If you want to sell personalised products that you either create yourself or have drop shipped for you, you’re going to need an e-commerce platform like EKM with a feature that allows customers to add their personalisation details to the products before going through checkout.
Some years ago, I set up an online store selling personalised gifts. One of the problems I came across when looking for an e-commerce platform was that many didn’t have a product personalisation option.
I trialled quite a few platforms before deciding on EKM. Not only is the platform easy to use, everything is provided to get you selling online quickly, including a choice of professional editable free themes for your shop. You can see a selection of them in the image below.
If you own a WordPress blog, you can use the Woocommerce shopping cart, then install a separate plug-in that will allow you to do this. If you have a large inventory, this can become a problem because it can slow down your WordPress site.
Sometimes it’s better to have a separate store and link it to your blog, especially if you know you’re going to end up offering lots of products.
I’m going to show you just how easy it is to add text fields for customers to enter personalisation details for your products using the EKM platform.
Firstly you’ll need to open a store and start setting up your shop. You can get a 28-day free trial here! This gives you plenty of time to get used to the platform and add products.
Adding a Personalised Product
Once you’ve set up your trial account, you’ll be led through a list of steps that will guide you on setting up and choosing a theme. To add a product that requires personalisation, firstly go to the navigation bar and select ‘shop’ and ‘add product’.
Enter Product Details
A pop-up box will appear, you’ll need to add the name of your product, description, price and upload your image etc.
Once you’ve added your product name, description and price, you’ll then be able to add the personalisation details by selecting ‘more options’ and ‘options‘, then click ‘add option’.
You can now select whether you want a text box or text area for customers to add their personalisation details. A text box should be selected for a line of text such as a name and a text box is what you’ll need if customers need to enter personal messages.
Adding a Text Box
Click on ‘+Create Option’ and you will see that you can now enter the option name and character limit. This is really useful as this stops the customer from entering too many characters.
Checking the ‘Enable Option Validation?’ box forces the customer to fill the text box and will not let them go through checkout until the box has been filled.
Once you’ve entered those details, click ‘Add’. You’ll then be presented with another pop up asking you to add the option name for your reference. I’ve named this one ‘Name 12 Characters’. Don’t forget to save!
Looking at the product from the front end, you’ll see that the text box is now displaying.
The text box displays the number of characters that the customer can enter in total. As they type in their details, it will show them how many characters they have left.
Adding a Text Area
When adding a text area, simply follow the same procedure as a text box but select ‘Text Area’ instead. You’ll be asked how many rows are required and this will determine the height of the box.
When finished your text area will look like the below, I’ve added a text area underneath the text box for you to see. Note that text areas have a limit of 250 characters.
EKM also has an option to allow customers to add images for use on a product, for example, a design for printing on a t-shirt or mug.
Online Selling Business
As you can see, it’s easy to get started selling personalised products on EKM. With online selling becoming more popular these days, now is the best time to set up an e-commerce store.
Selling personalised products is a great choice for anyone wanting to start their own online selling business. There are many companies out there that will produce and drop ship products to your customers.
If you produce your own personalised products, EKM is an ideal powerful e-commerce platform to sell them on that you can start using right away.
If you’d like to try EKM, you can get a 28-day trial today and start setting up your online shop straight away!
Dropshipping Integrations
Ekm now has four dropshipping integrations. Syncee is for online shops that are looking to source goods like homewares, clothing, toys, and more.
Anyone looking to get started with dropshipping for the first time can take advantage of the integration at £0 for the first 25 items. There are also larger plans available for businesses that would like to offer a wider range of dropshipped goods.
There are also three print-on-demand integrations available for online shops that would like to sell merchandise with their own design or logo printed onto textiles. These are Two Fifteen, Snuggle, and Printify. Visit EKM to find out more.
