We can’t imagine our life without online shopping, and it seems that everything we need can be bought online. E-commerce is widely used for selling different services.
Unfortunately, far to often, merchants don’t take into account that selling services online is not the same as selling physical products and requires special approaches to their promotion. Let’s take a closer look at the peculiarities of e-commerce marketing services.
How To Sell Services Online: Selling Online Services to Offline Businesses
People frequently perceive services as a normal state of things and don’t even think about it when they buy. The service sector is really huge and it has a strong influence on our lives. Talking about local stores with physical goods, where everybody can come and choose everything they need, merchants usually need to organize a different promotion company and structure of work in general. For example, it is much easier to sell a dress or a skirt in the local store, as clients have the ability to get sure about several important factors:
- the store itself and all the products are real (do not forget that there are many cheaters in the Internet nowadays)
- clients can try on the staff they like
- it is possible to understand what kind of material, color, and shape the goods have.
What’s more complicated – is the sell of some kind of services, especially online. Services can serve as added values to physical products such as delivery, after-sales and guarantee services, assembly operations, 24/7 customer support, etc. That is what customers usually expect from online stores. Moreover, it is important to present the information about the products in a particularly favorable light to make people buy the goods from a particular online store.
Usually, it is easier to sell some physical products online, if the merchants offer their clients some guarantees and bonuses, for example. In the case of companies which sell special services – it is important to present their service correctly.
The situation with such industries as education, medicine, tourism, hotel service, banking, insurance, transport, and others, is a bit different. Such companies also have their websites which operate as online stores.
A user can go to a website and make an order. But what do people buy exactly?
The main difference from the physical product is that the service is intangible, so physically people buy nothing. This feature is very important and it defines the other service aspects.
Make Money Selling Services Online
Service quality can be estimated only when service is completed. In other words, when you sell a service, you are selling a promise of the final result. To understand this better, put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Everything is easier with physical products. It can be touched, tested before buying, which becomes impossible when it comes to service. A client will be able to evaluate the training program quality only at the end of the process. Selling consulting services online and the service itself may be assessed only after completing treatment. Thus, the decision-making process for buying services is more complex compared to that of purchasing physical products.
Buying and Selling Services Online: How it Can be Put into Practice
Give all possible high service quality evidence. Provide certificates confirming compliance with the essential requirements, customer reviews, service process videos, and photos. Your website’s design and functionality should support the high-quality service image.
Service requires the producer and the consumer meeting each other. A hairdresser won’t be able to make a hairstyle until the customer comes to their beauty shop. A dentist will not be able to treat teeth until the customer comes to them. A flight service can’t be provided until the passenger comes to the airport. It should be noted that information technologies make a lot of changes in the service sector and give many opportunities for its development. E-learning allows service providers the ability to provide services remotely. E-banking allows clients to use bank services whenever they want without physically visiting the bank. E-service is quite common for us and greatly affects the quality of life.
Selling Digital Services Online: How it Can Be Put into Practice
E-service concepts identify the use of information and communication technologies in providing services. But it is really hard to give an exact e-service definition because all the products and services are very closely associated with each other. The main point is that there are services that can be provided online, but not in all industries.
The service company has to be easily accessible within comfortable business hours. It is important to use all possible ways to provide e-services. Clients prefer to have the best specialists providing services. It is obvious that treatment quality depends on the doctor. Design quality depends on a designer’s skills and experience. Moreover, it is necessary to understand that many services require special equipment and conditions for delivery.
The clearest example is medicine service. Choosing a medical company, clients pay significant attention to technical facilities.
It is essential to publish detailed information about the professionals who provide services on the company’s website. Certificates, work experience, real customer reviews about a particular specialist – clients might be interested in such details. The company description is also very important and can include work experience, technical conditions, plans for development, etc. It is also effective in allowing service testing before purchase. A free first lesson, trial period, a free consultation or examination, all such services may help a customer to make the right choice.
It Is Difficult to Get a Refund for a Poor Quality Service
Practically, it is impossible because any service is the process and it is not easy to prove that something was wrong. Clearly, describe the refund policy and the guarantees that are offered by the company. It sounds very easy, but in fact, it is the most problematic feature for providing services. The service can’t be always provided with the same quality because many factors influence the process.
The same training program does not guarantee that all customers will be satisfied with the result. Different people may have different opinions concerning the hotel services quality, even if they stayed in the same room. It is also important to take into account such an aspect as the client’s expectations. If they are too high initially, it is impossible to provide the best quality service and the final result will be perceived negatively.
Consider carefully the description of the service you provide on the website and give only a real picture. Don’t promise too much. A well-written message can help to sell a service, but finally, the company may get a dissatisfied customer only because of high too expectations. It is useful to ask clients what they expect before the service is provided, to be able to correct them. Moreover, it is better for marketers to present their service on a high, but real level.
Sometimes there can be different occasions, when tourists while booking a hotel room, see a particular picture of the room, where they find all the necessary facilities. In fact, they get to the place, they have booked, but this hotel or a room is not the same as in the picture. This situation can lead to bad reviews and spoil the company’s reputation.
This is not the best practice if you want to promote your business and sell your service as many times as possible. While selling consulting services online, it is important to prove our professionalism. In such a business, the marketer can demonstrate the portfolio of the existing successful projects or some documents which can prove your education in one sphere or another.
Most Important Tips on Making Money Selling Services Online
1. Provide good content.
Nowadays more than 45% of users place high demands on the quality of the content. For them, it is important to have photos, features, and reviews, as well as relevant information about its availability. And about 13% require affordable prices, different delivery options, impeccable quality of service and integrity from selling companies.
HOT TIP: all the buyers can not look at the goods and hold it in their hands. It is important for them to get as much information as possible in order to decide on a purchase. Try to convince the potential customers that the product and service you sell are among the best ones. People do not need to touch or try service to become sure of success, but they already know that it is possible to succeed in some deal.
2. Demonstrate your professionalism
This is exactly what buyers value in most cases. High-quality service is the main condition for sales and high rating. Professional service is based on competent communication with the client which is primarily a desire to help the client. To ensure it is important:
- respond promptly to the order
- quickly, clearly answer questions about the product or service.
Seller’s rating, in fact, and the primacy of its products in the issuance of a search engine, marketplace, based on customer feedback. Companies that care about their image, always try to make the customer satisfied. If the buyer is not satisfied with something, they are looking for a way to solve the problem. It is not enough just to be polite.
Potential problems can be avoided by providing customers with the convenience of buying:
give customers the opportunity to evaluate the quality of a product or service, try it on, exchange it or return it. Fortunately, postal services do not interfere with this but only go towards the sellers.
High-quality communication not only improves the seller’s rating but also encourages the customer to re-order. It can not be achieved, for example, simply by offering a unique product or low cost for a particular service.
3. Use advertising tools
There are many different tools that can help to promote your online business, no matter whether these are some products or services. It is important to build a correct and effective advertising company. In this matter, you can set everything yourself or seek the help of professionals. If you are ready to hire somebody for creating an advertising campaign for your website – you are going to use somebody’s marketing services. In this case, remember all the tips, you have read today in this article. Pay attention to all the points which can be important and valuable.
Companies whose business is based on IT technologies, digital marketing and so on are constantly working to provide their services as efficiently as possible in a highly competitive environment. Today, the market for selling a service online is developing at a rapid pace due to the demand for, respectively, and companies are getting bigger every day.
Competition is constantly pushing companies to address issues with the promotion of its service and services. To stand out against competitors is becoming really difficult. The main thing here must be, of course, desire, the constant search for new ways.
We can derive several points for selling digital services online:
- the tactics and strategy of a successfully developing IT company should be based on knowledge of the basic needs and problems of customers
- it is important that customers who are offered a product or service want to trust those companies with whom it is possible not only to exchange information through electronic means of communication. The opportunity to communicate live with the client, having carefully listened to his wishes, is the key to success in all areas of business
- all possible ways of finding customers should be applied and it is not only the manager who should work on this, but this is also the task of the whole team. In some cases, companies management hires experienced marketers to search for customers who cope with this task successfully and in a short time
In fact, in any type of business, it is possible to find unique service features that determine consumers’ behavior. The main service characteristics provide a better understanding to start the analysis, see what can be improved and find the opportunities to increase sales.
