Selling online worry-free. Here are the 2 most forgotten steps you must take for safe and responsible trade. This is highly important information for anyone who is in the process of launching an e-commerce business.
Table of Contents
- What about these 2 forgotten steps?
- Does selling online have anything to do with product safety?
- Why do most guides hardly mention the sellers’ responsibility for product safety?
- What are the 2 highly important steps that are missing on most checklists when launching your e-commerce business?
- Does compliance with product safety affect your (future) business?
- So what should the step-by-step plan look like?
- Links and downloads
- Selling online worry-free. Here are the 2 most forgotten steps you need to take for safe and responsible trade -Update Info
What about these 2 forgotten steps?
The odd thing is that these two steps are extremely important. Why are these steps about product safety hardly ever mentioned?
Does selling online have anything to do with product safety?
It certainly does. This article does not offer you a whole road map for launching your own e-commerce business. In fact, this is a knowledge base devoted to consumer product safety. Therefore it only addresses a part of what you need to understand in order to begin selling online. The part about your obligations concerning the safety of your products. Probably, this is the most crucial part of all: making sure your items comply with all regulations so that you will not have to worry about the e-commerce platform blocking you from their listings or, even worse, that there will be legal actions taken against you by European or national authorities.
Be aware of your legal obligations before you start selling on the internet. Unfortunately, if you Google how to start selling online, you will rarely come across this section.
Why do most guides hardly mention the sellers’ responsibility for product safety?
Informative articles about launching your own e-commerce business predominantly highlight the obvious actions you need to take. This is fine, every new online entrepreneur has to take them in order to start selling online, but that is just not enough.
First, they tell about how to create an account. But, surprisingly, many informative sources on the web claim that you can start offering your items online after creating an account. This is stunning for the mere reason that there is so much more to it. If anyone could sell anything, just by creating an account, would make buying online extremely risky.
Here we only discuss one item, which is your legal duty to sell products that comply with their relevant safety regulation(s).
What are the 2 highly important steps that are missing on most checklists when launching your e-commerce business?
The incomplete list: this is pretty much the list you need to accomplish according to the bulk of information sources on the internet. When you are interested in selling online, it is very likely that you came across this checklist before. It is actually not complete, but as a comparison and maybe a sign of recognition, we will still show you the steps underneath. These steps highlight the bulk of info you receive on Google and other search engines.
First of all, they tell you to open an account. After that, you can offer your items online. Furthermore, these guiding checklists want you to think about the costs, the logistics, the quality of your products and the way you are going to present your products to the clients. All of this is fine and definitely worth mentioning. But there is something highly important missing!
Does compliance with product safety affect your (future) business?
First of all: selling without proven product safety is prohibited. So, after you have created your account, you cannot just start selling your items. Secondly, you must have proof that your product complies with relevant, legal regulations. This rule has always applied. In the past, e-commerce platforms used to pay little attention to this.
Nowadays, international regulators ensure that online marketplaces require this from their sellers. So even before you are allowed to market anything at all as a seller, you have to demonstrably comply with the relevant regulations. This also applies to sellers with their own webshops; product safety is here for everyone.
So how should the step-by-step plan look like?
To do it properly, it looks like this:
- Create account
- Checking articles for conformity with product safety
- Obtain proof of that conformity to demonstrate it
- Offering articles
- Cost
- Logistics
- Quality requirements
- Differentiate yourself
- What should you do?
Step 2 and step 3 of the above list are in explained in some of the topics within this knowledgebase. You can start by reading How do I determine if my product is safe? Then feel free to scroll through the topics and frequently asked questions.
Links and downloads
Below you will find some links to articles and videos. These may also be of interest to you.
Selling online worry-free. Here are the 2 most forgotten steps you need to take for safe and responsible trade -Update Info
The last update was made on Thursday 6 October 2022