in the letter or message – this is a direct entry — a mirror image of brand awareness, which is achieved by any of the above methods.
While your assortment is hosted on a third-party resource, the portal achieves brand recognition, but you have nothing to do with this and continue to pay for each click.
Instead of output
Posting an assortment on a third-party resource and paying for its services is much easier than developing your own website. But by choosing the easy way, you give up:
- Attracting customers through advertising;
- Website promotion in search results;
- Increase brand awareness;
- Formation of a trusting relationship with the buyer.
In a word, you refuse to develop your own business for the benefit of someone else's.
Helping businesses take off
There are several options for launching your own online store, the most popular are: individual development and use of a ready-made solution. The first, as a rule, is extended in time and is associated with enormous financial costs. The second one is simple and low cost.
We offer the best option: developing an online spare parts store based on CMS Allzap 2.0 – a complete yet highly flexible software solution!
Having your own website, you can sell spare parts yourself, connect the store to allzap.ua or any other popular portal. You no longer have to pay for each click, assortment size, etc. The number of commodity items on Allzap is unlimited, the fee is charged only for an order placed directly on the portal. You make all decisions yourself: launch contextual advertising, start SEO promotion, or plunge headlong into Internet marketing. We, in turn, will provide you with reliable technical support!
The cost of a license to use the software product is only 550 UAH / month, connection to allzap.ua – free!
