Multi-Channel Ecommerce Software
Multi-channel ecommerce software allows online sellers to market their products across different sales channels and multiple marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart and eBay, from a centralized platform.
An ecommerce business that’s only selling on just one online sales channel is ignoring the opportunity to grow and expand their customer base by not disseminating their product catalog and marketing it to other available online marketplaces. Customers, nowadays, have a limited attention span and grow impatient fast. In fact, around 97% of individuals who visit a website to check its product listings are more likely to leave without making a single purchase, not even one item in the shopping cart. All the while, ecommerce channels and marketplaces like Amazon are taking nearly half of all online product searches in the US and niche marketplaces are attracting only about a third of all consumers.
This is where selling through multiple channels becomes a crucial, life-saving strategy for most small business owners and retailers looking to maximize their online sales. However, adopting a multi-channel strategy is easier said than done without the right ecommerce platform that has the power to facilitate the process. This is why multi-channel ecommerce software exists. A software solution like this can help save you time, money and effort, not to mention the stress that goes with managing a huge amount of data across multiple sales channels and marketplaces, including social media platforms. A multi-channel ecommerce platform is designed to help users work more efficiently across different sales channels by not having to log into every channel just to perform the same task.
Multi-channel ecommerce software is designed to provide a single unified platform for online store owners and managers, which they can use to manage their product listings simultaneously across multiple sales channels and marketplaces, such as Amazon, Walmart Marketplace, eBay, etc. While a multi-channel ecommerce solution can help reduce the work of manually managing and maintaining product catalogs on different channels, the practice of multi-channel ecommerce is a highly effective strategy for reaching more customers and selling more products.
Multi-channel ecommerce is all about diversifying your sales channels and reducing your dependence on just one online store, waiting for customers to come to you. The multi-channel plan revolves around using your online retail shop as a hub that is connected to multiple sales channels and platforms. This allows you to increase product visibility and expand your reach by displaying your product catalog across multiple channels.
For example, you have your own retail website, but your products are also indexed in other sales channels and marketplaces like Amazon, eBay and Walmart Marketplace. This will help increase the chances of people stumbling upon an item or product that you’re selling, without them having ever been to your online store. You’re capitalizing on the high amount of traffic on those popular sales channels and marketplaces to attract customers by adopting a multi-channel ecommerce strategy. A good multi-channel ecommerce software solution is the kind of tool that you need to make this strategy work.
Distributing your product catalog on a number of sales channels and marketplaces not only increases your visibility, but the strategy also makes it more conducive for potential customers to purchase your products via the marketplace or channel they’re on, which incidentally improves customer experience. This approach also helps to introduce your products to new customers who might otherwise have never heard of your brand.
So what kind of features can you expect from multi-channel ecommerce software? Well, there are different types of multi-channel ecommerce solutions to choose from. Some of them only provide features and tools for a specific aspect of multi-channel selling, such as inventory management, product listing and/or order management, while there are others that offer a combination or all of the aforementioned features.
The best multi-channel ecommerce solutions will also support third-party integration to keep all ecommerce applications and other related systems connected and running as smoothly as possible. The other key features include product listing automation, workflow automation, inventory synchronization, change management and centralization.
Being able to automate the product listing process is perhaps one of the biggest perks of using multi-channel ecommerce software. This will keep you from manually listing your products on each individual sales channel, which can be time-consuming and labor-intensive. It’s not the best way to spend your valuable time when you’re running a rapidly growing ecommerce business. The best multi-channel ecommerce solution with this feature is capable of adapting to the very particular listing requirements and unique taxonomy of different sales channels, which change fairly regularly.
Workflow automation is an important feature of multi-channel ecommerce platforms that you can utilize to effectively manage your tasks. Instead of spending the majority of your time doing manual work, specific tasks that can be automated should be automated. This is the feature that will let you do that. Workflow automation can cover a lot of areas, but some of the most common tasks that it can facilitate include automating purchase orders, promotions, making bulk changes to a large product catalog and quickly editing listing errors.
Inventory synchronization is a fundamental component of multi-channel ecommerce software. The software solution needs this function in order to protect your ecommerce operation from premature stockouts and overselling by automatically updating stock or inventory levels across all your sales channels. For instance, if a sale is made in one channel, the available product quantity will automatically be updated on all sales channels in near real time. Inventory syncing also helps with concurrent selling, ensuring that when a particular product is down to the last few units, it will only be available for sale on a single channel. All other sales channels will automatically be turned off in order to avoid overselling.
Change management is an important function to look for when you’re evaluating different multi-channel ecommerce solutions. Its value can be felt as marketplaces are constantly evolving. Take Amazon, for instance—it regularly updates its listing criteria in an effort to deliver a better customer experience, so your multi-channel ecommerce solution should give you the ability to adapt to these routine changes in the most efficient way possible.
Building a multi-channel ecommerce presence for your online store can help increase your reach, improve brand awareness, enhance customer experience and boost your sales through a strategy that focuses on practicality and convenience. But managing multiple sales channels is not only overwhelming; it can present a serious challenge as well, especially without a robust and feature-rich multi-channel ecommerce software solution.
One of the biggest benefits of leveraging a multi-channel ecommerce solution is its positive impact on brand visibility or brand awareness. As an online store owner, you have to remember that you’re competing with thousands of other ecommerce businesses. Some are bigger and more established, while others are just like yours or even smaller. You have to do everything you can to standout and reach as many potential customers as possible. Through multi-channel selling, you can achieve higher brand visibility and a multi-channel ecommerce platform can help you with the process.
In addition to brand visibility, good multi-channel ecommerce software also helps with promoting brand consistency across all sales channels. When you’re selling in various channels and marketplaces, you have to understand that different marketplaces function differently. It can be a complicated and overwhelming prospect to manage product listings and other relevant information in multiple marketplaces that have different policies and criteria. A multi-channel ecommerce platform will help ensure that all product information, prices, descriptions and quantities are the same across all sales channels.
Multi-channel ecommerce solutions also provide greater sales potential for your business. Numerous studies have shown that ecommerce businesses that capitalize on multiple sales channels (three or more) have a significantly superior purchase rate than those that use only a single sales channel or marketplace. By using a multi-channel ecommerce platform to market your products in multiple marketplaces empowers online shoppers to purchase your products in the channel or platform that they prefer.
For example, if they always use Amazon to purchase products, placing your product catalog on Amazon greatly increases your chances of making a sale. It also eliminates the inconvenience of going to your online store or creating a new account just to make a purchase. Imagine how inconvenient it can be when you already have a shopping cart full of items you want to buy and you have to go to checkout, complete the transaction and switch to a different platform just to get one more item. Most people will not go through the trouble. They might just look for an alternative and you end up losing that potential sale.
Multi-channel ecommerce software is an invaluable tool for ecommerce businesses that want to adopt a strategy of selling their products across multiple sales channels and marketplaces. Considering that multi-channel ecommerce has become a winning strategy for a lot of small business owners and online retailers, the value of this type of software can never be understated.
The software is equipped with a wide variety of features, such as multi-channel inventory synchronization, customization, listing automation, workflow automation, change management, inventory management, order management, data consolidation, etc. If you’re a small business owner and you want to expand your market reach, you might want to consider the multi-channel ecommerce approach.
