February 22, 2023
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Not On The High Street have thousands of visitors looking for craft goods. If you are considering Not On The High Street (NOTHS) or just want to improve your current NOTHS store, here are some tips.
Because NOTHS is a popular platform you'll need to consider competitors. Key areas for competitor analysis here are:
Other areas for research are looking at photography to get a feel for what you like. It's really important here that you don't cut corners with research, as you may be missing some vital ideas or creative genius that will give you inspiration.
We mention it in almost every post that involves selling a product. Photography is vital to the overall success of a NOTHS store.
The images above are good because they:
For your product images all the above are good points to note. Other considerations for your images are also to:
Here is a quote from professional photographer Yeshen Venema on how to shoot an image:
The factors at play ‘in camera’ during your shoot include: angle of camera, lens type, aperture, lighting, background, shadows and highlights. In processing you should aim for a standardised approach covering: crop factor, sharpening, saturation and finally how you save for web (size and quality).
You can find out more about consistency in product images here.
In Kate Newlin's book, 'Passion Brands' , she describes the importance of personalisation in an increasingly demanding consumer world. She believes that personalisation should be part of the modern day 'marketing mix'.
With this in mind try to focus on making your products as personalised as possible. Products on NOTHS are becoming increasingly personalised; don't be left behind. Ways in which you can do this are:
Personalisation can help you create a real song and dance about your brand and what you have to offer. I would encourage you to read the aforementioned book (especially those of you with a crafts store).
Ok so your brand may not be as strong as Ferrari, but you probably could improve what you have.
With this in mind the most effective form of marketing, if done properly, is word-of-mouth. To ensure that you use word-of-mouth advertising effectively you should focus on the following key areas:
Linking social media to your Not On The High street store is fairly easy. Making use of it in tandem with NOTHS is another thing. I could write loads on this, but here are a few tips:
Social media is a great way to gain exposure through various creative channels, it also provides a great platform to communicate with your audience. Tell them what you're up to, make videos, provide photos of shoots and develop a rapport with your customers, for free!
Our favourite ecommerce word: 'Upsell!'
We are really lucky to have amazing clients that are great at this. It's so important, and can make you a lot of extra revenue. Ways you can do this on NOTHS are:
William Cowper once wrote, 'variety's the very spice of life, that gives it all its flavour' , and we think that sellers should take heed of the Romantic poet's advice. Of the five listed points that NOTHS say they are looking for in a partner, "high quality and range variety" seems the one that people can often forget about.
NOTHS wants to benefit from having lots of businesses selling a wide variety of products on their site, so, linking into our first point about researching your competition, make sure that you are offering NOTHS something in your application that they won't have received before.
A lot of businesses have their applications rejected by NOTHS because they don't have enough variety to bring. Ensure that you're not one of them by:
As the wise old Porky Pig said, 'that's all folks'.
The key with all the aforementioned activities is to ensure that you try to replicate what the successful companies are already doing on NOTHS, then replicate it with your own personal style.
All the above tips are proven to work, but if you don't have time to implement all of them just do one at a time, I promise you'll recognise the difference.
