How do you decide whether to walk into a physical store? A few factors might influence your decision, such as an attractive billboard, attractive products, offers or the crowd in the store. When you take your business online, customers look for a similar traits, if not the same. It becomes imperative to have a well-designed website and an exhaustive product catalogue – both will help you increase your online sales.
If you’ve signed up for DotPe, you’ve already taken a huge step towards taking your business online. It’s time now to add your product details and pick a theme. A well-designed product catalogue will make your store look professional and help you get more orders. In this article, we’ll walk you through creating the perfect product catalogue and website.
How to Increase Your Online Sales
Create a great product catalogue
When you add a product to your store, you get asked for three main things about the product: photos, pricing and description. If you can make these elements look attractive, you will soon have an online store that has customers.
1. Use high-resolution images
An eye-catching online store has great images of the products it is selling. Amazon and Flipkart know this secret, and their best-selling products almost always have high-resolution images. Customers want to be able to see what they’re buying as clearly as possible.
Your product images should be crisp and bright. If you can feature multiple pictures from different angles, that’s even better. A plain white background helps colourful products stand out. You can also give customers a sense of scale with a picture of the product with a standard product like a pencil or water bottle.
2. Write compelling product descriptions
Did you know that over 87% of online shoppers1 are influenced by the product descriptions when deciding whether to buy something? A lot of online stores ignore this aspect, but it’s very important. A good product catalogue needs to have good product descriptions, period.
What makes for a compelling product description? Highlight the features that matter the most. A great product description lists all the important features of a product in a crisp, compact manner. For an item of cotton clothing, for example, you might want to mention that the fabric is 100% cotton, with washing instructions.
3. Offer attractive pricing
The price has the largest influence on a customer’s decision to buy a product. Pricing your products right becomes extremely critical to convert a visitor to a customer. If you want to nudge customers to buy more, you can consider offering discounts to your customers. With clever pricing and offers, a great product catalogue makes every product in your store look like a great deal.
If you do it right, pricing can increase your sales and keep customers coming back to your online store.
Make your online store look trustworthy
Once you create your product catalogue, the next step is to design your online store’s look and feel. It’s a bit like a physical store: now that you have the logistics in place, you can start making it look pretty. Here’s how you can give your store a professional look:
4. Get your own domain
If you want customers to trust your online store, a professional domain name will go a long way. Custom domains are easy for customers to remember, and give you more credibility. They show that you’re serious about your business, and that you do not shy away from investing in your digital services. You can buy a neat and catchy domain name straight on DotPe, in a few minutes.
5. Personalise your website
Personalise your website to tell your story – with a professional theme. Picking a theme on your online store is like picking out tile arrangements or paint colors for a physical store. They influence the look and feel of your store. You could go with the default theme or pick one that’s more suited to your business.
On DotPe, there are hundreds of themes for you to choose from. They have different color schemes and fonts based on the shop category. A theme for a clothing store will look very different from that of a grocery shop. Pick the theme that suits your store to make it look and feel trustworthy.
How to design your product catalogue on DotPe
With DotPe, you have everything you need to build a great product catalogue. Here are a few of them which you can use to improve your product catalogue:
1. Add popular products, instantly
Adding every product you sell manually to your online store can be a time-consuming task. You have to click pictures, update pricing and add product descriptions. The good news is that DotPe’s catalogue builder has plenty of ready-made listings for popular products. With just a few clicks, you can add these listings to your store.
If you run a grocery store – you can easily add Ashirvaad Atta or Dettol handwash to your store from the catalogue builder. The products listed on your online store will have a professional product picture and the latest pricing. With products ranging from smartphones to home appliances, the catalogue builder can create your online store within seconds.
You can bulk upload items to easily manage your catalog by uploading & editing product details in one go, using an excel sheet.
2. Get beautiful product pictures in a click
You can also add the product and its image to the catalogue manually. When you add a product, DotPe automatically searches Google for royalty-free pictures.
DotPe lets you apply a picture from Google’s image search results to your product listing. You can create an amazing product catalogue with rich images without ever having to click a picture.
3. Update price and availability
On online stores, product catalogues absolutely need to be up to date. You don’t want to accept orders at the wrong price, or for items you don’t have in stock. Customers need to feel that your online store is reliable. With DotPe, you can quickly edit the availability and price of a product.
You can change the pricing of any product anytime you want, and it will instantly go live on your online store. You can even add or remove discounts to the regular price. With these features, DotPe is fully equipped to help you create and maintain a great product catalogue.
To sum it up, there are two main elements to the design of your online store: the product catalogue and the look and feel. Once you get them right, new customers will feel comfortable placing orders on your online store. DotPe is packed with features that can help you create a well-designed online store within seconds, and help you increase your online sales.
