E-Commerce Video

From Etsy to E-Commerce

From Etsy to E-Commerce

Transcript:

From Etsy to E-commerce. Hi guys, I’m Syama Meagher, CEO of Scaling Retail. And if you’ve got yourself an Etsy platform, you’re probably wondering when you’re going to be ready to make that transition. Possibly, you’re tired of giving away a percentage of your sales, or really being beholden to a marketplace where you have to shell out so many dollars in advertising in order to get exposure. Perhaps your home business has grown so much that you’re really ready to up-level what it is that you’re doing, or possibly, you are looking to extend your products, launch out with new exclusives, and start to really build your own business to scale. Whatever the reason is that you are looking to transition, going to an e-commerce platform can really help you when it comes to increasing your product margins, and really making sure that you’ve got a brand hub and home for your business.

So the three ways in order to really start to bridge that is, number one, existing customers. Start by marketing to them. Number two, let’s make sure that you’re diversifying your product assortment and exclusives. And, number three, guys, let’s make sure you’ve got your payment gateways really set up and ready to build and bring home that business to e-commerce.

So the first thing, guys, when it really comes to really unpacking and building out your e-commerce platform, it’s very important that you make sure you’ve got all of your payment gateways and everything set up so you can really capture the sale. Now, why is that important? Well, certainly Etsy makes it easy, right, everything processes through their platform, it’s really simple. You get an opportunity to just get your invoices and who you are shipping to, and just drop-ship that product right away. But, on e-commerce, you need to integrate with something like Stripe, or another payment gateway service, to really ensure that you are able to transact and capture the sale.

The second thing, start by marketing to your existing customers. So, as you’re looking to build up your e-commerce platform, start to think about the ways in which your existing customer base can come back over to your website. That might mean by including bounce-back cards into your shipments, such as, “Come back to our website and get 10% off your next order,” or even to start by doing some e-mail, or even postcard marketing, to the existing people that you are sending out products to. That might mean you do a mailer announcement over postcards to the hundreds or thousands of people who have been buying your products.

Now, certainly, guys, you may not want to walk away from all of the business, the sales, the SEO, and the traction that you have built on Etsy, and by no means do I think you need to walk away from that completely. That brings us to our final and third point of how to make this transition, which is really thinking about product exclusives, and creating something that is really specific to that market on your website. So when someone goes to your online platform on your web store, they see a different selection of products, or even a different collection, versus what they would find on your Etsy platform. Now, why is that so important? Well, it allows you to really start to diversify who that customer and what that clientele is. But whatever the reason is, guys, that you are looking to make that transition, remember that your e-commerce platform is really the brand hub. So that means you want to make sure that all of your branded assets are correct, your visual direction, your price points, all of that SEO optimization, everything needs to be done right the first time in order to really capture and close that consumer.

So, guys, if you’re concerned about building a website, thinking about your branding, your brand DNA, or even looking at merchandising and product assortments, you might want to think about sending us an e-mail, at hello@scalingretail.com, to get a consultation set up so we can figure out together how to actively scale and grow your business, and take you from a hobbyist to an entrepreneur.

All right, guys, feel free to leave us a comment below. Follow us, we are on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. We are where you are. I hope this was helpful, and I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.

A lot goes into building a successful e-commerce – although it may not seem that way when you come across the countless websites and platforms that make it look deceptively easy. Here’s a free download to make your transition like a pro. Get your copy of “Creating Fashion Websites That Sell”.