Thursday, March 31, 2011

3 Tips and tricks for a successful Blogshop- Platinum Mall Guide article

 This article is written by someone from Platinum Mall, a major source for blogshop suppliers that is based in Bangkok.  It is clear that Platinum Mall understands the importance of blogshop owners as the customers of their tenants who are major suppliers for these blogshop owners.

The whole blog serves the purpose of helping blogshop sellers to shop more effectively at Platinum Mall.

This is an indication of the significance of blogshops to the Thai fashion industry who act as suppliers.

From: http://platinummallguide.com/wordpress/?p=266

3 Tips and tricks for a successful Blogshop

By andrian on March 26, 2011
 
1. Photos
You’re selling clothes, accessories, bags or shoes, and the only point of contact the prospects have are your photos on your website. I’ve seen many blogshops who have poor quality photos of their products.
The 2 main culprit for poor quality is lighting and poor styling, not the MP or whether your camera is an SLR

a) Lighting
It makes and break a photo, some landscape photographers wait days just for the optimal lighting. Do not use flash is possible, and if you do, let the flash bounce off the ceiling to obtain natural lighting. Trying to obtain bright natural lighting is key to make your clothes look natural and not odd

b) Styling
I’ve seen many placing their clothes on their beds, or on their floors, please hang it up and use a nice hanger.
Remember you’re selling clothes here! If your pictures are not nice, they will think like wise for your actual product.

2. Marketing
Why does your blogshop need marketing? You might be thinking that you’re just looking to earn some extra cash and do not want to come out with more money to do marketing. With many blogshops closing down within the 1st year. It is paramount that you do marketing online. You’re not a physical shop that can rely on human traffic passing your shop.

Most blogshops just create a website/blog and expect through their their friends that word-of-mouth would work.

What tools are available for budget conscious blogshops?

a) Facebook
The most powerful social media right now, if you can harness the power of facebook, you easily have thousands of viewers each day. The easiest method is to create a profile and add your friends on it, after that upload the photos and tagged every of your friend on the photo. This would appear on your friend’s feeds which their friends will be able to see.

I don’t recommend this method, I suggest taking a different harder approach by creating good original content via good quality photos so that prospects are more inclined to view your page rather than being forced fed

b) Updates
Updates are paramount, in this age of the Internet, we are being fed vast amounts of information daily, and if you do not update your content, stock or status, you will be forgotten easily

c) Differentiation
This is something I would like to touch on which is sorely lacking in the blogshop landscape. I’m not talking about selling niche items, but how are you different from the other blogshop that is targeting the same consumers as you are?

I’ve browsed hundreds of blogshops and have found that a lot pictures that were provided by their distributors have been recycled over and over again. Afterall you realise that all blogshops are the same, they offer the same price point, the clothes are similar and they offer the same guarantee and features.

Offer different clothes, take your photos differently, create your profile differently, don’t be generic, you need to differentiate so that prospect would want to buy from you

3. Ready-stock
You know why just because the cashier at supermarkets are small items like sweets, batteries, and chewing gums? Because they are considered compulsive buys, and the cheaper the item, the easier it is to be a compulsive buy.

Many blogshops do not have ready-stock, and do not have an automated pay system. Why this is important is because it provides a conducive environment for the prospect to compulsively buy your product.



No comments:

Post a Comment