THE QUICK-START GUIDE to Selling on...

R E A D I N G T I M E : 1 0 M I N U T E S

to Selling onOpenSky

T H E Q U I C K - S T A R T G U I D E

R E A D I N G T I M E : 1 0 M I N U T E S

Welcome to Selling on OpenSky!Consider this your go-to guide for getting set up quickly and easily. In just minutes you’ll have the basic tools in your back pocket to start selling on OpenSky.

1 Adding Your Billing Info & Business Details

2 Customizing Your Account

3 Product Names & Descriptions

4 Photography Basics & Things to Avoid

5 Product Pricing

6 Increasing Your Sales with Promos

7 Getting Your Team Involved

8 Growing Your Business: Key Terms

T H I S G U I D E W I L L H E L P Y O U W I T H :

First things first, in the “Account” section of your Merchant Toolkit, you’ll need to add your business details and billing info so we can pay you for your sales.

Be sure to completely fill out both the “Details” and “Billing” sections, and don’t forget to include your business name, primary category, address, returns address (if it differs from your business address), contact info, and tax info.

Adding Your BillingInfo & Business Details

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You have the option to get creative with the following elements to build your brand and tell your unique story. By adding these details to your account, it helps build trust with your shoppers and provides context to your products—ultimately helping improve your sales.

1. Logo: For best results, upload a square JPG image (minimum 130 by 130 pixels).

2. Cover Image: You can upload a cover image to give shoppers an idea of what you and your products represent. This image should be more editorial than your product photos and must be a rectangular JPG image (minimum 1,200 by 250 pixels).

3. Custom Greeting: This will appear over your cover image to welcome shoppers to your store (limit 20 characters).

1.CustomizingYour Account

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4. Product Promo Message: This will appear on the left side of your store. Here you can customize a special message for your shoppers, such as encouraging them to follow your store. You can also choose a custom background color.

5. Business Description: Tell shoppers your story in this section (limit 1,000 characters). Share how long you’ve been in business, how you got started, what you love about your products and more. You can also add your tagline and a YouTube video here if you have one.

6. Social Accounts: If you have Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and/or Instagram accounts for your business, add that info here so shoppers can follow you.

7. Store Facts: Finally, you have the option to enter the year you founded your business and the number of people on your team.

C U S T O M I Z I N G Y O U R A C C O U N T

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A well-written product name does double duty: It lets your shoppers quickly understand what it is and helps it climb to the top of search results. A poorly constructed name can easily turn shoppers off because it forces them to search through a string of words that can appear random.

When creating names:

• Limit the length to 80 characters, including spaces.

• Avoid special characters.

• Avoid catalog numbers and product codes.

• State what the product is in simple, searchable terms (e.g., “Cotton Short Sleeve Shirt”).

• Add in general descriptors such as color, pattern and size (e.g., “Gray Cotton V-Neck Short Sleeve Shirt”).

• Make sure to spell-check for typos or misspellings.

Product Names& Descriptions

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Here’s an example of a great product name

Creating detailed, engaging product descriptions is one of the most important things you can do to optimize your sales.

When writing these:

• Be detailed and accurate, and be sure to anticipate questions shoppers might have.

• Only include details about the product. (No need to include policies, your store name or contact info as they’ll appear elsewhere.)

• Describe how this product will solve a distinct dilemma for your shoppers. If you can clearly articulate how this product will fix a unique problem, you’ve just nailed the ultimate selling point for shoppers.

• Include keywords, but write for your shoppers, not a search engine. Descriptions should be engaging, friendly and provide all the necessary information visitors need to know. (This in itself will provide unique, search engine-friendly content.)

• Exclude references to other marketplaces or links to external sites.

• Spell-check and carefully proofread for typos and misspellings.

• Last, and certainly not least, be creative and have fun. This is your chance to talk directly to your shoppers and let them know what makes your product unique. Don’t forget to include how to use or style your product, any tips and tricks, and how exactly this product will benefit them.

P R O D U C T N A M E S & D E S C R I P T I O N S

Common product description mistakes and what to avoid:

• Don’t write paragraphs longer than 3 to 4 sentences. While it’s always best to provide as much information as possible, use this important space wisely. Often it can look like a huge block of text that’s hard for a shopper to understand quickly. Break up your description into clearly defined paragraphs or bullets to make it scannable.

• Don’t assume some details are obvious. Even if you have high-quality, detailed images, it’s still important to list key details about your product, such as what it’s used for and how it works.

• Don’t use big words. It’s better to be clear and conversational than to use long words that sound impressive. You can easily lose a reader if you use superfluous words and plethoric language that makes it laborious for purchasers to digest. (See what we did there?)

• Don’t include the materials or ingredients of the product. You can add those in your “Product Details” section.

P R O D U C T N A M E S & D E S C R I P T I O N S

Here’s an example of a great product description vs. a bad one:

Polka Dot Paper Baking Cups:

Good Description:

Give your next get-together a sense of whimsy with these pretty yet sturdy polka dot paper baking cups. They’re perfect for bridal showers, brunches and birthday parties for the kiddos. Skip the stress of looking for something unique to make your party pop and delight your guests by using these versatile cups instead of ordinary bowls or ramekins. You can fill the cups with cookies, candies and savory treats.

As you can see, the first product description example is warm and inviting, and clearly explains what the product is used for, and how it can solve a distinct problem. By using descriptions like this, you can optimize your sales by painting a clear picture of exactly how your product can benefit your shoppers.

Bad Description:

Dotted baking cups to be used for baking or entertaining. Fill with any treats and serve. Measures 5 inches.

Product images are the highlight of the OpenSky experience and a critical part of optimizing your sales—both on the marketplace and anywhere your products are being featured. It’s important to show shoppers clean and clear visuals since they can’t pick up an item to inspect it. High-quality, outstanding product imagery and multiple views of an item give shoppers the confidence to buy.

When creating a product, you’ll have the opportunity to add more than 1 image. Hit ’em with your best shot first and lead with a lifestyle image if you can. Great lifestyle shots are inspiring and help put your products into context—plus, they’ve been proven to receive almost double the traffic. Additional images should show the details of your product, its size and scale, and different angles.

Photography Basics & Things to Avoid

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Some helpful tips to get you started:

• Use JPEG or PNG images that are at least 544 by 544 pixels. To enable the zoom feature, images should be at least 1,248 by 1,248 pixels. On average, products with zoomable images have a much higher conversion rate than those without them.

• Strong, clear photographs will help you stand out, especially in search.

• Make sure you use a quality digital camera.

• Photo editing software gives you more flexibility to crop, color correct, and adjust the brightness and contrast of your images.

• Shoot against a solid background to make it easier to cut out the product in photo editing software if needed.

• A tripod can be handy for setting up and taking lots of shots, but sometimes a steady surface will do just fine.

P H O T O G R A P H Y B A S I C S & T H I N G S T O A V O I D

Using the right background:

The key to the perfect background is to use a clean, neutral and even surface. If you need to use a wall, it should be of low contrast or the same color as the surface.

A seamless white background is always best. A roll of smooth, white paper sold at your local art store, provides the best background to show off your product.

If you can’t use a white background, shoot against a plain background that will complement your item. Natural, neutral and simple backgrounds work best. Think beautiful, natural and simple settings, walls with interesting textures, or even plain white walls.

When shooting against a background, don’t let it become the focus. If all goes well, you’ll have your product in sharp focus, with a neutral, out-of-focus background.


Getting the right lighting:

1. Set up a seamless background next to a window for soft, natural lighting.

2. Bounce flash light from the ceiling to eliminate harsh shadows

3. Use overhead lighting and desk lamps with a softbox to create even, natural-looking lighting.

4. Try placing white foam core in front of your product when using flash to eliminate harsh shadows.

Morning and early evening light works best. Avoid direct sunlight and harsh midday lighting. If you set up your shot outside for a lifestyle image, make sure it’s not in direct sunlight.

For smaller items, a softbox makes it easy to create natural lighting without purchasing expensive equipment. Softboxes are inexpensive and can be found online or at your local photography shop.

Avoid using flash—it can wash out your product and create a glare. If you need to use flash, bounce it off the ceiling or try setting up white foam core around your product to create more subtle shadowing.

Use a bounce or reflector to even out how the light hits your product. This can be as simple as holding a piece of white foam core on the opposite side of where the light hits the object.

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Finding the right angle:

Showing your product in the best way possible usually requires a sequence of photographs from different angles.

1. Products look best when photographed from a straight-on view or from directly above. Center the item in the frame and provide enough open space around the product.

2. Give the shopper multiple views of your product and some up-close shots that show important details.

3. Keep products in context so shoppers understand the general size, scale and use of your product.

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Some common product photography mistakes and

things to avoid:

1. Don’t use distracting effects.

2. Don’t use a wrinkled white sheet as a seamless backdrop and remove timestamps.

3. Don’t use a busy background with multiple products displayed.

4. Avoid uneven lighting and shadows.

5. Avoid drop shadows.

6. Avoid props that don’t relate to your product.

7. Avoid using mannequins.

8. Avoid extreme contrast.

9. Avoid branding elements.

10. Don’t use scale props.

11. Don’t place watermarks over your products.

12. Don’t use low-resolution images, even as alternatives.

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One of the most important questions to ask yourself when you add a new product: Is the price more than right?

As you set your prices, be sure to do a little research and make sure your products are competitively priced. If shoppers see your products elsewhere for a different price, not only will you lose out on a sale, you’ll quickly lose trust.

Also, be sure to set the MSRP price on all your products. We’ll display these prices above the OpenSky prices to show shoppers the value you’re offering. Double-check to ensure your MSRP is accurate and not inflated, as listing an inaccurate MSRP can result in a breach of our Merchant Terms of Service Agreement.

Product Pricing5

Once your products are ready for the world, it’s time to make sure they get the attention they deserve.

Periodically, we run sale events called OpenSky Promotions and offer shoppers Discounts, Credits, and Coupon Codes. These events drive a large percentage of sales on OpenSky.com, so it’s no surprise that merchants who opt in to promos get more sales and become our most successful merchants. Ready to join them?

Increasing YourSales with Promos

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Here’s how you do it:

1. Sign in to your Merchant Toolkit, click on your merchant account and select “Dashboard.”

2. Click your “Marketing” tab and select “Settings.”

3. Select a Maximum Allowed Discount (the most you’d discount all of your products during an OpenSky promotion) from the drop-down.

4. Click “Save Settings.”

Once you do that, your products will be included in applicable sitewide promos. For instance, if you set your max discount to 60%, they’ll be included in 20%, 45% or 60% Discount Events but not 70% events, or events with higher percentages.

Now that you’re ready to sell on OpenSky, it’s important not to miss any emails and notices that you’ll be getting from us. If you have a team of employees or co-workers who help you manage your business, you may want to route certain types of notices to their inboxes, freeing you from forwarding messages.

You can have different people receive messages in the following categories:

• Business Owner (This is the primary user account, and the default recipient for all messages.)

• Customer Service

• Accounting

• Order Information

• Product & Inventory Management

• Marketing & Merchandising Updates

• Social Alerts (Loves, Follows, Comments, etc.)

Getting YourTeam Involved

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To add secondary users to cover these sections, go to your “Users” section located in the “Account” tab of your Merchant Toolkit.

Scroll to the bottom of the page or click the “Add Account” link at the top.

Enter the email address of the account you want to add.

Please note that the account must already be linked to an OpenSky account (e.g., the user you’re trying to add must have already joined OpenSky and created an account).

After the additional user confirms via email, you can go back to your “Users” section and use the checkboxes to choose the types of notices he or she will receive. An important thing to note: After a user becomes a secondary user, he or she will have access to your entire Merchant Toolkit with the exception of your “Billing” section.

G E T T I N G Y O U R T E A M I N V O L V E D

Congrats! You’re ready to sell on OpenSky. But now you’re probably saying to yourself, “What’s next?”

Over the years, we’ve heard from many merchants that once they start selling online, it’s difficult to know how to take their sales to the next level. So whether you’re just starting out, beginning to scale your business, or trying to hit that $1 million mark in yearly revenue, we’re here to help guide you to your goals.

Online sales and marketing terminology can seem like a foreign language, and sometimes you’ll hear us throw out terms like “margins,” “PLAs,” “CTR” and more. (Don’t worry; we’ll happily explain these things to you.) So to give you a head start, here is a handy glossary of key terms and ideas you’ll come across as you grow your business.

Growing YourBusiness: Key Terms

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Key Terms:

Affiliate Marketing: A way to advertise online where a publisher or site owner features your ad, or product and receives an agreed-upon commission rate usually for every sale you make or traffic you receive from their site.

Audience Demographic: Statistical data that defines your target audience, such as the average age, income and gender of the shoppers who buy your products.

Call to Action (CTA): A short, clear message that directs the viewer to take action (e.g., “Shop Now,” or “Sign Up Today”). In Web design, a CTA is a linked banner, button or type of graphic that is meant to prompt the user to click on it.

Campaign: In relation to online marketing, a campaign is any activity designed to promote a product, service or business.

Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of users who click on a link compared to the total number of users who visit the page, email or advertisement.

Conversion Rate: The percentage of users who take a desired action (usually purchasing a product) compared to the total number of users who visit the page, email or advertisement.

Cost Per Click (CPC): The price you pay each time a user clicks on your advertisement. The CPC is determined by the advertiser in a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The price you pay for acquiring a new customer. This can be calculated by dividing the costs spent on acquiring more customers (marketing costs) by the number of customers acquired in the period the money was spent.

Flash Sale: An e-commerce term for offering products at much lower prices than usual in a short period of time (usually 24 hours).

Tip: On OpenSky, we run flash sales daily by using a unique algorithm that will feature products with great discounts for 24 hours at a time. These featured products will show up on a shopper’s home page with a countdown clock for 24

hours—an automatic perk when you offer great discounts!

Fulfillment Cost: The total cost of receiving, packaging and shipping your products. Determining this cost is important in calculating your products’ pricing and how much to charge for shipping. (Products with low or free shipping always convert better.)

Impression: In online marketing, this is a single display of a particular ad on a website and is basically the equivalent of ad exposure.

G R O W I N G Y O U R B U S I N E S S : K E Y T E R M S

Keyword: In the context of search engine optimization, a keyword is a particular word or phrase that describes your Web content and makes it possible for shoppers to find your site, or products via search engines.

Landing Page: Any Web page that a visitor can “land on” after clicking a link.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): In marketing, the customer lifetime value is the predicted profit for the entire future relationship with a customer. This can help make decisions in terms of investing in and acquiring the most valuable shoppers through loyalty rewards, great customer service, and other methods.

Margin: The difference between the cost of the product you sell and what you charge customers for the product.

Online Ads: Paid advertisements that display your message to people searching, surfing, and socializing online (e.g., Facebook and Twitter ads).

Organic Search Results: Listings that appear because of their relevance to what the user is searching for (as opposed to paid advertisements).

Product Listing Ad (PLA): Product listing ads are cost-per-click (CPC) ads that can be purchased through Google AdWords. These ads appear at the top of search results on Google.

Remarketing: Methods used by online marketers to follow up with website visitors who did not make a desired action. For example, if a shopper visits your product page but doesn’t make a purchase, then remarketing tactics would be used to convert him or her back into a converting customer (e.g., emailing shoppers who abandon their carts).

Retargeting: Similar to remarketing, retargeting is cookie-based technology that tracks your audience (users who have visited your site) and displays advertisements to them in hopes to convert them into purchasing your products. Ever wonder how Facebook knows you were looking for those cute cat socks? Yep, you must have clicked on that website earlier and you’re being stalked, ahem, retargeted.

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Often used when discussing your pay-per-click advertising, ROAS can be a quick indicator of whether or not you’re making a worthwhile investment and can be calculated by dividing the total spend by the total revenue generated.


Return on Investment (ROI): The amount of return on an investment relative to the investment’s cost. This is one of the most commonly used profitability ratios.

Return Rate: A simple yet very important ratio to consider, the return rate is the number of orders placed divided by the number of orders returned.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM): A type of online marketing that involves promoting websites or Web pages by increasing their visibility in search engine results through optimization and advertising.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The process of increasing the visibility of a website or Web page in unpaid search results (often referred to as “organic” or “earned” results).

Split Testing: Also referred to as “A/B testing,” is the method of conducting controlled experiments with the goal of improving a certain outcome (e.g., testing 2 different images for a product in an advertisement to see which converts better).

Still reading? You made it! If you need additional help, you can always go to the Merchant Help Center in your Merchant Toolkit for access to commonly asked questions, step-by-step tutorials, and tips and tricks on how to succeed.

We’re also standing by and here to help. Contact us anytime by going to www.opensky.com/contact-us.


THE QUICK-START GUIDE to Selling on...

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