• The most difficult thing about selling on the internet is that your potential buyer can’t touch the product – include a tactile description.
• Imagine you are buying the product without ever seeing it before – what would you want to know? Put yourself in your customer’s shoes.
• Use plenty of accurate descriptive language to help your customer feel more comfortable about what they’re buying; eg. instead of “green scarf”, add in a few more adjectives – “lime green lacy crocheted scarf”.
• Offering a refund if the product is not what your customer expected also helps increase buyer confidence.
• Include suggestions of how the product could be used or displayed.
• Tell the story behind your product – the inspiration, the creative process, what it means to you.
• Above all, be honest.
Excellent tips – thank you. Regarding accurate descriptions, I think measurements are particularly important. It’s a simple thing, and easy for sellers to forget, but essential from the buyer’s perspective. Photographs often don’t give a clear idea of the size of an item, and buyers shouldn’t have to E-mail a seller just to ask how big something is (it annoys me when I have to ask this on Trade Me!). Remember that when we buy clothing or jewellery, we usually try it on to see if it will fit; but when shopping online, a buyer can’t do that. All they have to go by is the measurements the seller gives. Perhaps the buyer is looking for an item to fit in a specific space: the bare spot on their kitchen wall, the cubby hole in the dining room, or that particular bookshelf … so measurements become important even for things that aren’t clothing.