Starting Your s Store--5 Reason For Failure--Part II

TheMain reasons okay businesses fail!
Building an okay business is in many ways similar to building any business. To be successful everything has to work, Marketing, Sales, Quality, Pricing, and Customer Service. Selling on okay, however, has some unique features that differ from traditional retail businesses.
On okay, a seller's customer service reputation (Feedback Rating) is out in the open for everyone to see. Imagine, if every store in the shopping mall had a sign outside where customers wrote gements about their products and service. Would you stop to read the gements before entering the store? Negative feedback is the number one reason okay sellers fail. A negative feedback rating, however, usually has its roots in other problems.Theseare five major reasons why okay businesses fail... 1-- Poor Feedback RatingNew okay sellers typically under-rate the importance of quickly building a great feedback rating. Are yousurprised when you click on an auction description and see a seller with a feedback rating under 10? How could this person know anything about selling on okay? Experienced okay bidders are cautious of sellers with a feedback rating under 25 - 50. Admittedly, getting your first twenty-five feedback gements as a seller can be a long process. Don't forget, feedback gements as a buyer count as well (although okay does show the difference). Before you rush into selling on okay, you need to get some experience buying. There is nothing better than putting yourself in your customers' shoes.Before you start to sell on okay make sure you have gepleted a dozen or more purchases, paid for them promptly and received good feedback from your sellers. Don't be afraid to ask the seller to post feedback in your payment email. Sellers like to be paid quickly. Sending payment by credit card or PayPal will build your feedback rating quickly as well.When starting your okay business, you should bend over backwards to provide exceptional service. Remember, you are fishing for gepliments. When you have a positive feedback rating over 100 bidders will look at your rating number and then make their decision on whether or not they like your product. If your feedback rating is less than a 100, people tend to actually look back through your gements and read them. There is a big difference between --Nice transaction, good seller-- and --FIVE-STAR SELLER, EXCELLENT PRODUCT, FAST SHIPPING-- Whether you are a new seller, or a veteran okayer, building excellent feedback gements should be a daily goal.Poor gemunications between buyer and seller is the leading cause of negative feedback. Make sure your first email to the successful bidder is clear, and geplete. You should not only be polite, but be effusive in your congratulations. Remember, Some people shop on okay for bargains, but most people shop on okay for fun. Make the transaction a fun experience. Be personal. Don't sound like a big corporation. Make the buyer feel good and close the sale by geplimenting them on the great deal they made.Make sure your payment instructions are crystal clear and your shipping methods and charges are clearly spelled out (this should have been in your auction, but many people can't remember). If a buyer wants to pay by credit card, suggest PayPal, or explain how to access your secure credit card server. If they want to use a check, explain how they can speed up the payment and delivery by using PayPal's electronic check service.This is not meant to sound like an advertisement for PayPal, but the simple truth is it works! Anything you can do to speed up payment, shortens the time it takes a customer to receive their purchase. Nothing will improve your feedback faster than getting purchases to your customers quickly. Also, now that okay has purchased PayPal, there will be more integration and ease of use for everyone as soon as the merger goes through.As the seller, you have the most to lose by negative feedback. It is only a question of time until you run into a difficult or irrational buyer. He or she may be rude, or unresponsive, or both. Once your feedback rating is secure in the high hundreds, you can afford to take a tougher line and weather the negative feedback that inevitably follows. But while you are building your feedback rating, sometimes you just have to swallow hard and be extra diplomatic. Always give people the benefit of the doubt and try and work something out. Would you rather lose a sale than risk negative feedback from an irresponsible person? If a buyer won't geplete the transaction, its better to report them to okay, than to get into a feedback war? Once okay determines they are a non-paying bidder, they will not be able to leave feedback against you. To summarize... make your gemunications fast, friendly and geplete and your feedback rating will soar!2 -- Not Accepting Credit Cards Turns Away BiddersThousands of bidders worry about Internet fraud. Several studies by okay and Yahoo have positively concluded that accepting credit cards will increase your auction bids anywhere from 100 to 300 percent. This is even truer on web-site sales, where accepting credit cards can boost sales over 500 percent!Setting up a merchant credit card account can cost between 195.00 to 425.00 in set-up fees and anywhere from 2.5 to 7.5 percent,per transaction.Fortunately, PayPal offers an easy solution. There are no set-up fees and transaction costs are 2.2 percentor less. Here is an important tip... Some buyers don't know what PayPal is, or how it works. Place a PayPal logo on all your auctions and a link to PayPal in emails to your successful bidders. The process is simple and it should be one of the first things you do.In your auction, place a line of text above the PayPal logo that says,--To pay with a credit card, click on the PayPal logo below.--Do the same in your email to winning bidders. Use a statement such as, --If you would like to pay by credit card, click on the link below to register and pay securely using PayPal.-- Then place your PayPal referral link after your signature.If you have a web site (most successful auction sellers do), instead of setting up a merchant credit card account, you can now use PayPal's Web Accept in order to process a sale, via credit card orders, on your web site. Connect to PayPal's Web-Tools link, and type in the product, pricing and shipping info. Then copy and paste the html code onto your web page. You now have a credit card shopping cart for each individual product.3 -- Weak Headlines and Poor Auction Descriptions Lose BidsThere are over seven million items listed on okay every day. Your headline must stand out above the gepetition to attract bidders. A great headline should contain two key elements: Key words that are searchable, and emotional words designed to attract attention.Over 60 percentof bidders find the item they are looking for by using the --Search-- feature. Unless you use the key words bidders are looking for, you will miss many bids. For example, if someone collects Ferrari Formula 1 model cars, they will search --Ferrari-- rather than --Formula 1-- or --model cars.-- A search of Ferrari turns up 41 items, while Formula 1 turns up a few thousand items. A search of Blueand White will turn up thousands of listing in the pottery section, but a search for Liberty Blue (which is a specific type of blueand white pottery) turns up only a few hundred items.Your headline should also include emotional words designed to attract a bidder's attention. These words include... new, rare, unique, sexy, secret, unbelievable, super-value, etc. You should not call something --rare-- if it is not. But, there are other adjectives that work well in headlines. Besides the emotional words you can use words such as exquisite, charming, wonderful, mint, perfect, clean, superb, etc? Just make sure you are accurate.Once you catch the bidder's attention with a great headline, you need to sell them with your item description. Too many bidders simply describe the item they are selling. Yes, it is important to gepletely and accurately describe the item, but too many sellers leave it at that. Take the time to add some--romance-- to your jewelry items, for example. Sell the benefits of buying your item.Before writing the auction description, ask yourself: --Why would someone want to own the item you are selling.-- If you are selling something you use, say so. Tell the potential bidder why you owned the item, how you used it, what benefits it brought you. Sell not just the features, but the benefits and the romance.Here is an example: --This Sterling Silver bracelet is five inches long set with zirconium stones that look just like diamonds.--The same item but with some added spice to the description:--This exquisite Italian Sterling Silver bracelet is set with five glimmering zirconium stones that sparkle like diamonds. The silver is finished to a high polish? It's so bright, it looks like white gold. Whenever my wife wears this bracelet her friends ask, --Wow, are those real diamonds?-- --Where did you get that bracelet?--Your auction descriptions must also be geplete. A clear photo is critical to the success of the auction, but remember, photos don't always show all the details a bidder needs. If you are selling an antique, collectible or any used item, be sure to describe any and all flaws. The fastest way to build negative feedback is to over-describe the item, or over-promise performance.4 -- Poor Images Can Turn Off SellersThe saying --A picture is worth a thousand words-- is never more true than with on-line auctions. Not having a photo of your item will greatly reduce your bids, and lead to unprofitable or unsuccessful auctions. Not only must you have a photograph of what you are selling, the photo must be accurate and revealing.It is not necessary to be a professional photographer. okay bidders understand that most sellers are taking snapshots of the products they sell. But, your photo should be clear, and show the product as gepletely as possible. Here are some tips for good photos...--If the size of an object is not obvious, use a reference such as a ruler or a coin. --Show any flaws or defects. Point them out in the caption if necessary. --Don't use a flash. It causes reflections. Take your photos in open shade or using indirect window light. --Do not use stock photos. Bidders want to see a picture of the actual item they are bidding on, not a scanned photo from a brochure. --Use a tripod to make sure your shot is sharp. --Keep your photos to less than 300 pixels. Larger photos take too long to load and impatient bidders will click away from your auction. The e-mail setting on most digital cameras works just fine for most auctions. --Except for flat items such as prints, photos, stamps, cards and so on, scanners often produce an inadequate image for most items. If you don't have a digital camera, you can now take a 35mm photo to most Kodak processors and they will digitize your images and return them to you on a floppy disk or CD. This will cost just a few dollars more than the processing. 5 -- Not understanding your costs is a prescription for disaster.It is very easy for a new seller to get caught up in the excitement of selling and not pay attention to the costs involved in selling. Before deciding whether to sell an item on okay, and what to sell it for (i.e. reserve or Dutch auction price), you need to make 100 percentcertain that you understand all the costs involved.First of all there is the listing fee. There is also a selling fee that will be set by what price the item actually sells for. There may be a fee to process a Bill-Point, PayPal or credit card sale. If you use an auction management service such as AnDale or Auction-Works then you have their fees. Don't forget shipping, and the cost of the shipping materials.If you are selling items you purchased wholesale, were there shipping charges to get it to you? Did you pay sales tax on the item?Many businesses fail because they are either under financed, or because they do not understand their costs. A program such as Quick-Books or Microsoft Money or a myriad of other titles, could be one of your best investments. Quick Books, or many of the others, will allow you to track every expense, down to the penny, and allocate the costs to different categories so you will fully understand where every dollar is going and if it was well spent.