How to Win Big Selling Electronics Online

sell electronics online

They say ecommerce brands need to tap into a niche market in order to be successful. As a lifelong tech-lover, selling electronics could be your calling. Research shows revenues from consumer electronics – at more than $72 billion in 2018 – is expected to grow to almost $100 billion by 2023 in the U.S. alone.

If you want to learn how to win big selling electronics online, check out the tips below.

Your First Step

The first step in creating an ecommerce business is examining the market o you can decide what you’re going to sell and who your target customer should be. The electronics market is vast. You’ll need to narrow the field in order to create a successful offering.

Trying to be everything to everyone will place your venture in a first-class seat on the train to irrelevance. Stores like Best Buy and Amazon already have a huge head start in this area, so you’ll need to find a space they’re underserving and show it some love.

This will also help you develop a distinctive voice and style to cut through the clutter and garner attention. Once you have a particular audience in mind, that persona becomes much easier to develop and project.

Building Your Site

This used to be a rather laborious process, but fortunately, those days are behind us. Thanks to ecommerce platform providers, entrepreneurs can create websites with customizable themes, payment processing and business-user tools in a matter of days. The best play in this regard is to sell electronics via Shopify or another similar service. You’ll save yourself a lot of money and hassle.

Understanding Adoption Rates

A notable trend in consumer electronics is that prices tend to start high and decrease over time. This phenomenon creates two distinct opportunities for ecommerce entrepreneurs.

The first one is with early adopters. These consumers were the first to buy cutting edge technologies like drones, VR headsets, and wearables. They tune into every Apple keynote speech and wait hours in line for the latest Android smartphone release.

If you sell electronics, these are going to be your biggest spenders. Sure, breakthrough technologies are expensive for e-stores to keep in stock. But if you neglect this key demographic, you’ll be sorry you did. These consumers are willing to buy at pretty much any price.

The second demographic is the average consumer, who usually waits for tech to become proven. Consider smartphones for a minute. The first smartphone was introduced in 1992, to a ho-hum reception. Come 2018 and more than 77 percent of U.S. adults now own smartphones.

Once a product has been around for a few years, people begin to feel more comfortable integrating it into their lives. Cost is a factor as well. While early adopters love to spend big bucks on the latest tech, the high cost is usually enough to give the average shopper pause.

The takeaway here is tap into both groups.

Capture Consumer Interest

Now that you have figured out how to maximize your profits and sales based on the types of customers visiting your ecommerce site, you’ll need to figure out the best way to attract them. There are countless ways to do so, but here are few of the best examples to get you started:

  • Social Media – Find existing communities on Reddit, Quora, Facebook, Instagram, and the ilk to which you can advertise your products. Focus on the ones most favored by your target audience. If you can become a thought leader, you’ll attract interested parties to your site.
  • Influencer Relations – Another strategy is to find influencers in your market to review and discuss your products. For example, there might be a YouTuber who regularly reviews digital cameras. If you sell digital cameras, you should consider asking them to review the equipment you sell for an upcoming video. The influencer may charge a fee or require free merchandise, but it’s a good way to attract their audience to your ecommerce website.

  • Targeted Advertising – Send advertisements to the users most likely to buy your electronics. For instance, if you sell e-readers, you would do well to target affluent middle-aged women who visit sites like GoodReads. Programmatic advertising makes this possible.

Selling electronics is a great opportunity for ecommerce entrepreneurs so long as you establish a usable website, tap the right consumers, and capture consumer interest in the right ways. Find the right combination and you’ll win big selling electronics online.

Leave a Comment