Adding a classified section to our site
Discussion
Afternoon everyone,
Just running a few plans through my head on how we can look at expanding our site and revenue this year.
I own an online company within the sports sector, we have a good following after 7 years and loads of repeat custom plus quite a niche market so we often have buyers waiting for certain products (these can be new or even ex-demo etc). We sell a range of products including parts which helps fill out our website but the bigger/expensive items are the more niche product and where we make good money so we dont have a huge supply and its usually 5-10 items at a time.
My 'plan' would be to add a classified/sell your item category, it would allow buyers to advertise their product in front of genuine buyers while also bringing us some money and in turn more views to the site. We could do it two ways one being a simple advertise your bike which I presume would have to be free as 99% of other sites are or if legally possible offer something like what Chrono24 do (Link: https://www.chrono24.co.uk/offer/index.htm) where we will take a cut but the buyer can check out through our website paying on card, PP, transfer or on finance. This will greatly increase the sellers chance of a sale and once the product is delivered and marked as OK we then release the money minus our fee to the seller. We can help with things such as postage or general advice. I would put a description template together for the adverts so all info would be on there.
As mentioned this is just weekend thinking but were looking for a way to integrate a customer base a bit and really get some use from our site which we have just had rebuilt on to a fancy magento 2 platform.
Any advice or input is appreciated
Just running a few plans through my head on how we can look at expanding our site and revenue this year.
I own an online company within the sports sector, we have a good following after 7 years and loads of repeat custom plus quite a niche market so we often have buyers waiting for certain products (these can be new or even ex-demo etc). We sell a range of products including parts which helps fill out our website but the bigger/expensive items are the more niche product and where we make good money so we dont have a huge supply and its usually 5-10 items at a time.
My 'plan' would be to add a classified/sell your item category, it would allow buyers to advertise their product in front of genuine buyers while also bringing us some money and in turn more views to the site. We could do it two ways one being a simple advertise your bike which I presume would have to be free as 99% of other sites are or if legally possible offer something like what Chrono24 do (Link: https://www.chrono24.co.uk/offer/index.htm) where we will take a cut but the buyer can check out through our website paying on card, PP, transfer or on finance. This will greatly increase the sellers chance of a sale and once the product is delivered and marked as OK we then release the money minus our fee to the seller. We can help with things such as postage or general advice. I would put a description template together for the adverts so all info would be on there.
As mentioned this is just weekend thinking but were looking for a way to integrate a customer base a bit and really get some use from our site which we have just had rebuilt on to a fancy magento 2 platform.
Any advice or input is appreciated
Having been involved in classifieds websites for over 10 years now, including some of the biggest in the UK, I think the main things to consider are...
1. It can take a really long time to get traction, the balance between inventory (listings) and users is critical here.
2. Off the shelf classifieds software solutions, just about all of them are hopeless if you are serious, I have tried many of them!
3. You will probably need staff who are either going to do cold calling / outreach and then later, support staff.
4. There are some quite clever ways to make money out of these types of site once you have good levels of traffic, so don't rush the revenue generation part and piss of your early user base with crappy UX to just try and scrape a few ££
5. SEO will take a long time and there are some good strategies and bad ones to follow here, I was consulting with one for a year and they ignored everything I told them, a few months later they have gone from a team of 6 or 7 to 1 as the money dried up. Getting the right site architecture researched and devised before a developer is even hired is key here IMHO.
Do feel free to DM me if there is anything specific.
1. It can take a really long time to get traction, the balance between inventory (listings) and users is critical here.
2. Off the shelf classifieds software solutions, just about all of them are hopeless if you are serious, I have tried many of them!
3. You will probably need staff who are either going to do cold calling / outreach and then later, support staff.
4. There are some quite clever ways to make money out of these types of site once you have good levels of traffic, so don't rush the revenue generation part and piss of your early user base with crappy UX to just try and scrape a few ££
5. SEO will take a long time and there are some good strategies and bad ones to follow here, I was consulting with one for a year and they ignored everything I told them, a few months later they have gone from a team of 6 or 7 to 1 as the money dried up. Getting the right site architecture researched and devised before a developer is even hired is key here IMHO.
Do feel free to DM me if there is anything specific.
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