Improve Your Webstore With These Inspirational Tips

It’d be awesome if you, the e-commerce merchant, had the creative breadth and genius of Steve Jobs. Then, all you’d have to do is feature a seriously kick-ass product the entire world goes gaga for, watch the numbers rise, and retire to your palace to swim in your Olympic-sized indoor pool. Unfortunately, SellerExpress knows that it almost never works out that way and sometimes the creative juices need a little boost. This is why it’s smart to look at other sources for inspiration, with some of our favourites to improve your webstore below.

Pinterest

You may be reading this, groaning and thinking that it’s a frilly site women use to show the world the weddings they’ve been wanting since they were three. And while you will find plenty of wedding ideas on Pinterest, it contains so much more than that.

Pinterest is one of the best sites in being able to gauge what’s currently popular. Unless you’re selling relatively timeless products like sweat socks, Stiffel or Tiffany lamps, car tyres or Christmas lights, there’s going to be an element of trendiness to your page. This is especially true if you sell items that get changed frequently, like electronics or movies.

If this at all resembles your line of e-commerce, then why not take a temperature reading of what’s hot and what’s not? Pinterest has tens upon tens of millions of monthly users and a ‘popular’ section that can tell you what’s currently trending. You don’t necessarily have to jump on every bandwagon, but it’s a good place to pan for a bit of gold.

Wanelo

It stands for ‘want, need, love’ and like Pinterest, it’s a fantastic place to curate ideas for your own ecommerce page. It was started in just 2012 but already boasts over 11 million users with a million or so more products than users, and resembles Etsy in its scope and use.

It’s sort of like a digital American mall in that users post products they like, and everything is purchasable. Other users can browse people’s Wanelo pages and buy those items or simply save them on a sort of list. It has elements of Twitter on there, too, where users can use hashtags to search for popular items. As a retailer, it can be invaluable to have your products on users pages, so build up your presence by engaging with comments and stories.

Global Sources

Unless you’re making each and every one of your products — and, to a lesser extent, the materials used in shipping — you’re going to need a place to stock up on them. Manufacturers can sometimes offer you a discount on their items when you’re a retailer, but it’s a good idea to look around to find the best price possible so you can make as much profit as possible.

B2B sites are an excellent place to look for this, with Global Source being one of the oldest and largest. Founded in 1970, it’s a veritable goldmine of information you can use to your own advantage. If you’re at all in the market for new suppliers, head here right away. There are also trade shows you can attend to get real-time information and make new contacts, which is a pretty cool way of blending digital and analogue commerce.

Reddit

There’s more to Reddit than the oh-so-popular AMA (Ask Me Anything), even though awesome people like Bill Nye, Ken Jennings and even Barack Obama are on it! While a lot of Reddit is a big giant comment forum, it can be exploited for other purposes, too.

Reddit and its digressions, subreddits, contain some of the trendiest, most current and most popular material out there and if you put in the time, you can get a really strong sense of what the people want. You can approach it one of two ways: see what’s trending, or search for the items/products/ideas you’re dealing with. Both can give you ideas on how to tweak your current site to reach an even bigger audience.

It can be more than tough to curate your own site so that it’s as wide-reaching and on the button as possible, but SellerExpress knows that with just a bit of research and work, your efforts can pay off.