The A to Z of selling electronics online: Expert tips

Wondering how to sell electronics online? Our detailed guide covers everything you need to know: where to source gadgets, the best platform to sell electronics online, essential tools to maximize revenue, and much more.

The electronics industry is thriving. In 2024, the global consumer electronics market will achieve a staggering revenue of US$1,046.0 billion. Even better, in 2024 alone, online sales will drive 33.5% of the total revenue in the global consumer electronics market 😲

If you are thinking about selling gadgets online but don't know where to start, this guide has your back. Here, we'll cover:

• Everything you need to know about how to sell electronics online.
• A comparison of the best online platforms where you can sell gadgets.
• The exact tools you need to sell electronics online starting today (even with a low budget).
• The top channels to source electronic products.
• Lots more.

Ready to dive in? Let's begin!

A quick overview of the electronics resale landscape

As we saw from the stats above, there's a ton of opportunity to sell electronics online. From cell phones, cameras, ring lights, to Kindles and vacuum cleaners. Here are the top three key trends and popular products to watch out for:

Wearable technology

There's a huge demand for wearable devices that seamlessly integrate into users' daily lives, providing health monitoring, notifications, and other functionalities on the go. Think: smartwatches, fitness trackers, etc.

Smart connectivity

People crave seamless connectivity. They want devices that effortlessly sync with each other, provide a smooth user experience, and can quickly learn and adapt to their preferences. Think: smart home ecosystems like Amazon Alexa and Google Home.

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR)

AR and VR are reshaping how people interact with devices, so these products are seeing massive demand, too. People use them for everything from virtual try-on experiences for fashion products to immersive gaming experiences. Think: Apple Vision Pro, Oculus headsets, and other VR gaming consoles.

But every opportunity comes with its own set of problems. Here are the top challenges you might face if you decide to sell electronics online (together with ideas on how to tackle them):

• Rapid tech advancements: Newer models and features are constantly being released. Devices can quickly become outdated and unappealing to buyers. You can address this challenge by focusing on niche markets or offering trade-in programs.
• Logistics and shipping challenges: Electronics are fragile and can easily get damaged during transportation. Make sure you invest in secure packaging and use a reliable logistics company to reduce the risk of product damage during transit.
• Environmental regulations and e-waste management: The exact rules may differ depending on your location. However, you'll have to comply with e-waste disposal regulations and adopt eco-friendly practices.

Bottom line: Because the market for electronics is enormous, it can be a lucrative business venture. At the same time, it's not without its challenges, so you must tailor your approach accordingly.

Where can I sell electronics online?

There are a ton of online selling platforms. The top three for electronics sales are WooCommerce, Shopify, and Amazon.

Of these, the best platform for 99.9% of people is WooCommerce. Let's explore them in detail to find out more.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is hands down the most popular e-commerce platform in the world, with a market share of 39%. It is built to work with WordPress, the world's most popular content management system (CMS), with a market share of 43.2%. Both WooCommerce and WordPress are completely free.

Pros of selling gadgets online with WooCommerce

• It is super flexible and customizable: Essentially, WooCommerce allows you to tailor your online store exactly how you want. You can customize the layout, theme, design, and features as needed.
• It's suitable for any size of store: Even if you start with just one product, you won't have to worry about switching as you scale. It is SEO-friendly, can handle a growing product catalog, increased traffic, and additional features and still work well over time. In fact, some of the biggest eCommerce stores in the world (with thousands of products) still use WooCommerce today.
• There is an extensive plugin ecosystem: WooCommerce has a vast plugin ecosystem to help you add extra features to your site. Whether it's improved layouts, advanced filters, additional options, or payment gateways, there's a plugin for almost every business need.
• It boasts a super beginner-friendly interface on the backend: Managing products, orders, and customer information is straightforward, even if you're new to WooCommerce. Note that there is a slight learning curve if you're not familiar with WordPress terminology. However, everything is in plain language, not code. And there are tons of resources available, plus an active community from which you can quickly learn.
• It is cost-effective to use: WooCommerce is a free, open-source platform. There are no subscription fees. Note: You may need to purchase web hosting (I recommend Woo Express or Kinsta) and some plugins to maximize revenue. However, the platform itself is free.
• You receive the entire profit from each sale: Unlike fully-hosted platforms, there are no transaction or payment gateway fees either.

Cons of selling gadgets online with WooCommerce

• Although WooCommerce provides a solid eCommerce foundation, out of the box, some of its features are limited. However, you can easily fix these limitations by using plugins.
• The costs for plugins can add up over time.

Shopify

A fully hosted eCommerce platform, Shopify enables people to build and manage online stores without any technical knowledge. It's pretty popular, too — Shopify is the 4th largest eCommerce platform in the world.

Pros of selling gadgets online with Shopify

• It is a comprehensive hosting solution: Shopify provides a fully hosted solution, so you don't have to purchase hosting services from a separate provider.
• It is super beginner-friendly: It offers a straightforward and user-friendly backend interface so you can easily set up your store even if you have zero technical expertise. Note that like with other no-code web platforms, there is a slight learning curve if you're unfamiliar with its terminology. However, similar to WooCommerce, everything is written in plain language, not code. And tons of resources and a dedicated support team are available to help if you get stuck.
• They have an extensive app store for additional customization: WooCommerce has plugins, and Shopify has apps. Shopify's app store offers various apps to customize your electronics store further.

Cons of selling gadgets online with Shopify

• It is super expensive. There are monthly (or annual) subscription costs plus transaction fees on every order 😒. It can be difficult to make a reasonable profit!
• Even though getting started with Shopify is super easy, migrating data to another eCommerce platform can be a hassle.

Amazon

The self-proclaimed "everything store", Amazon is probably the largest online marketplace in the world, where people buy and sell virtually everything. You can set up an Amazon business account and sell electronic gadgets to customers.

Pros of selling gadgets online with Amazon

• It has a massive customer base: Many people regularly shop on Amazon's website and app. Listing products on Amazon's platform allows you to reach a large audience you may not have access to otherwise.
• It has built massive trust with customers: Amazon is a recognized brand. Many buyers feel secure buying from Amazon rather than a new online store.
• Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) services: You can leverage Amazon's logistics and warehousing facilities to handle storage, packing, and shipping. This enables you to focus on product quality and marketing.

Cons of selling gadgets online with Amazon

• There is a ton of competition and constant price wars. You may be forced to lower prices to stay competitive, which will impact your profit margins.
• Amazon charges hefty fees — listing, referral, FBA, advertising, etc. You might struggle to make a decent profit.
• You have zero control over Amazon's policies and algorithms, which can affect how products are displayed and ranked. Sudden updates can impact your sales.

The verdict: No platform is 100% perfect. Overall, I recommend WooCommerce over all others because its benefits far outweigh its cons. It is super beginner-friendly, scalable regardless of the number of products you offer, and cost-effective.

WooCommerce plugins to maximize electronic sales

Once you set up your WooCommerce site, it's time to consider how to customize it to maximize profits. I recommend these plugins:

• WooCommerce Product Table - It lists gadgets in a quick, one-page order form layout with add-to-cart buttons to speed up customers' shopping experience and boost revenue.
• WooCommerce Product Options - To add extra options, free and paid add-ons, and product recommendations, like extended warranty, smartphone cases, etc., to the product detail page.
• WooCommerce Product Filters - It adds powerful filters for parameters like device model, operating system, memory, etc., to help shoppers quickly find their desired gadgets.

Let's look at each in detail.

WooCommerce Product Table

Most shoppers evaluate devices based on their features rather than just how they look. Because of this, the traditional image-first approach to online sales might not be ideal for selling electronic gadgets.

WooCommerce Product Table fixes this by replacing the default store layout with one that's much better suited to selling electronics online.

It allows you to list items in a one-page order form where you can easily display product images along with all the relevant information like version, operating system, device storage space, estimated battery life, etc.

Here's a preview of how it looks on the front end of a website.

The product table also includes add-to-cart checkboxes and buttons. People can compare multiple devices in one glance, add their preferred items to the carts, and complete the order within seconds!

Also, when customers click on the product photo, it opens in a lightbox. They can zoom in and out and check out the images.

The top benefits of listing gadgets in a product table layout

• It allows for efficient product comparison: Presenting items in a table layout lets customers view essential details like price, specifications, and availability in an organized format. They can compare multiple electronic products side by side and quickly make buying decisions.
• It streamlines the ordering process: Instead of forcing people to navigate through multiple pages, the one-page order form simplifies the purchasing journey by letting customers select products, adjust the quantity, and begin checkout on a single page.
• It provides a better user experience (UX): With a product table layout, people can easily filter and sort devices based on their preferences, such as price range, brand, or specifications. This is more user-friendly than the traditional shopping experience.
• It significantly boosts revenue: The combination of the above — efficient product comparison, a streamlined ordering process, and better UX leads to a higher conversion rate and improved revenue for your business.

How to sell electronics online with WooCommerce Product Table

1. Get web hosting from Woo Express or Kinsta.
2. Setup a WordPress site and install the WooCommerce plugin.
3. Get the WooCommerce Product Table plugin and follow the tutorial below to set it up.

WooCommerce Product Options

Once you've streamlined the ordering experience, it's time to think about maximizing your store's revenue. With electronic gadgets, the best strategy is to offer add-ons and extra products.

That's where WooCommerce Product Options comes in.

WooCommerce Product Options is an advanced plugin that lets shoppers personalize their purchases and lets sellers offer bundles, upsells, and cross-sells.

Here's a preview of WooCommerce Product Options on the product detail page.

WooCommerce Product Options' key features

• There are more than 16 types of fields to select from: checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdowns, color and image swatches, and much more.
• You can offer add-on options for free or make them chargeable with various price options — for example, a flat fee, quantity-based, character-based, percentage increase, percentage decrease, etc.
• It has built-in conditional logic that lets you hide or show fields for each product page based on shoppers' previous selections.
• It lets you make some fields mandatory, set default values for each option, add minimum and maximum quantity restrictions, plus tons of other advanced rules.
• You can present extra product recommendations to upsell customers on the product detail page.

How to sell electronics online with WooCommerce Product Options

You can let shoppers select configurable options and custom-build their computers. Most electronic gadgets come in variants, so it makes sense to offer them in intuitive ways. You can also recommend relevant, more expensive versions of products to encourage customers to 'upgrade' their purchase (and spend more on your store).

Offer complementary accessories directly on the product page. For example, someone buying a smartwatch might want to add extra wristbands, an extended warranty, or a cleaning kit. People buying a video game console might also want video games, HDMI / VGA cables, etc.

The top benefits of offering extra options and add-ons

• It smoothens the user experience (UX): Offering extra options and paid add-ons on the product or Shop page reduces friction in the buying process. Potential buyers can easily choose upgraded laptop storage options or premium camera accessories from the same page.
• It is super intuitive: It's pretty standard for electronic gadgets to have multiple variations. WooCommerce Product Options displays different configurations, colors, and specifications intuitively. Plus, the conditional logic feature ensures that the options are presented in a way that doesn't clutter the product page.
• It helps maximize your revenue with upsells and cross-sells: You can easily offer paid add-ons, complementary products, and upgrades to increase the average order value (AOV) from every order.

Next steps: Get WooCommerce Product Options. Then, check out the video below for setup instructions.

WooCommerce Product Filters

WooCommerce Product Table and WooCommerce Product Options are sufficient for optimizing your site to deliver a great shopping experience and drive revenue. But there's one more plugin you should consider adding: WooCommerce Product Filters.

WooCommerce Product Filters does precisely what the name suggests — it lets you add powerful, advanced filters to supercharge your store's shopping experience and help customers find products they want faster.

This plugin is primarily beneficial for sellers offering hundreds of products, as sorting through many products can be difficult for customers.

People searching for electronic gadgets typically have specific features they're looking for and won't want to wade through products that don't match their requirements. Advanced filtering allows customers to quickly select the criteria that are important to them and pinpoint the exact device they want in minutes.

For instance, you can add filters for:

• Device type, e.g., iPhones, iPads, Macbooks, iPods, Apple watch, Kindles, etc.
• Manufacturer, e.g., Apple, Samsung, Lenovo, etc.
• Commonly used search terms, e.g., Apple products, Samsung products, etc.

WooCommerce Product Filters' key features

• You can allow customers to filter products based on price, products in stock, products on sale, customer rating, custom categories, custom taxonomies, and virtually any criteria!
• It is built with AJAX technology, which filters through all the products in your store and presents suitable options to customers within seconds — even if you have thousands of products.
• It lets you use various styling options: color swatches, image pickers, radio buttons, dropdowns, range sliders, checkboxes, tag/label clouds, and more to present filter options to customers.
• You can present filter options anywhere on your site — on the 'Shop' page, using filter widgets on the left or right sidebar, and with a shortcode.

Next steps: Get WooCommerce Product Filters. Then, check out the video below for setup instructions.

How to source and store your electronics

The question of where to source electronic gadgets can seem overwhelming, as there are many ways to go about it. Here are the top options:

Manufacturers

Sourcing directly from manufacturers often results in lower per-unit costs. This method eliminates middlemen and secures bulk pricing, which reduces the overall cost of each item. Building relationships directly with manufacturers gives you early access to the latest cutting-edge device launches.

However, remember that manufacturers typically have high minimum order quantity (MOQ) requirements. So, it may not be ideal if you're not starting with a large budget.

In addition, if you're sourcing products from a manufacturer in another country, there may be communication challenges due to different time zones, languages, and cultural differences. This can lead to misunderstandings, delays, and difficulties in resolving issues promptly.

Wholesalers, aka authorized distributors

Authorized distributors are intermediaries authorized by electronics manufacturers to sell their products. Sourcing products through wholesalers is a great way to obtain a variety of items from different brands with proper documentation and access to manufacturer warranties/support.

Wholesalers offer discounted prices with low minimum order quantity limits (MOQs), so you can still benefit from bulk prices. However, the per-unit cost will still be higher than sourcing directly from manufacturers. Plus, because they supply products to multiple retailers, there's a risk of competition with other people selling similar products at the same price as you.

Dropshipping

With the dropshipping sourcing model, you can sell products on your online store to customers anywhere in the world without holding any inventory. When someone makes a purchase on your website, your supplier ships it directly to them.

Dropshipping requires minimal upfront investment. You can offer a wide range of electronics without worrying about managing inventory, warehousing infrastructure, and order fulfillment. You'd only have to focus on customer acquisition, marketing, and customer service.

Keep in mind, however, that the convenience of not holding inventory comes at a cost. Suppliers take a bigger cut of the earnings compared to other sourcing channels, and this can lead to lower profit margins per product.

Dropshippers are also highly dependent on the reliability of their suppliers. If your supplier faces production delays, quality control issues, or issues with order fulfillment, it can lead to increased customer complaints or return requests and damage your brand's reputation.

Second-hand

Sourcing and reselling pre-owned electronics can be very beneficial for everyone involved. The original owners get to declutter and get earn some extra cash from selling their old phones and other electronic devices. Your customers get their desired devices at best prices. It contributes to sustainability by reducing waste from old electronic devices. You of course, benefit from profits!

There are tons of places to source second-hand electronics:

• Directly from their previous owners.
• Trade-in programs run by large stores like Best Buy, Walmart, Target, etc.
• Yard sales.
• Ecommerce websites like eBay, Craigslist, Decluttr, ItsWorthMore, Buyback world, Gazelle, etc.
• Social media marketplaces like Facebook Marketplace, Swappa, etc.

Second-hand electronics come at a fraction of the cost, so you can resell them at attractive prices to customers and still make a decent profit.

However, selling second-hand gadgets is not without its challenges. For example, specific models or configurations may not be readily available in the second-hand market, so you may struggle to source them consistently. If you only sell used electronics, this can limit you from offering a diverse product catalog.

While many second-hand products are in good condition, there is a risk of receiving defective or damaged items. You need to carefully inspect each product to ensure its quality before accepting it and issuing the payout.

How to sell electronics safely online

Fraud and scams are on the rise. Follow these best practices for selling electronics online successfully:

• Choose safe payment methods: Only use reputable and secure payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, Square, Apple Pay, Authorize.net, etc., that encrypt credit cards and other customer information to prevent unauthorized access while processing transactions.
• Use a secure web hosting service provider with robust cybersecurity measures: Opt for hosting providers (like Kinsta) that offer SSL certificates for an encrypted connection, built-in firewalls for protection against cyber attacks, and DDoS protections.
• Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) for site admins: Two-factor authentication layers on an extra security step to make sure that only approved people can access your site. Setting up 2FA means that even if someone steals your password, they would still need a second form of verification, such as a code sent to your mobile phone, to log in to your website.
• Regularly update WooCommerce, WordPress, and all plugins: Updates usually include security patches that fix vulnerabilities and ensure your online store remains protected against potential security breaches.
• Periodically conduct security audits: Even if you update your site frequently, you need to regularly review and analyze your website's security periodically. Conducting monthly security audits using scanning tools helps identify potential vulnerabilities in your website's code and promptly address them to prevent security breaches.

That's how to sell electronics online!

If you plan to sell electronic gadgets online, you'll need to use the right strategies and tools to stand out. How you present items to customers, your site's user experience (UX), and the overall shopping process can influence your store's success.

Fortunately, this is easier than ever with the plugins we've covered:

• WooCommerce Product Table - Perfect for displaying devices in a one-page, quick order form to speed up ordering and deliver a better shopping experience.
• WooCommerce Product Options - Adds extra options to each gadget, add-ons, and product recommendations to maximize revenue.
• WooCommerce Product Filters - Enables shoppers to find the products they want in seconds and significantly speeds up the shopping process.

Get these plugins and start selling electronic gadgets online today!