Be a Pro Packer

When shipping orders, the first step is to package your products. Packaging should always be cost-effective, functional, and customer friendly.

Packaging Materials

The customer’s unboxing experience is your chance to make a good first impression. It can also provide an experience that customers may want to share and post on social media. Social media influencers, beauty accounts, and more are known for creating “unboxing” videos with new products.

There are many different options when it comes to eCommerce packaging materials for your orders. Many carriers also offer free packaging with a specific shipping rate.

Save Time Buying Shipping Labels

You can avoid extra trips to the post office by buying discounted shipping labels from your eCommerce company such as Shopify. Once purchased, you can print off your shipping label and attach it to your package.

Get Your Orders Delivered Right

Today there are an array of shipping types and delivery methods available. Brands can now send products to customers via more innovative options than traditional mail such as local delivery or in-store pickup.

Local Delivery

Local delivery may be a good option if your customers are located nearby. You may also hire a dedicated staff member to deliver your orders or leverage a third-party service to pick up the orders and deliver them to a customer’s address.

Local delivery is also a great fulfillment method for brick-and-mortar retailers. It can effectively improve sales, especially if you have large items to transport.

Taxes

When you are selling products across state or country lines, it is important to understand the different tax obligations. You or your customers may owe taxes to the state in which you are operating, as well as the state in which the order is delivered. Each state has its own unique tax guidelines.

International Shipping

If you are interested in tapping into the global economy, selling internationally is one way to do so. However, this tactic comes with logistical challenges, including international shipping. With international shipping, you will need to use different carriers or a combination of carriers to account for higher costs and longer shipping times. You may also have to change your tax settings.

Optimize Your Ecommerce Shipping Processes

If you have an established eCommerce process, you probably already have some shipping processes in place. However, sometimes you can change what you have already set in place without a major overhaul.

Communicate Shipping Delays

Whenever you experience a shipping delay, it is important to communicate it. This means notifying the customers directly and also speaking with your supply chain, logistics team, operations, and whoever else may be impacted.

It is vital to stay in communication with your customers to keep them up to date on the shipping process. Sending an email to your subscribers can help to keep them in the loop. Also, don’t forget to update your shipping policy regularly.

Offer Free Shipping for Large Orders

Free shipping is no longer just a bonus, as many consumers consider it now to be the norm. While you may not be able to offer free shipping on all of your orders you may want to consider creating an order minimum. Customers who make a purchase above the order minimum will receive free shipping.

Build Your eCommerce Store with DLM Today

At DLM, we are dedicated to proving you with a user-friendly eCommerce store. If you are interested in starting an eCommerce store or would like to improve your current store contact DLM to schedule a 15-minute demo today! We can’t wait to speak with you.

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What is Product Pricing?

Product pricing is the process of using both internal and external factors to determine the value of a product. Product pricing strategies can vary widely based on your industry and area, but it’s important to know that your strategy has a direct impact on the overall success of your ecommerce efforts and your practice as a whole. Product pricing requires some in-depth knowledge of your business, industry, and competition, so make sure to continually look at other practices in your area offering similar products.

How Should I Price My Products?

Advice about product pricing can vary widely in its quality. The best way to begin developing your pricing strategy is by having a rock-solid understanding of your ideal customers and the local market you’re participating in. That’s because pricing will incorporate a variety of factors like your business finances, your online store, your product’s positioning in the market, and even whether there’s short-term or long-term demand for it.

Fortunately, setting a price for your product isn’t a one-time decision. The best strategy is to set an initial price and adjust it as you go.

Your Pricing Model

To find an initial price, start by adding up all your product costs and determine your profit margin. This process is called cost-plus pricing and it’s one of the most basic ways to set a price on your products. If it seems too simple, that’s because it can be – your pricing strategy will ultimately include a lot of other factors that are unique to your practice. These aren’t always something you can account for, either. Some other factors that may come up include consumer trends, competitors in your area, and insight from your customers.

Here are the biggest factors to consider when establishing a pricing model.

Variable Costs

Variable costs are the basic costs like the cost of ordering your products (or the labor and raw materials if you make them yourself), called the cost of goods sold. However, variable costs can also include things like your time spent ordering, preparing, sorting, and shipping your products to your customers. It can also include product marketing and promotions, as well as maintaining your ecommerce site.

Profit Margin

Profit margin is typically a percentage of each product sold on top of your variable costs. When you’re choosing a percentage, keep in mind that:

• Fixed costs haven’t been included yet
• Your price range still falls within the market’s acceptable price for your product (and doesn’t totally outprice your competitors)

Once you have your profit margin determined, take the percentage and turn it into a decimal (so 20% becomes 0.2) and follow this formula:

Target price = (variable cost per product) / (1 – profit margin as a decimal)

Fixed Costs

Fixed costs (or overhead costs) are costs that don’t change based on the number of products you sell. They’re typically not tied to product sales and can include things like building costs, salaries, taxes, website maintenance, and more. Regardless, it’s important to include them in your product pricing since they ultimately impact your overall profit – something that can be boosted by a well-managed ecommerce campaign.

Let’s Get in Touch

Interested in starting your own ecommerce site to boost revenue and become your patients’ source for their favorite products? At Digital Limelight Media, our marketing specialists can help you transform your ecommerce presence with industry-leading web marketing and strategy. Give us a call or fill out our online form to get started.

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Pricing Products is an Art Form

Price something too high and it will alienate certain customers. Price your products too low and you are at risk of not turning a profit at all, which can cause a domino effect and lead to a disastrous end.

While pricing is often an afterthought and a final step in creating a business, it should not be taken lightly. There are many factors to consider when pricing products or services – some obvious and some not.

Things to Consider when Pricing Your Products

1.    Cost

What does selling the product cost your business? This is the most important factor in determining the price for the end user of a product or service. If you’re selling a unit of lotion, the cost may be as simple as what you buy the product for plus your upcharge. For a service, it gets a bit more complicated when adding equipment, labor, expertise, product use, etc. Whatever the case, you need to determine the cost of the product or service that comes out of your pocket. This will serve as a baseline for future price considerations.

2.    Different pricing strategies

There are many different methods to determine pricing. From cost-plus to value-based to competitive pricing, each product category can require a different pricing strategy. Take some time to research industry trends, product types, and pricing methods to determine which is right for you.

3.    Industry standards

What is the current market like for your product? This could be a local consideration or an online search depending on where people purchase your items. Monitoring the market is essential, but also needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Use this information in tandem with your pricing strategy. You want to price your product true to your brand but also be aware if a significantly better or worse deal is out on the market.

4.    Who is your customer?

Having a well developed customer persona helps determine price. What can your client afford? Are they sensitive to price changes? Are they motivated by discounts? These types of questions allow you to fully understand the motivations of your customers and price a product or service accordingly. You must know who you’re selling to.

5.    Company image

Price plays a major part in perception. Often highly priced products are seen as higher end. While products that can be purchased at a discount or lower price point are seen as economical or “a deal.” Whichever strategy you choose, it must be in line with the image you want to send to customers.

Analyze your favorite products, their price, and how you feel about them. Do you feel excitement when you splurge on an expensive face cream? Do you congratulate yourself when you find a great deal at the discount store? These purchases serve distinct purposes and further solidify how you feel about a brand.

6.    Other marketing efforts

Pricing is just as much a marketing strategy as your monthly ad in the paper. We’ve discussed how influential it is in determining purchase power so pricing must work in tandem with your other marketing efforts.

If you’re running discounts does this pair well with a higher initial cost or lower? If you host events, are clients likely to make additional product purchases at the same time? Are your prices a major selling point? If so, how can you work this into advertising? Your website?

Pricing as Part of a Cohesive Marketing Strategy

Selling your product at the ideal price is a careful balance. It’s important to choose a price that speaks to both your product and your audience while still maintaining proper revenue.

Digital Limelight Media has over a decade of experience in the aesthetics, ecommerce, and medical marketing industry and can ensure your pricing methodology is a seamless part of your marketing strategy. If you’re interested in elevating your products as part of a seamless brand, website, strategy, and more, we’d love to chat.

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Key Factors When Selling Products Online

Updating Inventory

One of the main mistakes you’ll want to avoid with an online marketplace is selling products you don’t currently have in stock. With many online stores, inventory is managed automatically when someone buys a product. However, this can quickly become more complicated if you’re also selling products in your office to where the inventory may be depleting more quickly than your online store reflects.

Shopify has a great solution with point-of-sale software that syncs directly with your digital storefront whenever someone checks out in your office. This allows you to maintain a hybrid sales environment without short-selling online products.

Handling Shipping

The biggest hassle with creating an online store is figuring out how to package and ship products. Many online store programs offer helpful tools like shipping label generation, online postage payments, and even custom logo or branding help, all of which makes the job of sending physical products from your store easier. However, with sites that act more like marketplaces, there’s often more infrastructure to outsource storage, shipping, and returns for your products if you’re interested. On Amazon, you can sign up for Fulfillment By Amazon, where you ship your inventory to their facility, and they handle the rest for a flat fee per item.

Shopify perhaps gives you even more flexibility, with options for logistics through Shopify Fulfillment Network, where you can utilize the fulfillment solutions of Amazon or set up your own if you’re feeling ambitious.

Marketing Your Products

Finally, you want people to be able to find your products and recognize that they’re part of your unique offerings as a medical practitioner. This is a key difference between software like Shopify and marketplaces like Amazon. With Amazon, your products won’t show up with your custom branding; it’s essentially embedded in Amazon’s sprawling digital store rather than being distinctly your own.

With Shopify, you get a site that is linked to your own website, with fully customizable drag-and-drop design features that allow you to look like your brand while ranking on Google search results, rather than being limited to Amazon’s search results.

Why We Use Shopify

At DLM, our marketing specialists set up Shopify storefronts for aesthetic and medical practices regularly, helping customize their look and logistics in tandem with what each practitioner is capable of. We prefer Shopify for its ability to link directly to clients’ websites, and therefore its ability to rank in Google search results, its design customizability, and the flexibility it gives our clients to add on services or tools as needed, rather than pigeonholing them into pre-packaged payment tiers.

Create Your Online Store With DLM Today

Shopify does a great job of making it easy to get started with a custom online store, but there’s a lot to consider from logistics to the design and layout of your digital marketplace that makes it worthwhile to have a helping hand. Our experts in design and marketing can help your store become visible in Google searches for the products you sell in your area to boost in-office and online sales. Learn more about how we can help bring your online store to life by calling our office or contacting our team online today.

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Create A Terms of Service

The first step as you build out your product offerings should be formulating a Terms of Service agreement that you and your customers will agree to prior to them purchasing from your store. This document essentially collects the buyer’s consent to the way you do business, including opting in to email confirmation and order updates, as well as any marketing efforts you may launch once collecting their personal information.

Protect Your Customer’s Data

As a trusted medical professional, your online customers deserve the same consideration of privacy as your patients. This means that transactions, credit card information, personal identifiers, and any other information you collect for the operation of your store needs to be stored securely and use secure transfer protocols, such as through SSL-encrypted third-party applications like PayPal.

Create Trust With Committed Policies

Online stores are convenient, but they also introduce room for error that can lead to unhappy or simply confused customers. You can build trust with return, cancellation, and exchange policies explicitly stated on your store’s website that patients tacitly agree to when signing your terms of service. This ensures they have confidence that you’ll stand behind your products—and their customer experience—and they won’t be left in the dark from first click to the product’s arrival.

Put Prescription Drugs Behind a Digital Gateway

There are some things that are illegal to sell online without the proper licensing or customer verification, including alcohol and prescription-strength medication. As a medical practitioner, you may see this as an obvious way to grow and offer proven formulas for your online customers, but you have to tread lightly. You’ll need to verify the legitimacy of the pharmacy your customers want to work with and may need to schedule an appointment to make the transaction legal.

Fortunately, with the proliferation of telemedicine services, many such appointments can be made virtually, expanding your reach to people who may even be out of state but who are interested in what you’re selling. All this to say, if any of your products require a prescription, they should not be freely available online to anyone with an account and a credit card. Look for a way to prevent non-verified users from accessing prescriptions you haven’t written for them.

Keep Thorough Records

Most online e-commerce providers utilize databases or CRMs to manage your store’s data and transactions, but ensure you keep everything you need to protect both your practice and your customers from legal action. Your record-keeping policies should be enumerated in your terms of service so you can say a customer agreed that transactions will be linked with certain personal information for future reference.

Create a Compliant Privacy Policy

With varying states, notably California, requiring different privacy measures to protect their citizens, your privacy policy needs to be more than just a statement saying you’re protecting customers’ data. This is where you may want to consult with legal counsel to draft a privacy policy both in language and practice to ensure you won’t be at fault for a complaint brought up by a former customer.

Start Your Medical Practice Online Store

If you’re looking for experts to handle not just the behind-the-scenes and legal aspects of your new online medical marketplace, talk to the medical marketing experts at DLM. Our designers and developers have the knowledge and artistry to create great-looking and high-performing online stores that can expand your reach and keep former patients engaged. To learn more about how we can enhance your digital presence, don’t hesitate to contact our team online today.

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