Keep reading sand discover which of these alternatives to Channable best suits you and your business.

Let’s start at the beginning, what is Channable?

Channable is a platform that enables you to automate the management of feeds and creation of SEM campaigns. Channable allows you to synchronise products to more than 2500 sales channels (marketplaces, price comparisons sites, social ads, affiliate networks…).

This tool offers different types of monthly rates that suit the needs of every business. Prices range from €29 (small business) to €599 (XXL business professional) and offers the option of adding extra services. It already has more than 7000 active users, including clients like Rituals, Decathlon, Vodafone and many more. 

Advantages of working with Channable

• More than 2500 price comparison sites, marketplaces, social networks and affiliate networks
• Dynamic advertisements for Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising
• Types of integration
• Trial account
• The most affordable price according to the range of products and channels

Disadvantages of working with Channable

• It takes quite a long time to learn how to manage the tool successfully

6 alternatives to Channable that you should evaluate for your business

• BigBuy (recommended option 🥇)
• Lengow
• Feedonomics
• BeezUP
• Channel Pilot
• Shopping Feed

BigBuy (recommended option)

We simply had to start this post by recommending our star product: The MultiChannel Integration Platform. 

At BigBuy, we have developed a software which allows you to automatically configure and manage your ecommerce, marketplaces and other digital channels.

Here we tell you about its main features.

Dropshipping model

One of the main advantages of BigBuy is that it is also a dropshipping supplier. What does this mean? Well, you will be able to sell any product from its extensive catalogue without having to invest in stock. For business owners, this is a huge advantage, since the cost savings are immense. Dropshipping is a business model where the supplier ships directly to your customer, without going through you, but under your brand name. That way, your end customer has no idea the supplier has shipped it.

Catalogue management

You will have access to our catalogue of more than 250,000 products, many of them top brands. You will be able to synchronise the products from our catalogue directly on all of your sales channels, an enormous advantage! In addition, our catalogue is translated into 24 European languages and enables the automatic mapping of categories and products with the different marketplaces.

Shipping and carriers

BigBuy is synchronised with the main courier companies in the world, more than 50, including UPS, GLS, Fedex or SEUR. It also offers you the option of tracking the order at all times, since it is fully automated.

Personalised support

Our support team will be available to assist you with everything you need throughout the process. All of the support you receive will be fully personalised, tailored to your needs and multilingual.

In addition to all of these advantages, we offer more solutions to make managing your business easier:

• Automatic synchronisation with marketplaces of ecommerce platforms
• Automatic synchronisation and updating of prices
• Synchronisation and updating of stock in real time
• Centralised management of all of your orders from one single platform

Lengow 

Lengow is an ecommerce automation platform which boosts and gives visibility to brands. It helps small and medium sized projects to achieve a wider expansion through multiple sales channels. This alternative to Channable offers a solution tailored to the type of business and situation.

Advantages of working with Lengow

• It offers associations with price monitoring tools
• More than 40 applications available: Translation, customer reviews, email, price monitoring, and many more
• It doesn’t just have marketplaces: Marketplaces, Ecommerce Platforms, Comparison Sites…
• More than 1,400 sales channels available

Disadvantages of Lengow

• Expensive compared to competition
• The tool can be complex to use if it isn’t managed by someone with technical know-how

Feedonomics 

Feedonomics is an alternative to Channable which boosts companies’ sales. It synchronises data of products with a plethora of channels and optimises the information to generate more sales. Freedonomics offers the opportunity to publish optimised advertisements easily on hundreds of channels and markets, including: TikTok, Google Shopping, Facebook, Walmart…

Advantages of working with Feedonomics

• 24/7 constant support
• Easy to learn how to use
• Alert system: Error notifications so you can solve them as soon as possible
• Option of filtering the performance metrics to guarantee that all products are profitable

Disadvantages of working with Freedonomics

• It can take time to get used to the interface

BeezUP

BeezUp is an ecommerce management tool designed to provide solutions to brands, agencies and sellers. It offers all types of features to streamline and facilitate the management of your ecommerce.

Advantages of working with BeezUP

• It optimises the information and description of each product on the platform
• It optimises and tracks your marketing campaigns
• It offers a trial of the software
• It operates in five European languages
• More than 2000 sales channels

Disadvantages of working with BeezUP

• Most integrations are with European platforms.

Channel Pilot

Channel Pilot offers a catalogue management solution for brands, agencies and online stores. This feed management tool is an alternative to Channable that may be worth finding out about if you have an ecommerce. Companies like El Corte Inglés or Bauhaus already use it to manage their online stores.

Advantages of working with Channel Pilot

• It allows you to monitor the prices of the competition
• Optimisation of prices so you can achieve the set objectives
• Simple creation of feeds
• Free trial
• Thousands of sales channels throughout the world

Disadvantages of Channel Pilot

• Its website does not state the prices, as they would vary depending on the needs of the business

Shopping Feed

Shopping Feed is a tool that connects your online store with more than 1000 sales channels like Facebook, Etsy, Instagram, Walmart, Amazon and many more. Below, we tell you what advantages and disadvantages this alternative to Channable offers.

Advantages of working with Shopping Feed

• Synchronisation with more than 1000 channels
• Customisable interface

Disadvantages of working with Shopping Feed

• Its website does not contain information about prices

There are many alternatives to Channable, choose the one that best suits your needs

As you can see, there are many alternatives to Channable and all of them will expand your business. You just need to find the one that best suits your needs. Here at BigBuy, we want to help you to boost your sales exponentially and to make managing your ecommerce easier for you.

Do you have any queries? Contact us and we will be delighted to assist you.

La entrada 6 alternatives to Channable that will save you time in managing your ecommerce aparece primero en Blog Dropshipping y Ecommerce para tu negocio | BigBuy.

Valentine’s Day, although its origin didn’t foresee it, has become a key day for sales. What began as a commemoration of a priest who secretly married young lovers has resulted in a romantic holiday, yes, but one with a strong commercial background. Seize the opportunity and boost the sales of your dropshipping store!

Many businesses achieve particular success during this time of year; don’t get left behind and make sure you get your share of the pie; you have one of the largest audiences in the world: millions and millions of couples in love who want to prove it.

Valentine’s Day is, without a doubt, a date to mark in your e-commerce calendar, with sales comparable to Mother’s Day or Father’s Day and, in addition, it comes after the consumerist atmosphere of Christmas.

In Europe, after some Asian countries, you will find the biggest consumers of love these days, with spending which will vary between 90 and 220 euros per person on average, not insignificant figures. And we add a small detail… the ones who spend the most on Valentine’s Day are the Spanish, French, English, Italians and Germans. Even the banks of these countries break records on Valentine’s Day with digital loans… You already know where to aim!

Original gifts for Valentine’s Day: surprise your customers

In these romantic days, without a doubt, you have to get into the environment and know what your potential customers are looking for. We’ll tell you which products are the best sellers and – why not? – we also want you to think differently with our original gifts for Valentine’s Day. Why? We’ll let you into a secret: young people and singles who want to indulge seek original things!

Hearts and candles, undisputed kings of the campaign

Like it or not, Valentine’s Day is about love and romanticism, so we shouldn’t be surprised that Amazon has announced two bombshells: candle sales for romantic dinners increased by 1,200% and heart-shaped products by 400%.

With such amazing figures, you can’t miss this opportunity in your dropshipping shop, but yes, our recommendation is that you differentiate yourself and count on candles and hearts, but original ones!

GLITTER MULTI-COLOURED LED HEART

HEART-SHAPED SCENTED CANDLES (SET OF 2)

Valentine’s Day is about more than romanticism

As we have told you, if you want to stand out and make your clients fall in love with these dates, it is essential that you have original gifts for Valentine’s Day. And speaking of hearts and candles… give them a spicy touch!

HOT MASSAGE HEART XL BE MINE LOVERSPREMIUM

MASSAGE CANDLE RED FRUITS VOULEZ-VOUS…

We already commented in our article “Discover the advantages of starting a dropshipping Sex Shop business” on the rise which erotic items are experiencing in e-commerce; take advantage of the occasion; Valentine’s Day is one of the best dates for the sector in terms of sales.

Classics never fail, think of perfumes!

Earlier we talked about how many businesses achieved success on Valentine’s Day; wouldn’t you like the same thing to happen to your dropshipping store? If so, discover our wide variety of wholesale perfumes.

During these days perfumeries invoice 20% of their annual total, a figure which is juicy enough to leave these items on the side. And it is the case that the three classics (perfumes, flowers and chocolates) celebrate Valentine’s Day almost, almost as much as Christmas, since it is their second sales peak after this holiday. Of course, we have to confess that perfume is the one that survives best, where some stores sell twice as much as in a normal week.

With products in such high demand, with a more than predictable growth and which do not go out of style, you cannot get left behind. And if you want to surprise someone with original gifts for Valentine’s Day, we’ll give you some ideas…

EROTIC PERFUME BIJOUX INDISCRETS L’ESSENCE DE BOUDOIR

WOMEN’S PERFUME SET LA VIE EST BELLE LANCÔME (3 PCS)

Technology and electronics live their best moment

Valentine’s Day is surrounded by romanticism, as we know well, but in some couples this feeling is lost at the time of giving and they don’t conform to this aspect, but take a step further. Sophistication arrives and, why not, the increase in the average spend.

The irruption of technological gifts has stolen the budget from some more traditional gifts, so your dropshipping shop doesn’t have to be full of hearts and stuffed animals, at least not exclusively.

Every day it is easier to find a gadget-loving couple, in fact, most of the biggest lovers of technology will look for a mobile to give this Valentine’s Day. However, we want you to be up to date with the latest technology and the most original gifts of the sector, so we’ll show you some!

INNOVAGOODS VASS VOICE ASSISTANT SPEAKER

INNOVAGOODS SMARTPODS WIRELESS EARBUDS

Conquer with the best original gifts for Valentine’s Day

Go for it and choose one of the product ranges which is most demanded by customers. In BigBuy you can find thousands of interesting and trendy items, a safe bet, so you know, give priority to your original gifts for Valentine’s Day.

In addition, this category can give you one of the greatest profit margins, without forgetting that many of these items work perfectly as impulse products.

LOVE METALLIC BOTTLE RACK

ROMANTIC ITEMS RING FOR A KISS BELL

Tips to highlight Valentine’s Day in your dropshipping store

The great advantage of having a dropshipping store is that you don’t have to worry about the stock and logistics, something which is highly valued in times of great demand and urgency in delivery, as in these campaign days, so leave that part to us.

Once you have all the original gifts for Valentine’s Day in your catalogue, it is a matter of publicising your products and your possible offers. Remember, you only have to sell, the rest is in the hands of BigBuy. Take note of these little tips to promote Valentine’s Day in your dropshipping store and the campaign will be a success.

• It’s time to update your creativities. As we know that inspiration or time doesn’t always arrive, at BigBuy we help you with templates so that both your dropshipping store and your social networks and communications are in tune with Valentine’s Day.
• Take advantage to make discounts and/or offers. Couples are anxious to find the perfect original gift to give, help them to decide with a small discount, close more sales than you think, especially at the last minute (more than 60% maximum time).
• Do not neglect the power of social networks. We have repeated this on numerous occasions, but social networks are a great channel to advertise on. Take advantage of the special hashtags for Valentine’s Day and encourage yourself to create a contest or a draw, they are very, very profitable.
• Communicate through email marketing. If you have not done so already, launch your email marketing campaign; it works wonders as a reminder and loyalty, without forgetting its low cost.
• Dedicate time to your blog. Take advantage of content marketing and give life to your blog; it can be the ideal solution for a possible indecisive client.
• Invest money in advertising. If it comes within your budget, it is always a good option to reach new users by dedicating a part of it to advertising on social networks or Google Ads.

Now, don’t waste another minute and get the most out of these days of hearts, candles, original gifts and, who knows, maybe a crush too for your dropshipping shop this Valentine’s Day.

La entrada Valentine’s 2019: tips to help your dropshipping store succeed aparece primero en Blog Dropshipping y Ecommerce para tu negocio | BigBuy.

But…what is Black Friday?

There is no doubt that Black Friday is the ultimate discount event. This day, marked in the calendar of an increasing number of businesses, is the day which marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season in the United States.  And, why is it called Black Friday? There are different theories, but the most accepted suggests that it is the moment in which business accounts go from being in the “red” to being in the “black”. A great day for any business.

Back in 2010, only 8 years ago, the American company with the little apple symbol imported this tradition, creating a celebration which has been getting more popular year after year.  Nowadays, it is so integrated into the minds of consumers that there are even tricks and strategies to find the best bargains.  And Cyber Monday, which is nothing more than an extension of Black Friday, emerged as a good day to encourage online shopping, with great results up to now.

The figures speak for themselves: according to Netrica, in 2017 figures shot up during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, with an increase of 32.8% on orders from desktop computers and of conversion rates by 4.4%, the most desirable numbers for any day of the year.  However, the most shocking figures came from marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay, with 48.2% of total product sales concentrated on these days of the campaign, although it is necessary to mention that Amazon stood out above the rest, another reason to have Amazon dropshipping among your main strategies. Bear this in mind!

And what does Black Friday 2018 have in store? We have good news for the most sceptical amongst you; in the event How to successfully put digital strategies into practice for Black Friday by Making Science, there was a figure that resonated in all assistant’s ears, and that is the prediction of a 13% increase in sales compared to Black Friday last year.  

In summary, keep this figure in mind: searches carried out with the words “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” have multiplied by 14 times in the last 4 years.

Advice to increase your sales this Black Friday

Taking advantage of Black Friday to increase the sales of your dropshipping store is quite simple – and recommendable – if you follow certain guidelines. We’ll tell you what these are below.

1. Best selling products. Although it’s never taking too far to extend offers to other categories, it is often more profitable to focus on what consumers demand.  According to experts, the most popular categories last year were Electronics, Fashion and Make-up, with special emphasis on televisions, laptops and consoles, particularly the PlayStation 4. Sales also stood out for products such as the Conga Excellence robot vacuum cleaner, smartwatches and memory cards.As you can see, technology is the Queen during these days of discounts, so focusing the promotions of your dropshipping store on these categories is a sure way to increase your sales this Black Friday.  Discover all the options in our wide range with thousands of recommendations such as wholesale computing and electronics. 
2. A question of time. As often happens, foresight can prevent errors and unnecessary haste, so take your time and prepare your ecommerce for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in advance.  Ideally, you would have decided on your strategy at least two weeks in advance, so get to work! Given that, with our dropshipping service, you don’t need to worry about logistics and stock, focus your efforts on creating the best discounts and, above all, on how to communicate them to your customers.
   
   However, you need to keep time in mind during the entire process. So before doing anything else, you should decide how many days you will offer the discounts for.  Our experience has shown us that you should ideally maintain the promotions for at least the 4 days between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but you are totally free to decide if you extend or reduce these times.  One thing is for sure, don’t underestimate Cyber Monday. In terms of technology it is a key day to increase your sales.
   
3. Ideas for your promotions. As well as the essential discounts, it is a question of using your imagination and creativity. At BigBuy we provide some hints so that you can take full advantage of this period.-Offer discounts with vouchers, free delivery, 3×2…or all of the combinations you think are attractive, even though they may not particularly profitable for you. Keep in mind that it is a way to gain loyalty and to get yourself known, then you will increase the margins in the Christmas campaign. Ideally, you should give customers the feeling they are buying unique bargains that they can’t miss out on. In addition, top ecommerces take advantage of this period to capture leads, leaving the profitability of the order itself on the back burner during these promotions.- Accompany offers with pricing strategies.  A simple way to create urgency in the buying process is to create decreasing offers, so the discount decreases with each day.

   – Create combinations or packages of special products for this period: they will have a much lower price than if bought separately and, in this way, you will be compensated for the low margin with an increased spend of the average order.

   – Reward loyalty and give your top customers a treat: send them a unique discount that they can’t refuse.

   – Take advantage of up-selling and cross-selling in your ecommerce. There is no better opportunity than offering something for free, or something that is superior to what the consumer wants.  Think of the best cross-sales, apply a small discount and start to sell items that were less successful before.

   – It’s the ideal time to incorporate new products and/or categories with amazing discounts. Being new and on offer is a perfect combination!

   – Another great option is to squeeze the juice out of social networks with competitions before Black Friday. Launch the million dollar question to your followers and you will see which product they would like to see discounted, you’ll win for sure!

   – Important! Many of these options are very simple to carry out in PrestaShop, simply by accessing the Catalogue > Price section or by creating personalised vouchers; the process is very intuitive and, if you have difficulty, you have plugins which will help you enormously in the configuration of your tactics.  So you have no excuse not to start to apply them now.

    

4. Promotions don’t sell themselves. There is no doubt that a discount or offer is a great opportunity to increase your sales this Black Friday. But your customers need to know they exist. Don’t worry. We’ll give you some tips so that your offers don’t fall on deaf ears:
   
   – Prepare your email marketing campaign in advance and don’t be scared to be insistent, you won’t be the only one! Furthermore, it is an excellent excuse to be able to extend your list of subscribers and take advantage of these leads in your future strategies. A trick: Personalise emails if possible and make your customer feel special.
   
   – Don’t be scared to increase investment in advertising, but do it carefully. In these cases where your margin will be lower, it is recommended that you opt for re-marketing on Google Ads and Facebook, if you have a reasonable number of visits. And if you don’t already have it activated, our recommendation is that you pay for CPC (Cost per Click) on Google Ads, Facebook Ads or product comparison sites.
   
   – Remember the huge potential of social networks. Apart from publicity, communicate everything you have prepared for Black Friday and Cyber Monday with attractive copy and creativity.  However, the best thing about social media is that you can create expectation in very attractive ways. Take advantage of this.
   
   – If you have a recovery strategy for abandoned carts – which is highly recommended -, on this occasion you should pamper them more than ever: according to Barilliance, the rate of cart abandonment on Black Friday was 74.5% in 2017.
   
   – Take care of the fine details of your website. There is nothing more attractive than entering an ecommerce and seeing a striking banner with a juicy promotion. But don’t leave other options to one side, such as inserting pop-ups during the navigation. Think of it as increasing your dropshipping store’s sales in a type of pre-Christmas campaign!

You’re not alone. Discover some successful case studies!

Apart from the advice and help we provide from BigBuy with our own Black Friday and Cyber Monday, looking at other businesses that have run interesting campaigns is a good option. We provide a selection so that you can be inspired and achieve increased sales on your dropshipping store.  

• W·A·U Brand: Its success rests on simplicity, impact, the fact that they offer more than one type of discount and, of course, the urgency to make the purchase created by the phrase “final hours!”.
  
  
• Sephora: An evocative and attractive email marketing campaign. The structure is simple, there is a balance between images and text – you don’t want to saturate your customers with information -, it has action buttons with contrasting colours and clearly displays the brand identity.

• Amazon: in 2017, the King of the marketplace created a different offer for each day of the week.  The aim? Simply and plainly to keep users alert for the entire duration of the promotion. And it was a resounding success, as we mentioned at the beginning of the post!
  
  
  

We’re sure that you have an idea in mind, so don’t waste time and start to create your strategy to increase the sales of your dropshipping store this Black Friday.  If you’re still not sure what to do, have a look at our wholesale product catalogue and be inspired!

La entrada Black Friday 2018, discover how to increase your sales! aparece primero en Blog Dropshipping y Ecommerce para tu negocio | BigBuy.

In this post we will first talk about all of the essentials when it comes to reviewing and calculating an online store’s costs and the other expenses that you will want to avoid, without the possible loss of sales.

Online store costs: what are my essentials?

There are several indispensable investments when starting an online store. Let’s detail what they are and the approximate costs of each of them:

Domain and hosting

All websites needs a domain (www.exampleweb.com) and ‘accommodation’ or hosting, which is the internet space where all files and folders that make a website work are situated. Hosting can be of various types:

• Shared hosting: The most common. This is very economical but as the name implies, your online store will share its ‘space’ with others, which may remove resources from your own. This might be of interest for small stores in Worpdress or PrestaShop, which have little traffic.
• VPS Servers: This is a virtual private server, in which your e-commerce site is hosted on an exclusive virtual server, but with a shared physical location. This may be of interest to online stores with extensive catalogues.
• Dedicated hosting: Just for you! You don’t have to share with anyone, but the price will naturally be more than for other options. This is recommended for advanced e-commerces sites.
• Cloud hosting: scalable in terms of your website’s growth. This is advisable for e-commerce sites with large catalogues. There is no fixed cost as it varies depending on your usage.

There are hundreds of providers offering domains and hosting, so you just need to select the one that best fits your needs. But be careful and make sure that the hosting does meet the minimum requirements needed for a store to work perfectly, and above all that it has a fast and effective customer service to quickly resolve any problems that may arise.

If you’re not an expert on these matters, don’t worry. In the event that you decide to launch a dropshipping store with BigBuy, we can advise you on what type of domain and hosting to go for and that will belong to you 100%.

Average price of a domain and hosting

.com domains usually cost between €10 and €25 a year, but you can also find domains costing only €1 per year.

• Hosting: The price varies greatly depending on what you choose.
• Shared hosting: There are some very cheap ones, which are around €15 per year, but the average is usually over €40 per year.
• VPS Server: Available from around €10 per month.
• Dedicated hosting: The cheapest are over €30 a month. The more expensive ones can cost much more, depending on your needs.
• Cloud: You can find them from around €15.

E-commerce site themes

Themes or templates are predefined designs used to create a simple and practical online shop. Depending on the type, they may be more or less customisable, as well as work with a Content Manager (CMS).

CMS is essential for being able to manage an e-commerce site and keep it properly updated, so it is important that you look closely at its features. One of the most used, powerful and safe is Prestashop, a CMS used by BigBuy dropshipping store templates. In addition to Prestashop, there is also WooCommerce (with WordPress) or Shopify, for example.

The prices of themes also depend on many factors and they may even be totally free, although such themes are often problematic and can negatively impact the success of a dropshipping business. A PrestaShop template might cost you between €60 and €130.

Payment method prices

Once we have our chosen theme, we’ll need to analyse and calculate how much we want to pay and look at the different payment methods, since they may vary substantially. Let’s analyse each of them and their different options:

• Payment gateway: also called the virtual TPV, is a secure card payment system. It is set up directly with financial institutions and allows your buyers to purchase your goods in a totally safe way. Your monthly maintenance depends on each bank, but can range between €0 and €20-30.
• PayPal: this is one of the most commonly used payment methods in e-commerce since it offers a high degree of confidence to prospective buyers and because it is a very easy option for implementing a payment system on websites. In most cases it is free to set up, but PayPal charges a commission for each transaction at 35 cents per sale. Commissions vary depending on your monthly sales (the more you sell, the less commission percentage you pay).
• Transfer and/or payment on delivery: Bank transfers have the advantage for the seller of not requiring any kind of prior set ups, so there is no expense involved other than bank fees. The same applies to the payment on delivery option. Despite the fact that both methods are not often used these days, they continue to be payment options that can offer security to those who do not trust online payment methods, for which reason it is wise to keep them in mind.

Data protection law costs for an online store

Before launching an online business in Spain it is obligatory to ensure compliance with Organic Data Protection Law. This is not a huge amount of work and is not costly, but it is important to ensure that our legal and privacy policies are all in order.

The cost of this process depends on the consultant or advisor we choose to help us make sure that everything complies with the regulations, so we recommend that you contact several and do a price and service comparison.

Other expenses: There are some other details to consider when creating, launching and maintaining an online store. As they are not essential points, we are not going detail them in this article, but there are a series of other aspects that you’ll have to know about when you are costing your e-commerce site and getting ready to start selling.

My online store costs: what else can I save on?

Apart from the expenses we have discussed above, there are some alternatives that will allow you to save without having to lose out on any possible sales or business expansion.

Some examples are as follows:

• Save with stock: One of the greatest expenses for any store, either physical or online, is stocking merchandise. At BigBuy we are dropshippers, and we manage all storage and shipping for our customers. In short, we become your integral logistics operator, which allows you to save time and money with all logistical aspects of your business.
• Saving with logistics: This is very much related to the previous point. A dropshipping service allows us to save on costs related to ‘fulfillment’, which is all order preparation, as well as delivery to the final customer. So you won’t need to worry about your e-commerce site logistics.
  In addition, as we are a logistics operator with a presence throughout Europe, our clients can ship to any country on the continent much more cheaply than with other methods.
• Save on design: as we commented earlier in this blog, the image transmitted by our e-commerce site is essential in generating confidence and higher levels of sales as a consequence. So as to avoid dependence on a designer, there are very economic crowdsourcing platforms for design that allow you to use high-quality professionals without the need to invest large sums.

As you can see, there are many economic factors to be taken into account when creating and maintaining an e-commerce site. An online store’s costs are numerous, but there are ways and means to deal with them, as well as alternatives that will let you save money without giving up the quality of your service, especially at the beginning,

La entrada What is the real cost of creating an online store? aparece primero en Blog Dropshipping y Ecommerce para tu negocio | BigBuy.

On the Internet, image is everything (or almost everything). Nowadays we rely on images to make a purchase online, whereas in the past we would have used a combination of our sight and other senses, such as touch and smell for example. We also rely on photos when it comes to deciding where to go on holiday, and we even use the power of images on the internet to find a partner. Your online business, with it’s well designed logo cannot be left behind.

A logo is a symbol which is formed of images, letters or a combination of the two, which identifies your business and everything surrounding it in a way which is easy for the human eye to take in. A logo is also a way of creating a positive and trustworthy first impression of your online business, therefore choosing the correct logo and designing it well can be very important for the growth and development of your business.

If you are thinking of setting up a dropshipping store but you do not think that you have the ability to design a powerful corporate image, there are other interesting and effective options. One of these is a crowdsourcing design platform which is very much a la mode in the online world.

What is crowdsourcing and how can I use it for design?

This is a relatively new concept which started on the internet, but with each passing day it is becoming more and more relevant. Crowdsourcing started out as a tool for outsourcing tasks. There are of course many crowdsourcing platforms which focus on design. Hundreds of professionals in the same place who could lend a hand in the design of your corporate image (which of course is the logo for your website).

These communities work by listing tasks and projects from a company or a freelancer using their platform. These tasks, (along with the approximate range that the company or freelancer is willing to pay for them) are published on a platform which can be seen by professionals who are likely to want to take on the task. These professionals will have previously registered to offer their services.

Crowdsourcing goes one step further as well. In addition to professionals who offer their services, it can also include something as simple as giving an opinion. You could design your own logo and submit it to one of these communities for the users to see it and give their opinions, offer ideas and alternatives or even just to say whether they like it or not.

How do these platforms work?

In the first case, once the task has been put up, the professional gets in contact with the company or self employed person, and makes them an offer, then both sides can negotiate until they reach an agreement.

In the second, once you receive feedback on your question or proposal, many new ideas will usually come to mind. The usual case is that whoever has asked the question will help the respondents with gifts, products, recognition or an economic incentive.

Now that you know what it is and how it works, let’s have a look at some of the best crowdsourcing platforms for our needs, i.e. creating a corporate image and logo for your dropshipping store.

5 crowdsourcing platforms for design

As we have seen, both of the forms of crowdsourcing which we have described above are useful and perfectly valid options for the objective we have in mind, although it is probably the case that the first of the two is the most relevant for the needs of a future online entrepreneur. Our favourite platforms are:
Guerra Creativa

This is an Argentinian platform developed purely with the creation of logos and corporate images for websites in mind. It is one of the most well known platforms amongst the Latin American community both in terms of the quantity of projects and in terms of quality as well as the quantity of designers willing to accept projects and to carry them out to a very high standard.

Twago

This is a descendent of an older crowdsourcing platform known as Adtriboo, it is one of the leaders in Europe for connecting clients with freelance professionals and developing projects and tasks. There are many different types of experts on Twago, including web programmers, app programmers, graphic designers, translators and online marketing experts.

99designs

This is one of the leading crowdsourcing platforms in the English-speaking world when it comes to publishing and developing logo and corporate image design projects, as well as other tasks. They have four pricing scales depending on your needs: number of designs or proposals, how experienced the designers are… This is a very good option if you are looking for a logo for your business.

Freelancer

If you need a developer for a project regarding your website, software, applications, drafting or of course to design a logo or image for you then Freelancer is a great option for outsourcing.

Ideas4All

Finally, we have a crowdsourcing platform which is a little different to the others but it is interesting too as it involves “co-generation” of ideas. The concept is that they can help you if you are in the middle of developing a project, but have got stuck at some point. This is the place to look for fresh ideas or even professionals who can help solve any technical problems which might have cropped up.

So, what do you think about these platforms? From our point of view, they could be very useful for finding alternative ideas which could be very interesting as well as finding large groups of people available to work for you! Right, let’s get going!

La entrada I Need a Logo for My Website! 5 Design Platforms To Find It aparece primero en Blog Dropshipping y Ecommerce para tu negocio | BigBuy.

Setting up your own online shop from scratch is definitely a challenge, but more and more people are deciding to sell over the net. In the second half of 2016, the National Commission of Markets and Competition (NCMC) registered a 20.3% increase in online transactions , compared to the same period of the year before.

If we convert this percentage to euros, we would be talking about almost 6 billion spent online. The trend shows no signs of falling in the near future, and more and more people want to learn how to create an ecommerce website step by step.

As a dropshipping supplier, at BigBuy we work with hundreds of customers who have their own ecommerces, and we know their needs and the problems they encounter every day. In order to support them in all the tasks related to an ecommerce, we’ve prepared this guide, in which we cover the main doubts that may arise in your daily life when you set off creating your own ecommerce website. Here we go!

Creating your ecommerce website step by step

STEP 1: Define your business model

Many people who decide to create an online store skip this step, but we’ve included it because it’s what really should be done. If you really want to make a profit and take your ecommerce seriously, the first thing you should do is define your business model. Don’t know how to do so? Don’t worry. Defining your business model can be as simple as making a Canvas. A Canvas is a single page indicating the main information on how your ecommerce will work, to give you a guide and tell you the first actions to carry out. The question is, what kind of business models can work in an ecommerce? Although more and more are becoming available due to the digital revolution, we have identified the 3 main ones:

• B2C (Business To Consumer): This is the most widespread model, in which you sell to the final consumer. ‘Asos’, ‘Media Markt’ or ‘El Corte Inglés’ deal with purely B2C ecommerces. Almost all the literature you find on ecommerce and online marketing is usually focused on this type of model.
• B2B (Business To Business): A B2B online store is one that sells to other companies. BigBuy, for example, is a B2B. We sell wholesale and look for customers who want, in turn, to sell to their own customers.
• C2C (Consumer to Consumer): The C2C model was practically non-existent until the Internet came on to the scene. This business model, also called P2P (“Peer To Peer”), can be found in companies such as Airbnb or BlaBlaCar, which put individuals in contact with each other and usually charge a commission for each transaction.

What kind of business will your ecommerce be? Whether you sell products or services, you can be either a B2C or a B2B (or even both) or simply get clients communicating with each other and be a C2C.

At this stage you’ll have to establish several things but the most important thing is where your income is going to come from. You’ll have to see what expenses your shop is going to have, how much you plan to sell, and when you should reach the desired ‘break even’ (that moment in which, at last, a company stops making losses and starts making a profit) .

Sell online without stock

When someone decides to create an online shop, and analyses the expenses and income of their ecommerce, there is a problem that usually arises – what should I do with the stock? There isn’t a problem if you sell services but if your ecommerce is dedicated to selling items of any kind, one aspect to take into account is your provisioning, storage and, of course, shipping. If this aspect gives you more headaches than anything else, we recommend that you find out more about dropshipping. This distribution model basically consists of the idea that when a customer buys something in your shop, you don’t deal with the shipment, the wholesaler does. This, in a nutshell, saves you the stock management and allows you to dedicate yourself to selling. Anyway, in the article below we’ve explained it much better.

• Post #1 to read: What’s dropshipping and how does it work?

This phase involves many tasks and we wouldn’t be able to delve into all of them: finding a viable market niche, become freelance (or not)… We will take a look into them in future articles. Meanwhile, we’ll continue with one of the most entertaining parts of putting a new ecommerce together: its creation.

STEP 2: Creating your online shop

Let’s say that we already have the basic tasks under control before setting up our ecommerce website we’ve done a market study (which doesn’t have to go any further than a few deep searches on Google), we have become self-employed (or we have found an alternative), we have looked for a wholesaler to acquire our stock… If all of this (and a couple more things) is ready, we can get to work on creating our online store.

This phase of the article will be oriented mainly towards those people who are going to create their ecommerce from scratch, and who aren’t subcontracted by another company. However, if the technical part isn’t your thing and what you want is to start selling as soon as possible, you can turn to a web design company who specialise in ecommerce. If, in addition, you want your business to be dropshipping, there are suppliers like BigBuy that offer you a dropshipping shop already fully configured and synchronised with the wholesaler’s catalogue.

First steps: Contract a hosting, a domain and choose a CMS

The technical part of building an ecommerce doesn’t have to be too hard. As with any web, the first thing to do is to contract a hosting and a domain (that is, the space in which your ecommerce will be hosted and the name you are going to give it). Once you have this, you should choose the content manager system (CMS) that best suits your business.

If CMSs are not your thing, you can always develop a personalised web, but it’s a much more arduous job and to do so you must have a lot of advanced programming knowledge. A custom web isn’t usually recommended unless you’re going to build a very specific type of shop, where you need custom processes that a CMS doesn’t offer. From our point of view, these situations are very rare and a predesigned template is going to be much cheaper and will allow you to have your website much quicker. There are many ecommerce CMS that are useful, but each of them is best suited to a particular type of shop. Let’s look briefly at some of the most important ones:

• WooCommerce: It’s not a CMS itself, but a plugin for WordPress. It’s very usable and allows you to set up simple but effective online shops.
• Shopify: The software is very simple to use and it doesn’t require having great knowledge of computer science or programming. In addition, there are a lot of templates available, which adapt to all types of shops.
• PrestaShop: Without a doubt, it’s the best-known CMS for ecommerce. It’s one of the most complete and allows you to set up medium-sized shops. Developers from all over the world have created plugins and templates for PrestaShop.
• Magento: It’s the most used CMS for ecommerces with lots of references and traffic. Its usability is not the best, and we only recommend it if you expect to have a considerable volume of traffic and sales.

Once you have chosen your CMS and you have found a template that you like, you’ll still have to modify the design a little, configure payment methods, contact forms … Down below are a couple of articles that may be useful to you.

• I need a logo for my website! 5 design platforms to find it
• Everything you need to know about payment methods for ecommerce

Don’t forget SEO

An essential part of creating your online shop is that it’s ready to be correctly positioned in Google. Today, CMS and its templates are usually designed to enhance positioning, but there are certain tasks that you must carry out yourself.

The SEO, as you’ll know (or as you’ll soon discover) has both an on-site and an off-site side.

• The on-site part is related to the operation of your website, its structure and content (so you can dedicate yourself to optimising it in the first few days of your ecommerce website).
• The off-site part is more related to the traffic you bring to your website: its quality, where it comes from, how many people recommend you … The off-site has more to do with how you broadcast your website and maybe we should leave this until Phase 3, but so we don’t complicate things, below you can find a great selection of posts focused on SEO.

Posts about SEO you should read

• Introduction to SEO On Page: keys to optimising an ecommerce
• What are a website’s SEO tags? Learn the key points
• The importance of keyword research in a SEO strategy
• The 4 best tools for analysing and searching for keywords
• Explaining the difference between main keywords and longtail keywords
• Anchor text: What is it and why is it important for SEO
• Everything about guest posting to promote an ecommerce
• Factors to take into account when creating SEO content for an ecommerce
• How to design my online store’s internal link structure
• Link types and metrics to keep in mind when linkbuilding
• Tips to optimise off-site linkbuilding for your e-commerce site

STEP 3: Make your ecommerce known

Once your ecommerce is set up and ready to sell, it’s time to make it known. This phase is key in any ecommerce, and many blogs and courses on digital marketing are mainly focused on helping you boost your business’s broadcast channels. It wouldn’t make sense to create an online shop if no one ever enters it.

Evidently one thing is clear: if your ecommerce doesn’t receive any traffic, there won’t be any sales. So now you can promote yourself in the search networks, in social media, in the media or wherever your customers are. This phase of managing an ecommerce is such a “backbone” that the bulk of our blog is focused on helping you as much as possible with it. We have more than 20 articles oriented to support you on this subject, which you can see below, which we’ve sorted by categories:

Campaigns on Google AdWords & Google Shopping

Google’s search and display network, as well as Google Shopping, have become essential tools for ecommerce (often ahead of social networks). If you configure well and prepare good ads, your results can be outstanding.

However, there is one aspect to keep in mind that we can’t push aside: this type of advertising must always be paid for because as soon as we stop investing in it, our ads will disappear off of the map. In this sense, it’s important to develop an SEO strategy in parallel with the investment in Google campaigns. If we succeed in positioning ourselves correctly on Google, our ranking won’t depend on whether we’re paying or not. Instead, with Google campaigns we are required to constantly invest if we want to appear. It’s not a question of choosing one thing or another, but of knowing how to balance them.

Let’s not leave it there. If you want to know more about AdWords and Shopping, we have a selection of articles that you might be interested in:

About campaigns in AdWords: Search network and display network

• Adwords (Part I)
• How to configure Adwords. Tips to remember | Adwords Guide II
• Adwords Glossary. Nomenclature and basic concepts to master | Adwords Guide III
• Discovering Google Adwords Search Campaigns | Adwords Guide IV
• Keys to launching a Display Campaign for your Dropshipping store | Adwords Guide V
• Adwords Remarketing Campaigns: What they are and how to take advantage of them | AdWords Guide VI
• Adword Campaigns for mobiles. Types and recommendations | Adwords Guide VII
• How to create video marketing campaigns through Google AdWords | Adwords Guide VIII

About Google Shopping

• What is Google Shopping? Starting selling with our guide
• Learn to optimise your ecommerce and start selling on Google Shopping
• How to choose and optimise the items on your Google Shopping feed
• Tricks to differentiate your Google Shopping campaigns from the competition

Launching ourselves on social networks

Filtering deeper and deeper into the society, social networks are becoming part of our day to day lives and have become advanced advertising tools for companies. Depending on the sector of your e-commerce and the type of client you are targeting, it’ll be more appropriate to be in one network or another. If you sell women’s shoes for example, Instagram will be very suitable. On the other hand, LinkedIn wouldn’t be useful at all (unless you’re looking to hire people for your team!).

On more than one occasion in this blog we’ve talked about how to get the most out of different social networks, and how to get make your e-commerce known to as many people as possible. In social media, it’s important to bear in mind that having new followers shouldn’t be a sole objective. Being on social networking implies improving your company’s branding (if your company goes from having 100 followers to 10,000 on Facebook, its brand recognition is obviously reinforced). However, this improvement is useless if the sales achieved through Facebook don’t increase proportionally. In the end, social networks are a sales tool, just like a websites. It is worthless if we fail to convert our efforts into benefits.

Keep reading about social media por ecommerces

• How to use social media for your online business
• 4 Social Media tools which will make your life easier
• Advertising on Facebook: How to get started
• How to use Facebook Ads targeting and succeed
• 5 tips for designing successful Facebook Ads
• Tips for creating and optimising your online Facebook Store.
• Advertising on Twitter. Basic guide for creating a Twitter Ads campaign
• Twitter for companies: all the keys to boost your ecommerce
• Advertising on Pinterest: a basic guide to creating a Pinterest ads campaign
• How to position products and do SEO with Pinterest
• Pinterest for businesses: how to make the most of what it offers
• Instagram for businesses, the most visual network for your ecommerce
• What is influencer marketing and how can it help me?

E-mail marketing: A tool that has constant usage

Whether your busy inbox likes it or not, email marketing still works as a sales tool. Even more so in e-commerce. It allows us to keep our customers (and potential customers) aware of our product news, our offers and anything else we can think of.

Even though more and more companies are using it, hardly any of them take advantage of the fact that it can be personalised. So that our customers don’t get bored and unsubscribe, it’s important to personalise our emails and adapt them as best we can to what they’re looking for. Segmentation is key in online marketing, and especially in email campaigns.

Some more posts about email marketing for ecommerce

• Email marketing for e-commerce, a key tool for online marketing
• How to design an email marketing strategy for effective e-commerce
• The best tips to reach my customer’s email inbox
• How to design an email marketing strategy for effective e-commerce
• 6 common errors that we should avoid with email marketing
• How to configure and analyse campaigns in MailChimp

STEP 4: Calculate, analyse & make changes

One of the golden rules which you should repeat over and over again in digital marketing is the obligation to size up everything that’s done. The days when companies made huge investments in TV and radio campaigns where it was difficult to calculate its return are gone. Now, everything is quantifiable and the ROI is within arms’ length.

When you create an online shop, analytics are connected to every aspect of your campaigns, but it’s likely that the most important information is the one you get from your website. The quintessential tool in web analytics is Google Analytics: The technology giant offers a free program, which allows you to control everything that happens on your website.

No prized e-commerce should overlook the importance of measuring what your users are doing. Here you can find 5 posts with which you can start updating Analytics.

Keep reading about web analytics

• What is Analytics and how could it help my e-commerce store?
• The importance of setting up e-commerce in Analytics
• How to configure Google Analytics in 6 steps
• Google Analytics dashboards: How to install them + 5 essentials
• Ecommerce KPIs: The Key Performance Indicators of your Online Store

STEP 5: Always keep up to date

Although we have left it to last, having an e-commerce means it must always be up to date. For this reason, this last step should really be transversal to all of the others. When you create an online shop, you start to depend on the latest demands of the market, which is advancing at full speed. It’s important not to be left behind.

To do so, you can subscribe to our blog, follow us on Twitter and find other publications that talk about the latest trends in e-commerce and digital marketing. Take the risk and try new possibilities and launch simple campaigns to be able to discover new ways to reach your customers and to get to known and, of course, to sell more.

La entrada Your step by step guide to creating a successful ecommerce website aparece primero en Blog Dropshipping y Ecommerce para tu negocio | BigBuy.