10 Wholesale Tips for Online Stores

Perhaps you have long wanted to take your business to a new level and provide goods not only in the retail, but also in the wholesale segment, or even completely retrain as a wholesaler. The step is serious, time-consuming and sometimes risky, but not as difficult as it is painted.

Preparation for the start of wholesale sales

To get started, follow the standard scheme for any business.

• Analyze the market. Take a closer look at the degree of niche demand and the level of competition.
• Set clear goals. This is indispensable in any business, but the wholesaler should be especially keenly interested in the issue of the volume of purchases of future partner clients. A detailed consideration of this aspect will help to more clearly outline the future turnover of the wholesale business.
• Choose cost-effective brand positioning. The product provided can be exclusive and expensive, or widely available. The main thing is an adequate ratio of price and quality of the product.
• Hire professionals. Wholesale sales have their own specifics, so for the successful and effective development of a new direction, knowledgeable specialists will be needed. Start by looking for a candidate for the vacancy of a sales manager. As partners, look for a person who will deal with accounting and office work specifically for goods of the "wholesale" category. You can't do without employees responsible for logistics. Over time, it may be necessary to expand the staff, but these people will be enough for a confident start.

Wholesale site features

1. separate resource. Needless to say, both for SEO and for the comfort of customers, it is better not to mix wholesale and retail and create a special site for each direction.
2. Personal account - will greatly facilitate the life of customers and eliminate paperwork as much as possible. Visitors to the online store will be able to place an order and track its status online.
3. Convenient directory structure. Users will certainly find the desired products if they are correctly divided into categories. This rule applies to all online stores. Wholesale customers will be especially interested in top products, bestsellers and the best product bundles. Not extra work - the allocation of a segment of narrow niche and unique products, there will also be a buyer for it.
4. Adequately working search on the site. If there is a solid product base, it will serve the client well, especially if the product can be searched for both by name and by article. Auto-suggestions in the search are a separate bonus, they will certainly improve the karma of the site owner.
5. Simple ordering system. Buying products for a wholesale client is no different from ordering a piece of goods, and therefore should be understandable, pleasant and fast. All the same 5 points in the order form with 2-3 mandatory fields have not been canceled.
6. Quick order. Regular users who are familiar with the catalog will appreciate this feature because they do not have to go to the product pages every time to add them to the cart. In a quick order, there should be fields with tips for the name and article of the product, where you can also select the characteristics and quantity of products.
7. Various payment formats. Payment for goods is carried out in two main ways:

• online - using bank cards, WebMoney, PayPal and other cashless purchase systems, which allows you to automate the ordering process as much as possible;
• offline - with the delivery of products by mail and payment by cash on delivery, which is popular in Ukraine.

8. Availability of goods presented in the online store. The absence or shortage of items from the placed order will certainly cause a negative on the part of the client. Even in the retail trade, such mistakes should not be made, and for the wholesaler, such situations mean the loss of potential cash investments in a much larger volume.
9. Loyalty programs. Bonus systems, promotions and cumulative discounts have long existed in the real world and have already taken root in the virtual world. They encourage site visitors to make purchases more often, tie them to the site and gradually turn them into regular customers.
10. Really useful information for clients. Conduct research, share successful cases and give real product recommendations to your partners in your own blog. Remember that the well-being, business expansion and stable growth of your customers' profits is the key to success for a wholesale supplier.

We left the most important and simplest advice for last - actively advertise your products, namely with the prefix wholesale. Contextual advertising, site optimization, promotion are traditional methods to make yourself known on the Internet. With the consent of your own customers, you can also advertise a wholesale product on their websites by placing a link, logo or text that tells about the supplier company.