Online Sales Process Diagram: Everything You Need to Know from A to Z

Vũ Khôi

Author at Wotech Electronics Blog

Building a professional online sales process is a task for any business aiming to maximize its profits. An effective sales process will give your company a major competitive advantage in the market. In today's Industry 4.0 era, when online selling is becoming one of the world's dominant commerce channels, solving the puzzle of a professional online sales process is absolutely essential.

The Growth of Online Selling

The rapid evolution of technology, along with businesses pursuing digital transformation in today's booming Internet era, has opened a new epoch for commerce and transactions. Many companies have been quick to jump on the trend and invest in tech products and applications.

According to statistics, nearly 24% of retailers have switched entirely from traditional to online selling, and thanks to that, 56% of them have recovered or exceeded the revenue targets they set before Covid-19. In 2019, e-commerce ranked only 4th among the most effective sales channels; by 2020, it had overtaken Facebook to claim the top spot.

From everyday essentials like toothbrushes and shampoo to high-value items like cars and motorbikes, there is always a website selling whatever you want. If the brand is a big name with its own website, you can visit it directly, or shop through channels like Shopee, Lazada, Tiki, and so on. Or you can browse many different shopping sites to compare prices and weigh the deals before making a purchase decision.

Clearly, online selling is a field growing at a remarkable pace. So what should you keep in mind when building an online sales process?

Describing the Online Sales Process

E-commerce is growing strongly and has become an indispensable part of businesses worldwide. On top of that, the explosion of small online selling channels has contributed greatly to the scale of Vietnam's e-commerce market. With growth this fast and consumer trends shifting this decisively, it's no exaggeration to say that e-commerce in general — and online selling in particular — will only grow more important.

To survive in such a harsh competitive environment, setting out a specific online sales process and building it step by step is essential. Of course, you'll start with the basics: choosing your market and products, naming your brand, and setting up a website... All of this may seem overwhelming for a newcomer with little experience, but if you know how to arrange it into a well-organized process, it is entirely achievable.

The Online Sales Process Diagram

Building the Online Sales Process

Here are the steps you should take to build a successful, effective online sales process:

Step 1: Market Research

Before making any business decision, market research is one of the first and most critical steps a business must take. Will the product succeed? Do customers actually need it? Is the price reasonable for the market? A whole series of questions and challenges demand answers, and every business's job is to find those answers itself to avoid unnecessary mistakes and risks.

Market research simply means collecting and analyzing data to guide your business. It can be seen as a tool for understanding your market and customers better, so you can choose the right market-entry strategy. Research may not guarantee 100% success, but it acts as a compass giving you at least a broadly correct direction. Careful market surveying and research helps you avoid wasting time, money, and other unnecessary costs.

Step 2: Choose Products and Platform

Perhaps you've had a business idea pop into your head but aren't sure it will be profitable. Or maybe you have many interests and favorable conditions for selling a wide variety of goods but still can't make the final choice. Of all tasks, the starting step is always one of the hardest. Take things slowly and methodically, working from the big picture down to the details, and carefully analyze the external factors that could affect your business.

Once you've narrowed down your list, think about what excites you most, because passion is the greatest motivator driving people to work. Also, always keep asking questions and actively practice critical thinking to gain a broad perspective for drafting a sensible online sales process.

Here are some criteria for choosing products to sell online effectively:

• Products with little competition

• Products with high demand

• Products with abundant supply

• Products with high profit margins

• Products not sold in stores or supermarkets

• Products customers urgently need

Step 3: Design and Build the Product Presentation

Website and content play an extremely important role in attracting customers and introducing them to the product. Detailed product descriptions paired with engaging videos will increase customer reach. That said, many businesses worry about building their own online sales site because of limited technical knowledge.

However, in today's digital age, you can create an online sales platform easily and effectively without writing a single line of code. What matters is knowing how to make sensible choices so you can design your website quickly and easily, boost sales, and manage all your products conveniently.

As for the product presentation, here are some useful tips for making it impressive:

• Avoid spelling and grammar mistakes

• Write in an easy-to-read, concise style

• Focus on the benefits customers care about

• Limit negative wording

• Limit hedging words like "perhaps" or "maybe"

In terms of content, try to convey the message and achieve the ultimate goal of guiding customers toward the product. Clear, concise, and compelling content paired with attractive, authentic images will increase customers' response to the product. For images, choose carefully to avoid copyrighted photos, images watermarked by other brands, or blurry, low-quality pictures.

Step 4: Promote Products Through Online Marketing

An indispensable step in the online sales process is online marketing. Promoting products through online marketing comes in 5 common forms:

• Website: This can be the decisive step in a customer's purchase decision. After seeing other ads, they will come to your website, and how appealing it is will shape their choice.

• SEO/SEM: connects users with products by optimizing visibility on search engines. It's an opportunity for businesses to increase customer reach and, in turn, brand recognition.

• Advertising with Google and Facebook: we're all familiar with the ad videos that appear daily. This advertising approach can easily impress customers, though at high frequencies it can sometimes backfire.

• Social media: introducing products through social networks and forums. With social platforms constantly growing in users and functionality, this is one of the most promising marketing channels with massive reach.

• Email marketing: communicating with customers directly via email.

Step 5: Selling

Beyond promoting your image, building a good, long-term pricing strategy will bring you a solid, stable source of income. Solving the problem called "product pricing" opens up a huge opportunity, giving you a competitive advantage and saving you many other costs.

Selling doesn't stop at pricing — it also revolves around many other issues, such as finding a good, stable supply source, setting up sales methods, and planning long-term development... In today's digital 4.0 era, online sellers must never stop changing. Always equip yourself with knowledge and accumulate experience daily so you never find yourself lost and adrift in a highly competitive market.

Step 6: Brand Building

Small and new businesses always struggle to compete with industry giants because of one problem called "the brand." Building a brand is genuinely difficult and can't be done overnight. A brand-building strategy means using product development directions and marketing plans to drive customer awareness of the brand, with the goal of creating uniqueness and differentiation from competitors in the market.

Strive to identify your target customers, survey the brands in your market, and then choose or create a unique mission for your brand. Many factors combine to make a brand successful: products, services, slogans, logos... So stay true to your direction and establish touchpoints with customers to build a brand of your own.

Step 7: A Sensible Delivery Policy

Try to establish the fastest possible delivery methods for each location and province. Your credibility and brand will improve significantly if your shipping runs smoothly and cleanly. Also pay attention to packing and packaging to avoid damaging goods and losing points with customers.

Step 8: Post-Sale Customer Care

The final step — but an extremely important one — is staying in touch with customers and keeping them loyal to the product. To do that, the store must build a professional customer care department. Specifically:

• Survey customer satisfaction through channels such as email, website, mobile phone, etc., making it easy for customers to give feedback on products.

• Keep your promises: always ensure that everything you say, present, and advertise to customers is completely accurate and delivered. Be enthusiastic with customers in every situation and they will form a good impression of your product.

• Stay in touch and give customers perks: ask customers about their product experience whenever possible. Combine introducing new products with special offers reserved for loyal customers to build long-term relationships.

• Help customers solve problems: and always remember that "the customer is king." In every situation, strive to give them the best experience in both attitude and service; minimize misunderstandings and complaints that could hurt the store's reputation.

According to statistics, as many as 36% of customers will come back to your product if they are satisfied with both product quality and service. So strive to raise the quality of your customer care as high as it can go.

Step 9: Measure Results

Evaluating performance is important work that must be done regularly and periodically so you can promptly adjust business strategies. Set specific KPIs to compare and measure actual figures such as: sales, marketing metrics like pageviews, follower counts on the company's social pages, financial indicators, number of leads captured, etc. These metrics reflect how the business is operating, giving the company, its investors, and its customers the most objective view of how the business is running.

Conclusion

Those are all the steps you should keep in mind to build a complete online sales process. Work hard to build a truly professional sales system so you can reach more customers, gain a competitive advantage in the market, and keep pace with the trends of the times.

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