Designed to Sell – Introducing Online Sales

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Designed to Sell – Introducing Online Sales

2020 was a very difficult year for so many people –  both personally and for business. I am a partner at Designed to Sell Ltd – a Homestaging company based in Essex. We were very badly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic last year – with cancelled projects and the housing market shutting down at the beginning of 2020.

So last year I spent a lot of time trying to ensure that our website was functioning well and that we were offering a variety of services – both hands-on and virtually – so that we could continue our business and serve our clients. So we introduced Virtual Consultations and Interior Styling services. We also started to work with Utility Providers – both commercial and for homeowners – and EasyStorage.

The main bulk of our projects are working for homeowners with empty properties – mainly ex-rental properties that are now up for sale. So we need to source furniture and decorative items though Wholesalers. We have about eight different accounts with various suppliers.

As businesses were suffering throughout the UK (and around the world) one of our suppliers introduced a Dropshipping service. This is where you can purchase the products to go directly to the end consumer. This was a game-changer for us as we don’t have a physical shop and not an extensive amount of storage.

So we decided – just before Xmas – to offer our clients some Xmas products, using this Dropshipping service. We got a limited amount of interest – our website doesn’t get a huge amount of traffic every day. But we did get some sales, so in January 2021 we decided to increase our offering and add some furniture pieces and decorative items.

This has been a labour intensive project, and there has been a lot of changes that we have had to make to our website. We maintain the website ourselves, as really don’t have the budget for a digital agency at the moment. The first task was to join an online payment service so that we can take credit card payments. This has proved to be an excellent step – we use Stripe which not only links in with our accounting software but also takes a much smaller charge than PayPal.

Then we had to add all the physical products one by one – and there are still have a lot to process. Not only are we adding them to our website but also to our Facebook and Instagram shops, Google my Business page and Google Merchant. The shops are linked via our WordPress site now – so are pretty much automated – but that was a big learning curve! And each product has to be added to Google my Business manually.

We have realised that just having the products on the website does not mean that people see them or buy them! So we are now in the process of learning about Amazon sales as well as Pinterest. So far I have done some training on Pinterest and on Hashtags, and we have meetings set up with a Pinterest Ads Manager and an Amazon shopping expert in the coming weeks. So there is much more to do!

We are hoping that these sales will add a good income stream to our business – with sales online as well as promoting products to our Virtual Consultations and Interior Styling clients. As I said this is all very new to us, and so far sales have been very slow – but we are hoping that in 2021 that will change and the online sales will become a solid revenue stream for our Homestaging Business.


Jackie Plant
mb: 07726 270 850
gopaperless.eu/jackie-plant

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