We all make mistakes when we’re busy: Salt instead of sugar, keys on the wrong side of the door, hitting reply all – but plummeting the shares of Amazon, Google and Apple by nearly 87% goes down as a pretty big one.
Last week Nasdaq experienced a trading glitch whereby financial information interpreters wrongly listed test prices as live; with Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft all showing prices of $123.47 – Ensue mayhem.
Errors on your listings might not be quite as dramatic but when selling multiple items on multiple channels, there is a lot more room for mistakes that could cost you money and reputation. Here are our top five tips to avoid the “oh-no” feeling that those Nasdaq employees certainly felt last week:
1. Procedures.
It might not sound glamorous but having set procedures in place for creating and editing listings – that encompass double checks of pricing and information – will reduce the chance of mistakes being missed before going live.
2. Checks
Whether using old school dictionaries, built-in spell checkers or apps such as Grammarly, checking your listings for spelling and grammatical errors is vital.
3. Be alert
Is one of your products selling unusually well? We’re sure it’s because the word has escaped about how great it is but do take the time to double check that it isn’t because of misinformation or a pricing error.
4. Stop doing too many things
Using a multichannel software platform, such as Expandly, reduces the number of things you have to do. Editing multiple listings and prices in one place removes some of the opportunities for errors and it saves you time so that you can concentrate on getting it right in the one place. Should you still suffer a pricing glitch, multichannel software makes it quick and easy to fix with listing management and Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Wish and shopping cart integration. Simple.
5. Don’t beat yourself up
Mistakes happen. If you do suffer a listing or pricing glitch, swiftly and calmly fix the error and apologise to those involved. You may want to honour the glitch, or if not possible make a reasonable offer in order to protect your brand reputation and gain some positive PR.