Halloween… that magical time when the veil is thinnest between the good, the evil, and the downright spooky!
Whether Halloween is your bag of candy corn or just another day to you, there are some TRULY terrifying forces lurking in the Ecommerce wholesale industry that would make even the bravest trick-or-treaters scream!
These ghoulish forces are out to spook your eCommerce business every day of the year, not just on Halloween. But don’t worry, the Wholesale Horror Busters here at Worldwide Brands have your back! We spend day after day making sure that our members stay safe from middlemen, wholesale scams and fraud.
Want to learn how to conjure up the TREATS for your online business this Halloween, and avoid all the TRICKS?? We have a series of 5 common Wholesale Horrors and how to avoid them.. starting now with Kill-O-Tron!
“Kill-O-Tron” The Automated Product Feed
Lurking in the shadows of eCommerce, the “Kill-O-Tron” Automated Product Feed is a true Trickster! It makes sourcing products seem effortless, but in reality, it drains the life out of your business in sinister ways (BWAHAHAHAHAHA!).
This Trickster hides behind many seemingly harmless names. Promoted by its minions as the perfect solution for selling products online, it’s anything but.
They claim, “Just use this App” or “Just connect to this System” to automatically populate products into your store. Dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of products that AUTOMATICALLY get loaded and updated! You don’t have to do anything!!
Wait…WHAT?! There are lots of problems with that concept. Here are two major ones:
The Automated Product Feed Has Two Major Problems
1. No Market Research: An Automated Product Feed loads tons of products into your store without any kind of market research. Sure, these feeds can push a few good products into your online store, but they also push tons of random products that wholesalers and manufacturers simply want to get rid of! So, they figure, why not use your site as a dumping ground for things they can’t sell otherwise?
It doesn’t matter that you won’t sell them either. At least the junk products get exposure and ultimately some will sell, so it’s a partial win for the minions… but not for you!
2. SEO Nightmare: Ever heard of Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short? An important part of SEO for any online store is the wording and phrasing of your Product Descriptions. Search engines read through your Product Descriptions, and that has a lot to do with whether or not your website will rank well in those search engines. Savvy Online Store Owners always write their own Product Descriptions to work well for SEO for the keywords targeted for their website because the manufacturers and wholesalers are lousy at it!
However, even if your version of Kill-O-Tron allows you to rewrite your Product Descriptions, it really doesn’t matter. Because you can rewrite dozens, hundreds, or thousands (if you have a couple of years to do it) of those Product Descriptions, but guess what happens next? The Automated Product Feed UPDATES every week or so. Then every time it updates, ALL YOUR PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS AUTOMATICALLY GO BACK TO WHAT THEY WERE BEFORE YOU RE-WROTE THEM!!!
You can’t maintain an eCommerce business that ranks well in the search engines if your content is constantly being overwritten!
How to Avoid Kill-O-Tron and Do it Right!
Never ever use an “automated feed” or any other kind of automated process that puts products on your site or in your listings. Don’t believe the evil minions that are looking to trick you into becoming a dumping ground for random lousiness that will doom your online store from the start.
If you want to load products in your eCommerce store that sell, you start with real wholesale suppliers, research the products, make sure that they are all part of the same niche, and you load them and maintain them yourself. It’s the ONLY way to do it, no matter how many masked evildoers show up at your door and try to convince you otherwise.
