What to Do If Your Ecommerce Products Aren't Selling

This is one of the questions that I often get asked.  People say they are scared to go for an ecommerce business because they're afraid that products won't sell, or they run a product and it's not quite getting the numbers that they expected. So I'm going to go through the top 3 things to do if your products don't sell. 

3 Things to Do if Your Products Don't Sell

The video I'm posting here is the first time that I've done a screen share with Facebook Live. It's a new feature, and I'm just testing it out.  We've all heard that Facebook is cracking down on organic posts, but I still feel like Facebook Lives can get a pretty good reach, and now we can screen share. This is exciting stuff!  I've shared a presentation, and if you've got an ecommerce shop and you're stuck, you'll want to watch this. If you've got some products that don't sell, I'm going to go through my 3 tips of what to do if your products don't sell.

The three are: change it, dump it, or gift it. I'll go through each one of those so you can get a better grasp on what needs to be done. What you need to change about it,  when you'll know it's time to dump it, and then if all else fails, gift it.

First: Change It

Number one, you're going to change it. These are my four Ps, picture, pricing, pitching, and product. You have a product on either a marketplace, your Shopify store, on Facebook, or wherever you're selling. It didn't sell or it didn't get the numbers that you wanted, so you are going to change it. These are the four things that I go over every single time I put a product up. If it doesn't sell like I wanted it to, I'll go back and address these four things. Let's go into each one.

Pictures

Number one is your pictures.  If you're selling clothes, does it look like dirty laundry?  I had a product pop up in my feed, and it looked like it was dirty laundry.  Like she just pulled it out of the laundry basket, and put it on, and took a picture. The lighting was horrible. I could see that there was clutter in the background. It was a horrible picture. If it was my product and I was trying to sell that shirt, the number one thing I would change would be my picture. Your picture needs to sell the vision, the vision of looking pretty in the shirt. If your picture's crummy, it's not going to sell.

Pricing

Are you being greedy with your margins? I want to talk about a commodity versus a brand. A commodity is just something that you can go get from a wholesaler and resell it. Other people are doing it too, and it's not a unique product. When you're selling a commodity, you're not going to get huge margins out of it. You get huge margins when you start growing your brand because brands can demand. 

Did you create an offer that's too good to pass up? If you create an offer that just kind of blends, everybody else is selling it for the same price, or the shipping's expensive, no one's going to take it, right? But if that offer is so good that people can't pass it up, then you're going to have a lot more people buying. Free shipping has been good in the past for me or bundling items.  We would sell a bundle of three together, and that usually did really well. You want to create an offer that other people are not doing. Stand out a little more. Put in a free product. Make it exciting so that people want to get your product because they love it. They're excited about it.

Pitch

Next thing, pitch. Are you selling to the wrong crowd? This is a big one. The pitch is kind of like your copy.  It's what you're typing out and what you are selling to your audience. Here are a couple of examples. Trying to sell a Chia Pet to teenage boys–that's not really their market, right? Maybe a couple have them, but that's not their market at all. Then take, for instance, elephant pants. We were over in Cambodia, and I swear, all the women and teenage girls had these pants on. That's who they marketed to. They didn't really market to dads because the dads weren't wearing them. Or if they were selling blankets in Cambodia in 115-degree weather, nobody would buy them. However, if you sold cooling fans, those would sell out like crazy. You want to make sure that you're selling your product to the right crowd.

Product

The next one is product. We're going to go through and determine if your product ultimately stinks. If it ultimately stinks, you don't want to sell it. Just move on.  Number one, are you listening to what your customers want? Are you finding those trending products? If you're not finding those trending products, tweaking them, branding them, or making your own, you're going to blend in or get lost. You want to be able to find those trending products that are already selling because if they're already selling, you might as well just sell more, right?

Be Sure You Are in the Selling Season for Your Product

Is it past the selling season? Watch to see if you're past the selling season. If you're trying to sell a coat in January, that's not really going to sell. Maybe a jacket will or if you have a winter blowout, but if you're full-on selling a coat with a hood, your sales are going to be a little bit lower, just because that's not the season. People are wanting to think spring by February, like, “Bring on the warm weather. We're tired of the cold.”

Make Your Product Unique               

Next, have you made your product unique? You want to sell trending items, but how do you make it just a little bit unique. How can you offer something else that no one else can offer? Why are they going to buy from you and not someone else? Let them know why you can sell to them, why your product is so much better for them.

Dump It!  The Second Thing to Do if Your Product Doesn't Sell

Number two, dump it. There are some things that are my criteria for dumping a product. I'm not getting any sales, or maybe just one. It's just not creating a bunch of sales. I've gone through the process of changing the price, changing the pitch, and changing my pictures. Then everybody has some honest friends out there, right? This is the time that you want to pull them out and just say, “Hey. What do you think about this product?” They'll tell you the truth.

You've submitted to at least three marketplaces, and they're all declining you. There's something wrong with the product. It's outdated or the market is saturated. It's not trending. If you submitted to marketplaces, and they're declining you, your friend's telling you it's awful, and you're not getting any sales, guys, it's time to move along. It's time just to drop it and go to the next product.

Failure is Not a Bad Thing

When you dump a product, you have to remember it's not personal. Don't be offended. Don't be distraught. It's just a product. Move to the next thing.  I always say that I failed my way to success because if I didn't try it every single day, day after day after day, I wouldn't have learned what failed and what succeeded. Don't be afraid. Failure's not a bad thing at all. It teaches you. Failure teaches you what works and what doesn't work.

You've Dumped Your Product, Now Gift It!

This is the last of the things to do if your products don't sell.  If you've made the decision to dump the product, feel free to gift it. You have to buy gifts anyway, right? So give what doesn't sell. These gift-giving things can end up being some of the greatest gifts that you give people, so don't be afraid.

Do You Want to Learn More?  You Can Do This Too!

If you want to know more about how to sell products online or how to build a website, this is what I talk about on the Facebook page. It's the Alison J Prince Facebook page. We call it Because I Can Clan. Why do we call it Because I Can Clan? It's because you can. You can do this. You can change your life.

There's also a masterclass that I teach called 0-100K.com. You can check that out. I go into more detail about how my daughters, who were 10 and 13 at the time, sold over $100,000 in scarves.  It's not a hard process. You just have to know the process, and I will help you get there because I've done it so many times.