Getting Relevant People to Your Website

Credit: Visual Capitalist

Using your website to sell requires you to get relevant people to visit as a prerequisite.  But how can you get people to view your website?  And it needs to be relevant people - those who are potential buyers.

These are some suggestions on ways to attract visitors.

Keywords in the meta descriptions and in the text are important.  These are not just products, colours and other aspects of the work, although essential.  They are why people are buying.  Elements of this are buying gifts, e.g.:

• Holidays
• Celebrations
• Awareness days and weeks (Mother’s Day, birdwatch month, Gardening week, etc).

These need to be detailed in specific terms to bring people who are buying for birthdays, aniverseries, weddings, etc.

They may be buying for a purpose:

• Windows, 
• Kitchens,
• Decorative,
• Functional,
• Garden

Again, these need to be described in specific terms, e.g., splashbacks, dinner sets, wall art, etc.

Use the specific terms in your titles and early in the descriptions of each item.  This process is not easy, and you may want to enlist help from friends and family to get the right terms.  SEO is not the complete answer to getting visits, though.  There are other things you need to do

Categorise your pages with specific names rather than generic ones such as collection or portfolio. Use names such as splashback, tiles, birds, bowls, etc.  Leave the mention of glass to the description of each item. It doesn't really have a place in the title for your pieces.

Promote your social media and site at every opportunity. If you have been mentioned somewhere, let everyone know.  Use specific links to the work relevant to any communication within the post. All your printed material needs to have the addresses of your site and social media, also as part of the signature of your email address.  Link between all your social media platforms, your website and any selling sites you participate in.  

But it is not only your own site that you need to promote.  In promoting other sites that you are associated with, you spread the knowledge of what you do.  By linking and liking sites or businesses that have been useful to you, you may also get reciprocal mentions.  These all spread knowledge of what you do to a wider audience. 

Share

Make it easy for people to share the content of your site.  Have buttons and links that viewers can click on with no extra effort. Share links to other articles that you have found interesting.  The readers of those articles will pick up on your links.   Include internal links to other works on your website and any other selling platform in which you participate.

Update your website.

Updating the website is time away from making.  But it is essential to the selling of what you make.  Of course, you update your site every time you complete a piece of work - don't you?  You let people know of developments in your business life at they happen, surely.  This refreshing helps the indexing web crawlers to recognise a site that is current and so index the new stuff. By using all the specific terms in describing things, you will provide human browsers with the terms to direct them to you.

Respond to current matters

React to timely and trending topics.  These can be relevant general news items, upcoming events that are relevant to your potential customers, awareness days relevant to you and your work, etc.  What is happening in the craft world, or your section of it is of general interest.  It helps develop the audience for craft, which in turn, gives you a bigger audience.  Not everything needs to be about you. 

Write about your customers’ questions.  Give information about the questions and the background to them along with the response.  Use the customers’ language.  By doing this you are making use of the search terms used by your potential customers.  You don't get questions on your site?  There are other sources.  

• Keep track of the questions you are asked at craft and trade fairs and use them. 
• Use the questions you have of other crafts and craft workers, adjusted for your own work. 
• You can develop questions by googling for answers to your own questions and see how they are phrased.  Then use that kind of approach in outlining responses to the questions.

Use case studies in your updates and posts.  Providing in-depth descriptions of a commission or development of a product goes a long way to giving an insight to how you work and about your values.  These are interesting things for prospective buyers. And it engenders confidence in your approach to your work - your ethos.

Write for other sites that are relevant to your customers.  There are websites and blogs that publish guest articles.  You will need to develop a relevant pitch for each of the ones of interest.  Do only one pitch at a time to ensure you are not overwhelmed.

These suggestions are not exhaustive, of course.  It may seem like a lot of effort for uncertain results.  As you become practiced, you will find it easy to add a few paragraphs each day to one of your online presences.  These entries will provide the entry points for potential customers and develop the personality of your business.

Contacting the Wholesaler

Credit: lunchshow.co.uk

Preparation

Whether preparing for a trade show or direct approach to a wholesaler, you need to get things to a good standard before making contact.

This can be a lot of work, but it will benefit your sales across all the venues you have work placed.  Wholesale gets your work out to multiple locations, develops your relations with shops and, by extension, to communities and to customers that you would not be able to reach by yourself.

Presentation materials

You need to have a clear identity to your work – something which binds the separate pieces together, making it clear that it is your sensibility that runs through the works.

You need to have a pricing strategy that runs through your range of products.  This will be connected to the target market that you have identified.  This is important to getting your work taken up by wholesalers and stores.

Excellent photographs of your work are needed in all the literature you produce for the buyers. Photography can make all the difference. Include photos that highlight your story and integrate with your products.  These should be consistent across all your materials.  They should have a unity of style whether shot on models, on background (normally plain white or black), and with props that support the story of your work.

Line sheets

credit: sewport.com

Line sheets are simple listings of each of your products with a code, title, sizes, and prices with each product line and variation on its own line on the paper. Create simple, readable line sheets with clear instructions on how to order, minimum order levels for discounts, and all your contact and banking details. If you have a required means to get in touch, make sure that is included on the line sheet.  The line sheet is essentially an order form which each of you will have a copy, and from which you will create the invoice.  The agreed payment terms, including supply dates should be written on the line sheet when agreed.

Information on product and maker

Write the material for promotion of your work and yourself clearly and concisely.  Start with the most important information about the business and products. Details and methods should come much later.

Be consistent in the way you describe your products.  Always consider the target market.  The wholesaler will be much more dispassionate about the products than the ultimate buyer will be. The descriptions show the trade what your target customer is like and so they can see what the fit between your work and the shop’s offering is.  Use the concepts and words that are familiar to the ultimate customer. 

Review your literature many times, proofread, and finally get a friend to look over the materials for style, spelling, consistency and accuracy.

Your complete contact information is required on every piece of printed material.  It also is needed on all online and email communications.

The meeting

Do the work to know who you are contacting by name and job title.  Use the person(s)’ names, refer to the business, store or shop, indicate you have followed any blog or social media postings, and if relevant, be knowledgeable about the local area.

Be selective in what of your work you present to the buyer. You don’t have to have all your lines of work in shops.  You probably could not cope if you did.  Consider what you can supply in quantity that will fit with the shop’s offering.  This will relate to the materials you can source in bulk (for discounts), and what you can produce quickly and easily.  To offer the best prices at a profit, you will need to determine processes that can be streamlined; designs that can be simplified; processes that can be done by less skilled people.

Remember the buyer’s interests during the meeting

They are looking for a range of work that has wide appeal – to both/all genders.  A price range for different works to appeal to a range of customers is needed. 

You need to demonstrate you know what is going on in the design and crafts field and can respond, keeping your offerings fresh and contemporary. Colours, themes, shapes, interests change, and you need to show you are aware of current trends.

Owners are looking for exclusivity.  Store owners want to sell items that no other venue in their area has available.  It is arguable that the more of your work a shop sells, the more exclusive the two of you should become.

Part of the appeal for the shop is signed and dated pieces.  It adds to the caché of the work.  This should be done discretely to avoid distracting from the whole of the work. 

Often owners expect not only well-made items, but displays too.  At the least, you should have presentation boxes that show off your work well.

credit: theproductmart.com

Trade Shows

The alternative to trekking around shops is to attend trade shows.

Trade shows are a place to make contacts – shop owners, fellow crafts people, and representatives.  Yes, you are there to get orders, but the people you meet may be your future customers. Your contacts might help you understand the market better, or move your work in different directions.  It is a place to gauge how your work is perceived, and what you might change or re-enforce.

Networking can help you in gaining new contacts, and even friends in the crafting community.  Visit other stands and arrange to have a coffee break during the show with those you find compatible. You can compare notes on the show or general business stories with those who are not in direct competition.

Have your product display in evidence at the show.  If that is not possible for some reason, have photographs of it in your literature that you can hand over. This enables potential buyers to see how your work might be displayed in their shop.

Take material to the show that you can hand out to prospective purchasers or representatives.  This could be inexpensive samples, the essential business cards, literature, and of course, the line sheet that you complete with the orders at the show, or be taken away if you cannot get them to commit immediately.  Be sure you get material from them too and that you record what they were interested in, so you can contact them after the show.  A contacts book for you to keep information in is essential.

-----

Selection of a gallery or shop in which to place your work is a complex interaction of commission levels; the value you place on your time in preparing for and attending craft fairs or putting your work online; the perceived prestige of the shop/gallery; the potential relationship between you and the outlet; and the relationship of the consignment, wholesale and retail prices.

Craft and Wholesale Pricing

Craft fair pricing 

Image credit: craftprofessional.com

An important element to be considered in setting prices for pieces at a craft fair that are also consigned to a shop, is that the price the shop is selling your item at, is also the price you should be asking at craft fairs.  Without doing this you risk losing the consignment arrangement with shops and stores.

Also remember that when attending craft fairs or pop up shops, you are doing the setup, travel, marketing, sales, etc., that the shop is doing in a commission arrangement. That cost needs to be reflected in your price for the item at a craft fair, even if different work is being offered.  Especially if the craft fair is in the region of any of the shops or galleries you have placed similar items, you need to be fair to the shops in your pricing to be able to continue supplying them.  The same principle should apply to your online sales.

Some people solve this problem by having a craft fair range and a consignment range.  The craft fair items can be offered at a slightly lower price, if you must. But remember to factor in the costs of craft fair and pop-up shops even when pricing craft fair lines.

Wholesale pricing

Image credit: erplain.com 

Also note that your price on consignment needs to be high enough that you can take wholesale orders without losing money.  Wholesale orders are where the buyer pays you for the work in advance or upon delivery without taking a commission. They normally expect to buy at a lower than commission price and multiples of the work you are offering.

Maybe you feel you do not want to do wholesale work.  Stop a moment to consider that instinctive reaction. Wholesale means you have made the sale already without having to wait for the ultimate sale to occur, as you would on consignment. You do not have the administration of keeping track of stock in various galleries. You have certain, and almost immediate income. All these things make wholesale attractive.

It is the expectation that the wholesale price will be half or less of the retail price.  To make the piece affordable to the wholesaler and for you to still make a profit, you need to add something to the consignment price to enable the items to be sold by the wholesaler and the consignee at similar prices. This is most often less than the full difference between wholesale and consignment prices because you receive the money up front.  Cash can mean quite a lot.  You also need to have enough cushion to be able to give a discount on orders for multiples of the piece.  And that means you need to set the minimum order number to get that discount.

The bottom line (as they say in accountancy circles) is that you need to set the wholesale price first and then work back to the consignment price and retail price.

The wholesale price should be about 10% above the absolute minimum price where you can make the desired profit.  This enables you to offer that amount of discount for orders of multiples of your work.  This then implies the retail price is twice the wholesale plus taxes.  The consignment price will be about 70% to 60% of the retail price (based on 30%-40% commission levels).  More realistically, you can visualise the consignment price to be 10% to 20% higher than the wholesale price, leaving the shop to add their percentage on top of your price.

Image credit: seobook.com

Selection of a gallery or shop in which to place your work is a complex interaction of commission levels; the value you place on your time in preparing for and attending craft fairs or putting your work online; the perceived prestige of the shop/gallery; the potential relationship between you and the outlet; and the relationship of the consignment, wholesale and retail prices.

Instagram as a place to sell

What it is

Instagram is a place to show work and get followers.  It is a photo and video sharing site owned by Facebook.  It is a place to tell visual stories that lead to direct message conversations that can lead to sales.  But it is not a direct selling site.

Developing a body of followers is a slow process requiring continued commitment.  Audiences tend to focus on the Instagram stories and videos. Talking to camera, showing your workspace, showing and telling about favourite products are some of the things you can do to make stories for Instagram.  Posting these images and videos is way to get feedback on new products by inviting people to react.

Using it

Instagram’s value is largely as a marketing tool.  It is not a place to do frequent or blatant selling.  There is a general lack of response to posts with an overt selling message.  But occasional on-line sales to a group of committed followers seem to work. Beware of the effort and cost of packaging and posting, though.

What to post?

Frequent posting is essential to developing and maintaining your group of followers.  Remember the title - Instagram.  Instant reporting of developments is important.  It develops the connection between what you are doing and your followers.  The things to concentrate on are such things as how the day has gone, stories, new venues and products.  Ask questions of followers to get feedback and conversations developing.

Some use Instagram as their main social media source.  Share anything in your life that you are comfortable with everyone knowing, and of course, how the business is developing.  In all this sharing be yourself, have your own voice.  Your postings need to be when there is news rather than at set times.  Your account becomes livelier and more personal when spontaneous.

Images

Good photographs are essential.  Photos and videos are the essence of Instagram.  Your photos need to have clear captions. The captions need to provide the context for each image. Some suggest that concentration should be on the captions, and then finding a photo to fit.  The captions and hashtags are the ways people find their way to your postings.  You need to think about the terms potential customers may use to find out about your kind of work.  There is no need to overload the images with hashtags.  A few well thought out terms will give better results.  Look at the kind of tags you would use to find items of interest outside your craft. The really important element is an emphasis on providing a story in all the postings.

Sharing

In addition to creating content, reciprocation of likes and comments is important.  This means you need to spend some time on the platform to help develop followers.  Instagram does assist in creating a community of followers and makers, especially if you connect with makers of similar things and exchange supportive chat.

Time commitment

There are suggestions that 80% of your time on Instagram should be building your brand, and partaking in the community. The rest of the time you can tell about new products, promotions, and answering questions that will help people in deciding on the purchase.  But, generating sales is difficult by use of only Instagram.

Location of Outlets

Galleries use Instagram too.  But it is mostly about raising awareness of their businesses, so sales on Instagram are incidental to them.  They use it to let people know about news of the gallery and artists, their interests, and promote their exhibitions.  For them it is about publicity. 

Their secondary use is by browsing and getting a sense of potential exhibiting artists as persons and what their expertise and audience may be.  This means that getting galleries as followers can be a way to maintain contact with galleries and get invitations to participate in events.

How Can Glass Enthusiasts use Instagram?

It may seem the emphasis of this post is on full time craft artists, but these things are applicable to any craftsperson who wants their work to be more widely known and purchased.

Anyone who is going to craft fairs needs to do a lot more than turn up with product.  Many times, I hear of people lamenting the poor attendance at an event.  Or, the concern that people don’t seem interested in buying your work.

The organiser of the craft event can do only a limited amount of promotion.  Their promotion will be largely general and untargeted.  Your promotion will be much more targeted, because it will be directed at your followers – an already interested audience.  If you can get your followers to attend the event, or spread knowledge of your attendance at an event, you have a greater chance of having a good event.

In summary, Instagram can be an element in building an audience for your glass work.  This can increase attendance of interested people at the events you are involved in, if you put effort into getting followers who appreciate your work.

Pricing, 4 - Customer Relations

Good Customer Relations

It is vitally important to keep a customer database and to develop good communication channels with your customers.  It may be that they will not be repeat customers, but they will surely tell others about your good service and excellent quality craft.  Get at least email details of every customer and potential customer wherever you go.

Always remember that trade customers need you as much as you need them, so keep them in touch with news.

It is also advisable, to make sure you allow enough time to deliver orders. It is better to say it will be two weeks and deliver early than the reverse. If you do fall behind, keep in touch with customers and let them know what is happening with their order. Also, remember it is acceptable to have a waiting list if necessary, as part of what the customer is buying is the exclusivity of your work. Always remember who or what else you may be reliant on, e.g., the weather, supply times, length of time for shipping, etc..

If you are contacting new outlets or customers do no more than 10 at a time so you can control or monitor the process. If someone says no to your work ask why, as it is important to know for your future business.

If you are supplying, or want to supply, to different outlets in the same area negotiate with them. Consider customising work for different shops or gallelries or offering them different parts of a range.

Be consistent and professional in the way you manage your relationships with customers.

Listen to customer feedback and develop ways for customers to make suggestions, such as comment cards.  Keep in touch with people who have bought your work before.


More information is available 
Establishing the costs
Creating a pricing structure
Terms and conditions of sales
Customer relations

Payment

Stand Alone Online E-Stores

Perhaps none of the existing online marketplaces fit enough of you needs to join them.  You can set up your own and make it your only online store, or you can do it in addition to other ecommerce sites that have some of the features you want.

Advantages

The advantages of your own online store relate to control and adaptability to your design needs.

You retain control of the design, layout, branding, etc., of your site.  This helps maintain your identity or brand and aligns it with your product range.

You have control of when the store is live and when it is updated. You, of course make the rules for what can be listed and how it is displayed.

You don’t have to acquire a lot of knowledge about setting up websites and online stores. Website builders offer templates and store services. You can also use professional website builders to get complete control.

You can link to Etsy or other market places from your own store.  You can funnel the traffic from these sites to own site.

Your own site will enable you to build closer relationships with your buyers. You can communicate directly rather than through intermediaries.

Disadvantages

Nothing comes free of course.  There are some disadvantages to establishing and running your own site.

An especially important element of a store is visits – akin to footfall in real life stores.  You must get people to visit.  You get the visits by making the links with people using a variety of communications.  You need to combine social media with the creation of newsletters, direct mail, blogging, etc.  These relationship building efforts are vital to get people to your website and store.

There are costs relating to hosting fees and one-off fees for the building of the website.  The online stores also charge fees in different ways, so a careful comparison of the best-looking services is important.

There will be additional administration in comparison to an online marketplace.

Questions for E-commerce Site Building

       

What are the facilities for integration of Etsy offerings into your own store? Will separate loading be required?

Is drag and drop site building supported? Is there user support or a user group to support you?

Is an integrated shopping cart available?  What are the order fulfilment assistance options?

Will the site support expanded functions as your business grows?  How adaptable it the site to changes in business?

Is the e-commerce site a market place?  How will exposure of the site to potential buyers be managed?

What is the cost for the features you want?

       

The Balance

You must decide whether the advantages of having your own e-commerce site outweighs the disadvantages in terms of traffic, time spent developing relationships, administration and cost

Websites for Selling Craft

This is not a discussion of which site to choose, but a range of things you need to think about when considering which site to use for selling your craft items.  This includes whether to have your own e-commerce site instead of, or in addition to, a market place site.

Evaluating website offerings requires you to think about a multiplicity of things.  Many of these are listed here, although there may be a few additional things you need to think about for your products.

Recognition/Visits/Traffic

You need to think about the amount of recognition the marketplace has.  Is it the place your potential buyers know about?  Are there a lot of visits to the site?

Is it a market place offering where the website promotes the whole site and the shops within it?  Or is it a site where your own efforts to drive traffic are required? This latter element is like having your own site.

What is the competition within the site? Are there many other sellers of your kind of product? How easy will it be to distinguish your things from others?  Are there mass production sellers on the site?

       

How selective is the site in approving sellers?  This also relates to reputation.

Reputation and Products for sale

Is the site restricted to craft made items? How are mass production manufacturers eliminated?

What range of products are allowed? Is it possible to sell services, and digital products as well as physical goods?

Is the site focused on general products or arts and crafts?  What pricing levels are exhibited on the site?  Is the focus on arts-based items, or does it include bargain basement and cheap deals?

What is the level of security of transaction information offered to you and your customers?  It is vital that the site offers good security for transactions to give customers confidence in buying from the site.

Your identity

Whatever site you join, there will be many other sellers or shops.

Do you get your own shop? Or are all similar products grouped? Is there support or templates to set up your shop?

If you have your own shop what degree of control do you have?  How are images formatted?  What amount of text can be included?  What range of formats are allowed?  Does the site brand dominate, or can you have yours as the prime visual?  What number of themes are available to you?

What level of flexibility in store arrangement and titles do you get?  What number of pages do you get at the various plan levels? How much flexibility and customisation is allowed? What number of items per page are allowed? And what descriptions are allowed either in length or number of terms?

What are the restrictions on the number of products you can sell? Are you allowed discount codes?  Is there inventory control with the site? What is the assistance for order fulfilment?  How much and what features? Is there a system set up for returns? How much support is available?

Are searches restricted to your shop or for all shops on the site?  How are the meta tags used by the site? Are hyperlinks within site only or allowed to outside sites too? Are social media buttons available and with what flexibility?  Can you use your own domain name?

Connections with other e-commerce sites

Are connections allowed?  How easy is the linking? Can you link to multiple sites? Are links to social media – Facebook, etc. – allowed? And how are they managed? Can you link the potential customer to mobile phone sales?

Costs

Of course, there are always payments to be made. You need to look at the various options offered, and the charges involved in them.  If you are new to online selling or have low volume sales, it may be that higher selling fees rather than regular payments with lower transaction fees is better for you at the start.

Listing costs are normally linked to number of items you are offering in your shop. There may be refreshing fees – you must pay a fee to keep the product in the shop after a set period.

There will be continuing fees.  These may be in relation to each item – commission - either as you sell or related to the plan level you choose. Are the commission fees in addition to the listing fees?  Are there additional credit card fees?

Plan level costs are ongoing fees that may be monthly or annual. They are often linked to the length of contract between you and the site provider.  They will give different levels of item fees, and levels of features.  What are the costs of the plan levels? What benefits to they give, and do you need them?  What level of functionality do you get in relation to plan level costs?  How are the plan levels related to the volume or value of sales?

What is the ability to expand and grow through graded plans?  How and when can you move from one plan to another?

Administration

The costs of doing business online may be significant. They may also be related to your familiarity with online offerings.

The creation of an entry should be easy and flexible. You should find it easy to move around the listing form, and it should contain a significant amount of flexibility.  You should be able to make bulk changes.  It should be easy to move items and entries around your shop. 

How much control do you wish to have?  With less experience, you may want to have a lot of the listing, editing of pages, especially contact information done for you, or highly guided.   The kind of support is important. Does the site have a maker support community?

An often-unrecognised level of administration is inventory management. Does the site support that?  If the site does not have inventory control you will have to do it yourself. If you don’t have the stock to satisfy the order, you probably will lose the sale. 

Is the site easy to use?

An important general question is the ease of use for you and for customer. Test the sites out for how easy it is to find and buy an item.  Look at how easy it is for you to use the tools to list your products.

Reviews of e-commerce sites

There are sites that review the offerings of various sites to help you answer some of the questions listed above.  One I have found to be helpful is Ecommerce Guide.

The answers to the relevant questions listed here will assist you toward choosing a website that suits your needs.  It may also lead you toward considering a stand-alone ecommerce site if there are not enough positives in your review of market place sites. It may lead you to consider both.  But the more sites you have the more important it is to be able to link between them and move entries between sites.

A discussion of various things that need consideration on whether to sell on line at all is here.

Why Sell Online?

"Why not? Everyone else is doing it."

The more interesting question and response is:

“Why do it at all? There are lots of other ways to sell.”

The first thing you need to help you decide whether online is for you, is a plan for selling.  You need to think about how you sell. Selling needs to part of whole strategy that can involve multiple ways and avenues of selling. The ways you sell your goods needs to be integrated into social media - whatever platforms you decide to use to sell.  One platform will not be enough.  You need to look at where the main effort will have most return.

Planning a selling strategy

Initially:

Even before you have a whole selling strategy worked out, you need to be using social media to promote your work.  A blog about you and your work is a good place to start.  It gives you a presence, a personality, a brand. Write regularly about your craft life.  Share it with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, etc., and ask them to share it with their friends to get it known.

Linking to and from that blog using Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and other social media platforms help to spread the knowledge of who you are and what you do. These are the things you need to do whether you decide to join an online marketplace, a stand-alone shop, or stay with physical sales points.

Making an online selling plan:

The first part of the planning is to decide why you are going to sell online, rather than stick with just bricks and mortar sales locations. These physical locations include galleries, museum shops, gift shops, craft fairs and exhibitions, etc. Some questions to ask yourself are:

• What do you gain by interacting with shop owners and direct customers? 
• What might you lose by going online?
• How does online fit your products?
• Will you need to put in more, or less, effort online rather than selling in physical locations – shops, craft fairs, etc.?
• Where is your market located? Local? Dispersed?
• Is your market a specialised or a general one?
• Will your products stand up to delivery company handling?

The answers to these questions will help you decide if online will help sell your products.  It may of course throw up ambiguous answers – on one hand, on the other hand kind of answers.  This would indicate a mixed platform approach is desirable.

       

But, just a minute!

Don’t sign up to an online marketplace just yet.  There are some things you need to prepare before searching out the appropriate site or sites for your work.

Products:

Yes, you have a lot of different things you could sell. Think about where you want to concentrate your efforts.  A few key products will help to give your work an identity.  It will help you define, and so reach your customers.  It will focus your marketing and build your experience and reputation. 

Online enables you to concentrate on niche marketing more successfully than bricks and mortar can.  It is one of the main advantages of online selling. Once you have identified your products and therefore your market, communicate with them.  Think about their interests, needs and desires as you write.

Work on describing a strong identity – often called a brand. This should be accomplished in a short sentence. Know who and what you are. Tell your values, your story to the world. But especially to your potential customers.  Follow this description up and re-enforce it with photos and descriptions in all areas of social media. This will then be a style to carry over to the online shop, if you decide to set one up. And even if you don’t it will improve your selling at physical locations.

Prepare product titles and descriptions:

Clear titles and descriptions are needed for each item. These should be direct using simple language making it possible for the viewer to understand immediately what is in front of them. These titles and descriptions should include specific words - terms, tags, keywords - that the prospective buyers might use to search for your products.  You should include lots of tags for the photos and descriptions, but they must be relevant.

Include all the detailed information – size, colour, materials, price, delivery mechanisms and costs, projected arrival time, etc. – in the description, but toward the end when they have probably already almost made up their mind. 

Excellent photos are required.

The main descriptive element when the buyer gets to your page or listing is the pictures.  They must be descriptive of all the elements of the piece – several images per item is a good idea.  Consider a professional photographer to make these images.  They have an independent eye and can see things from the buyers’ viewpoint.  In addition, they can take better pictures.

Share these descriptions and images on social media.  This all needs be done before you join a marketplace website.  It helps to test your abilities to present your products successfully before you commit to online.  It will help you in your presentations of your work where ever you place it.

Costing and pricing:

Of course, there is the boring bit – deciding on the price.

These include factual elements:

Costs of production - materials and time, overheads, administration of the materials buying and the object’s selling processes.

Applying this cost information to each item will give you your break-even price.

You then need to consider what profit you want to make for your effort. This might be done as a margin on each piece, or as a part of your desired annual income.

The break-even plus the income or profit factor will give you the wholesale price.  The retail price is at least twice the wholesale.

Will the market bear that price?  Compare similar products and test your pricing with potential customers. If your price is too high, return to the design of the item and consider how it could be simplified. Alternatively, consider how it could be enhanced to achieve an even higher price for little more effort.

If your product is the kind where purchase of multiples is possible or likely, give yourself enough margin so that you can offer discounts for quantity purchases.

Also think about whether yours is a luxury product. If it is, the price needs to be higher than for general work.  E.g., if your jewellery is set in silver, it needs an extra margin for the luxury element of the item.

Cost of delivery – packaging, time, delivery charges. You need to decide if you are you including this in the price, or is it separate?  This will need to be reflected in the price, or the cost of delivery must be stated in the description.

Benefits

This process of preparing for online selling will benefit your selling, even if you decide against online selling.  It will clarify your offering to the potential customers.  It will help to define you as a producer and develop the awareness of your products. It will assist the customer to understand your story and your work, so encouraging them to buy.

A discussion of choices about choosing a website is here.