As you spend more time on the internet researching and learning how successfully grow your online retail business, someone is bound to say to you “ah, you need multichannel management software”. What is it and why do you need it?
Multichannel Management Software Saves You Time by Linking Marketplaces and Shopping Carts
Multichannel software is great time-saving software that sits in the middle of your marketplaces and shopping carts and allows data to flow to and from each of them. This data can include product, listing, inventory, order and shipping information. It allows you to log in to one place, once a day and administer each of your sales channel(s) directly from there. This is great news for online retailers selling on eBay, Amazon, Etsy and on their own websites using one of up to 30 Shopping carts.
Listings and Products
One of the greatest time-savers of all is centralised listing and product management. Why? Because good multichannel management software allows you to list to all your sales channel(s) from one screen. You can create one product and listing with all the information needed for each of your sales channel(s) then push it to each of your sales channel(s). It should also let you add images, include Amazon only information, provide extra details needed for Etsy and add eBay field data.
Imagine a product with 15 colour and size variations. Imagine updating these manually on each of your 3 sales channel(s). Headache? Now consider doing this once, through one screen, and pushing all your updates direct to each of your channels.
Orders
Another great time-saver, centralised order processing gives you rapid access to view and process all your orders, no matter which channel they come from. Logging in to each of your platforms to individually pick, pack and ship each of your orders can waste a lot of your time. With good multichannel management software you can create picklists, bulk pick orders, filter your orders to view those that meet certain criteria and bulk pack and ship direct through the platform. The multichannel software updates the data on each of your channels as you enter it.
Inventory
Here multichannel software can save your reputation and increase your sales. Multichannel management software provides a live update on stock levels between each of your channels. This is great as it means you are much less likely to oversell items and you can list products on all your sales channel(s) even if your stock levels are low – no more ring-fencing “eBay stock” or “Amazon stock” to make sure you don’t get it wrong.
Shipping
Any multi-channel software that has order management functionality should allow you to mark your orders and add shipping information which gets sent directly to your channels as you enter it. Some multichannel software will allow you to connect direct to your shipping carriers. This is great as it saves you time and effort.
Choosing Multichannel Management Software
It can be difficult to work out if Multi-channel software will do what you need it to do. We spend a lot of time working with online sellers, helping them to work out what it is they need from a multichannel solution. We have compiled the answers to all their questions into this online guide.
If you want to know more about how multichannel management software can help your business, feel free to get in touch. We are always happy to talk through your individual business needs – no matter what the size of your business.
Good luck!
About Expandly
Expandly is multichannel management software that is all about saving you time and effort.
From the moment you login in the morning to the moment you ship your orders, Expandly aims to reduce your workload. It is simple, easy to use and focussed on helping small eCommerce businesses go from home-office or unit to warehouse and beyond.