Marketplace can be really frustrating and boring at times. Sometimes your storefront can look like a graveyard where everything is silent. No new sales alert or customers making enquiries about what you are selling. If you’re a new seller and you dream of making millions of naira within one month of selling on Konga and Jumia, well you will be shocked and wonder where are the millions of customers that the marketplace claimed visit their portal daily are not shopping in your store. Abi why is that other sellers are making sales yet you haven’t get just a single order or you’re an experienced seller who have been flying with sales daily that people start thinking you’re doing jazz taking all the customers away from other store to yours.
To be frank, sales nosedive sometimes that you can go weeks without making a single sale on your storefront in the marketplace. If you’re currently experiencing slow sales in the marketplace, well I have some advice for you to improve your sales and maybe you will remember to send me some cash (#smiles) when Jumia and Konga pay you for successful delivery after implementing my ideas.
Here are the reasons why you’re not getting sales in your storefront:
- Product Listing – Well, the first thing to do when you’re not getting sales is to check your products in the marketplace. Don’t go straight to your marketplace store URL, instead type Konga.com or Jumia.com.ng and use the search function to look for your products. Don’t use your product name or the name you used to list your products, instead use words that your potential customers will use to search for your products. If search result doesn’t display your product or store, then your customers can’t find or locate you among thousands of sellers in the marketplace.
- Product Title – It’s very paramount to use common language in your product title to make it easy for your customers to find your product. Don’t use the manufacturer jargons to list your product in the marketplace. Make it simple, searchable and understandable for the customers. If you’re selling TV set, don’t list it as LG Latest Smart Technology TV, instead use simple words like LG Television (Smart TV). The customers are looking for television not the latest smart technology TV.
- Product Description – Again avoid jargons in your product description instead tell the customers what the product can do or what they can achieve using the product. If you’re a selling a phone, tell the customer what he/she can do with it not 21mp camera, Android Jellyfish, 16GB internal memory and 2GB ram. Instead tell the customers they can snap crystal clear pictures using the phone’s 21 megapixel camera and can store thousands of music in the phone’s 16GB internal memory.
- Product Pricing – If other people in your niche market are selling and you’re not making any sales, maybe it’s time to check your product price. A customer will abandoned his/her order in your store if your competitions is offering the same quality at a lesser price even if its fifty kobo. YES! You can loss sales because of fifty kobo in the marketplace.
- Product Pictures – If you use poor or low quality images to list the product and your competitor use top quality pictures for the same product, am VERY sure even YOU will not buy your products in the marketplace with poor pictures. Use good pictures of the product to list it in the marketplace. You can snap good pictures of the product using your mobile phone. Well, that’s another topic for another day.
- Your Marketplace Store Rating – Konga rate stores performance in the marketplace every month. Your store rating will determine your visibility in the marketplace. If your store rating is poor on Konga, customers will not find it talkless of using Konga’s Buy Now button in your store.
- Buyers rating and feedback – Your best marketing techniques in the marketplace is your existing customers and their feedback. New customers want to read about the experience of people who have transact with you before and the product quality. A good feedback from current customer or users of the product is worth more than $10,000 advertisement.
- Product Quality – If you want to have repeated sales from current users of your product, then I need not emphasis the importance of selling quality products. Quality products sell themselves without adverts. Most of my sales are refer businesses from existing users of the product that bought it from me. A customer once bought a powerbank from me and refer another buyer to me, who end up buying 30pcs of powerbank at #7,000 per unit. I need not tell you how happy I was about the transaction because I didn’t spend a dime to acquire the new customer that bought 30pcs.
- The Economy – Well, what can I say. Some state governments are owing their staffs salaries for more than six months. The people who are yet to collect their salaries for six months cannot afford to eat talkless of coming online to shop for products. Their siblings are also busy sending them money for upkeep so they have little or nothing left to shop online. Sellers need workers and salary earners to survive.
- Your Competitions – If you’re competiting with Konga and Jumia on their platform, I can only wish you Best of Luck because you’re dead on arrival. You can’t win the battle because you can’t sell cheaper than them on their platform. Yes ke, remember they will charge you commission for using their platform to sell, so how do you intend to sell cheaper than them on their platform.
- Free Shipping – If you want to boost sales you can cancel or borne the cost of shipping the product to the customer. Free Shipping increase sales of ecommerce website worldwide but you need to be extremely careful if you want to use this strategy in the marketplace. Your product must not be pricey because of free shipping. Customers will not buy expensive products if there are cheaper options because of FREE Shipping.
Conclusion:
Marketplace is battle zone where all sellers gamble and fight for customers’ attention. You can only win the battle if you deliver a great experience for the customers. Don’t just sell and deliver products to customers. Let them have a great experience doing business with you.