Selling on bol.com: what steps do you need to take?

In this article we will work step by step to be able to sell on bol.com.

Selling your products on bol.com is of course very smart. You reach a large audience and you do not have to create your own website. But before you can start selling on bol.com, there is still a few things that need to be done. We will discuss this in this blog! Using the same topics as discussed in the videos, you will gradually become more at home in the world of bol.com!

Registering a sales account

To start selling via bol.com, we need to create a seller account. You can create this account via www.partnerplatform.bol.com. In the white bar at the top of the site, you will see the second option ‘become a partner’. Click on this, and then click on the blue button ‘become a partner of bol.com’. From here you can start!

You then choose to register. To be able to register, you must enter your e-mail address and a password. You also need your first and last name to create the account. Now it is final!

When you have entered your first details, you will be asked in which country you are registering your company. You can choose between the Netherlands and Belgium. Then you enter your Chamber of Commerce and VAT number. So make sure that your company is already officially registered before you start working at bol.com! If everything is correct, bol.com can find your company immediately. You then only have to check whether all the details are correct.

Finally, you must indicate how bol.com can reach your company. To do this, enter the same or another email address and a phone number. The registration is now complete: congratulations! You have created your own store on bol.com!

You can verify your account via the activation email in your inbox. Now you can really get started!

Store name & conditions

Once you have verified your email address, you can immediately go to your own store via the link. You will then end up on an introduction page where bol.com will give you a helping hand for the first steps of opening your store.

Step 1 is filling in the store details. Your store details consist of your store name and an associated description. Briefly tell us something about your store here. Customers have more confidence in a store when it briefly states who you are and what you sell. For example, you can also briefly mention your return conditions and warranty conditions.

Step 2 is filling in the return settings. You will immediately end up here when you click on 'continue' after filling in the store details. The first thing bol.com asks here is in which country you want to sell. As mentioned earlier, you can sell in the Netherlands and Belgium at bol.com. The advantage of bol.com is that you can offer from the Netherlands in both the Netherlands and Belgium, and vice versa. Unfortunately, there is also a disadvantage to this. This has everything to do with the delivery promises, which I will discuss in detail later. Don't worry yet: you can choose both countries!

Then you fill in your return address and indicate which return method you prefer to use. The return methods that bol.com offers are bol.com return service (favorable rates, one return service for the Netherlands and Belgium, easy access to the track & trace status) and an own return service (choose your own shipping party, you arrange the return stamps for the customer yourself, most advantageous choice when using a reply number).

At bol.com, the customer can always return for free. This means that the costs of a return are always for the seller. I advise you not to go for the own return service, because this is often a lot more expensive. Bol.com buys return labels in large badges from DHL or PostNL, for example, which reduces the costs. The choice is of course still yours!

In the next step you can choose the return instructions for the customer. Bol.com has standard instructions, but you can also choose your own instructions if you sell certain exceptional products. Think of very fragile products!

Step 3 is the last step, the verification code. Bol.com will send you a letter with a verification code so that you can officially start your store. Once you have received this letter and filled in the code, everything is done and you can start selling. Congratulations!

While you wait for the letter with the verification code, you can continue with your account on bol.com, more about this later!

Dashboard

Het dashboard is de eerste pagina die je ziet als je bent ingelogd op het verkoopplatform. Als je de code van je brief (zoals hierboven beschreven) al hebt ontvangen, dan zal je het dashboard meteen zien verschijnen. Een dashboard ziet er als volgt uit:

The most noticeable thing is the large circle in the middle. These are your open orders, which you can process via the button. On the left you see the open customer question. These are questions that customers often have after they have ordered a product from you. On the right are your open returns, these are customers who return something. Please note: the number of returns may seem high, but this is often in proportion to the number of products you sell. If you sell good quality products, you will receive relatively few returns.

Furthermore, we see the reviews of your company on the dashboard. The general rating is at the top left, in the example this is the number 8.9. Below that you see the most recent reviews. Do not forget that customers can also give negative reviews, for example if they received an item too late. In this case you can send the customer a message to solve the problem.

In the middle you see the heading 'your performance'. This is a weekly review from bol.com to you. First, they look at the number of cancellations you have, you may have a maximum of 2% in a week. Second, they look at how many of your products have been delivered on time. A product is on time when it has been delivered within your specified delivery time. Third, bol.com also assesses your Track & Trace: is a product traceable? Finally, they look at how many returns you receive.

The last box you see on your dashboard is the news. You can see this on the right side of your screen. Bol.com has various news items in the form of a blog that you can read there. Some things are very important, others are not.

When you scroll down a bit on your dashboard, your turnover measured per day appears. Sometimes this is of course very nice, because a high turnover makes everyone happy. Unfortunately, it can sometimes be disappointing. If you have staff, they can also view the turnover, so keep that in mind!

Below the turnover we find the to-do's, these are a number of points with which bol.com thinks you can improve your company. In addition, there is a chat icon on the dashboard, here you can reach bol.com with questions. The red triangle indicates the malfunctions at bol.com, keep a close eye on this, because it could apply to you!

Shop settings

The store settings can be found at the top right of your dashboard under your store name. If you click on the figure, you have a drop down with ‘settings, store page, log out and sales number’. Go here, as usual, to the settings heading.

On this page you will find various settings divided into three sections: my store, account and services.

The first heading at my shop consists of shop details, here you will find all the details you entered when creating your account at bol.com. You can edit and re-save this information if necessary, you can also add a logo and pause your shop. When you have done this, you close your shop for an indefinite period of time. This is useful if, for example, you have to move warehouses!

The second heading at my shop is about warranty & repair. This heading indicates that customers are entitled to a legal warranty when purchasing an item. Customers will therefore receive this warranty from bol.com in any case. You can also choose to add additional conditions or instructions regarding warranty and repair yourself. You can also add a repair address if you think it is necessary, but in my case this is not necessary! You can often get by with the standard warranty and repair.

Thirdly, we see the returns appear at my shop. With this heading you have four different options. First we see the return method. We have already set this earlier in this blog: we made a choice between the bol.com return service and our own return service. Secondly, you can enter your return address. If all goes well, you have already set this up, but you can always change it here! Below the return address, we find the return instructions. Here you can choose the standard instructions, but you can also apply your own instructions. Finally, under the heading ‘collection service’, you can indicate whether or not you will collect the returns from the customer. This is a lot of work, but this is often chosen for large items such as washing machines. In that case, it is also a part of customer service!

Furthermore, we find more information about customer service in the store settings. Customer service is very important, you must be easily accessible to your customers, both by telephone and by e-mail. In these settings, you can indicate via which telephone number and e-mail address you can be reached and when, so that you never have any problems with angry customers!

Under the heading ‘across the border’ you can choose to activate your store in the Netherlands and/or Belgium. More information about this will follow later.

We conclude the store settings with a new concept, namely the delivery promise. Here you can indicate per day what can be expected with regard to the delivery of the products to the customer. I will also go into this further in a next blog.

Other settings

Just like the store settings discussed above, you can also find the other settings on the settings page (found at the top right of your dashboard under your company icon). In this section, we will discuss the other settings: account settings and service settings.

Account

In your account settings you can manage your personal data. In the first link you see contact: the place where you can fill in your personal data. The second heading is users. Here you can add all users. You may have to deal with multiple users when you work with certain marketing agencies, or simply when you have staff working. The third tab is finances, here you fill in your bank details.

Services

In services you will find two different tabs. The first tab is API settings. API is a specific connection that you make with software. Suppose you use an inventory system, then you can make a connection with software with an API key. In addition, under the heading services you will also find 'logistics at bol.com'. Via this tab you can have manual inventory returned or unsaleable inventory automatically returned.

Finding your way through the menu

By now you have learned quite a bit about the seller account of bol.com. In this blog I will take you through the entire menu once more. In the bar at the top of the website we see different subjects: articles, orders, customer questions, finances, performance, reviews, analysis and advertising. You are most active in articles, orders and customer questions. For the sake of completeness we will zoom in on the entire menu bar once more. Each subject is briefly explained.

Articles

In the article topic, you can choose from various subtopics in the dropdown, namely my articles, add article per piece, add articles in bulk, manage supply via Excel and changed product information. How to add an article is something we will learn later in this course. For now, it is important to know that you can find everything about products and articles in this dropdown.

Orders

If you click on the orders heading, you will see open orders in the first tab and then sent orders. You will also see an overview of all returns and your processed returns. In your processed returns, you can also easily search for a specific question from a customer about a returned product.

Customer questions

The customer questions tab is used to create an overview of questions that customers ask about your products or about their order. You can handle these customer questions here.

Finances

In finances, you can download your invoice every month. You can also see the interim status of your invoice amount, so you are immediately aware of what you will be paid!

Performance

In this important tab you can see an overview of all your performance on the account. This is cast in the same form as the dashboard discussed above.

Reviews

On the dashboard we could see that a top five of the reviews was shared. Via this page you can read all the reviews you have received in the past.

Analysis

With the topic analysis you can choose from sales analysis, assortment analysis, return analysis, bol.com search trends and set up customer questions in the dropdown. You only use this analysis if you have been selling for a while, so come back then! Then we will go through it with you in more detail!

Advertising

Via the heading advertising you can advertise your company and associated articles.

This blog has discussed the first steps to be able to sell on bol.com in detail! Hopefully you have become a lot more familiar and have now managed to create your own account. In order to set up a really successful company you must of course also be able to place and sell articles, so this will be the next topic that I will discuss in this course. I look forward to seeing you again in the next blog, so you can become more and more at home in the world of bol.com!