One of the most complex parts of multichannel eCommerce is managing your product listings.
Each sales channel provides a fresh opportunity to reach new customers but adds layers of complexity. Monitoring your product data, listings, and sales across multiple channels can become overwhelming.
Still, the effort is worth it. Brands that sell on three or more channels see considerable gains in sales numbers. According to Statista, multichannel retailers in the US generated over $350 billion in 2020. By 2023, those numbers are expected to exceed $575 billion.
Brands are increasingly looking for ways to tap into this growing market without experiencing administrative headaches. Many have found a great deal of help from multichannel listing software.
These product listing software platforms help you optimize your listing efforts to focus on more pressing matters. Below, we'll outline some of the core advantages that come when you partner with the right solution. Then, we'll give you a few tips for how to pick the right one.
What is Multichannel Listing Software?
Multichannel listing software gives online stores a singular place to post, edit, and manage their product listings across multiple marketplaces.
This software allows you to set up and store all your product data in one place while publishing it to however many sales channels you choose to utilize.
These solutions help users optimize some of the most burdensome parts of selling online like:
- Logging in and out of multiple platforms regularly.
- Creating individual product descriptions for multiple online sales channels
- Manually updating every product listing
- Monitoring inventory quantities for different online stores
- Evaluating success and comparing several sales channels
5 Advantages of Using Multichannel Listing Software
Simplifying your listing capabilities has a sort of ripple effect on the rest of your business operations. You'll see it affect areas of productivity, labor costs, marketing, and more.
Here, we'll highlight some of the key advantages that come from streamlining your listing processes.
Increase Visibility on All Sales Channels
Customers won't buy from you if they can’t find your products. That's partially why the multichannel strategy exists in the first place: to get your brand in front of more customers and reach a wider audience.
Having the power to create and manage listings without bouncing through dashboards allows you to spend more time crafting thoughtful product pages to impress customers and increase sales.
Visibility becomes even more valuable as the multichannel strategy gains traction in eCommerce. It has already become much harder to maintain visibility. Simply selling on multiple channels doesn't cut it. To stand out amongst competitors, you have to think about SEO, keywords, imagery, and product descriptions.
The best multichannel listing software helps you accomplish all this without accessing a ton of platforms.
More Focused Work
Since these solutions allow you to save time, you and your team will open new availability. The hours previously spent copying and pasting product data from one marketplace to another don't just disappear in the day.
What will you do to fill that space?
You have loads of options. For instance, you might go for a walk around the office or watch Youtube videos about puppies. Or, you could choose to repurpose that time with work that grows your business.
Here are a few ideas:
- Learn to optimize your listings for search engines
- Study your analytics to gain customer insights
- Build out your marketing plan
- Research or develop new products
What you decide to do comes down to your business needs. Maybe you need the mental reset of a puppy video more than you need a thorough marketing strategy. Either way, the point remains: multichannel listing software gives you more time to do what matters most for your company.
Improve Inventory Management
Inventory can get complicated when you've got listings spread out across various online marketplaces and stores. Some brands opt to invest in an inventory management system, but some multichannel listing solutions can also meet particular inventory needs.
The top platforms can handle additional needs like:
- Warehouse management
- Inventory syncing
- Inventory masking
- Inventory price management
- Order management
- Order fulfillment
- Dropshipping
The software also helps you reduce your chance of overselling items. Bouncing from platform to platform can make it hard to track everything perfectly. Things often slip through the cracks. Centralizing that information helps cut down on those tiny mistakes.
Create Better Customer Experiences
Customer experience has become the driving factor of success for eCommerce. With so many different options available to buyers, they have little tolerance for poor interactions with your brand.
Good experiences often come down to consistency, efficiency, and convenience. If your customer has to jump through hoops to buy your product, they'll probably look elsewhere.
By optimizing your product listings, you also give your customers the same experience across all channels (consistency). The improved inventory management processes help keep things in stock and fulfill orders quickly (efficiency). And you’ll meet them where they are, by selling on the channels they want to use (convenience). What you end up with is a better overall customer experience.
Increase Efficiency with PIM
Product information management (PIM) is a set of processes and tools eCommerce brands use to monitor and enhance their product information to better sell and market to customers.
Multichannel listing software helps improve these processes by:
- Centralizing your product data in a dedicated space
- Allowing you to visualize your product data from multiple sales channels
- Simplifying complex processes for your team
6 Questions to Ask When Considering Listing Software
How Is the User Experience?
Any great software solution has an intuitive interface. If it's created to help you, you should be able to use it easily. Don't be afraid to ask for a demo to peek behind the current and see how user-friendly the platform is.
What Features Does It Include for Managing Inventory?
Inventory management causes just as many headaches for online sellers as managing listings. Finding a platform that simplifies both will make your life much easier and reduce your time clicking through tabs or toggling from platform to platform.
Can You Create Bulk Listings and Changes?
Different channels sometimes require the same changes. Your multichannel listing software should be able to make this easier by allowing you to make adjustments in bulk when necessary.
What Automation Is Available?
There's always going to be some manual work involved in creating your listings, but your listing software should have the functionality to reduce quite a bit of it. Asking about which features are automated will help you identify how much time you'll be able to save with their solution.
What Kind of Integrations Does It Allow?
Integrations are essential for a successful multichannel listing software. The more channels you sell on, the more critical it is to find a solution that works with each. This question can also give you a general insight into the platform's technical abilities and help you see if they have the necessary expertise to adapt to differences between sales channels.
Is Customization Allowed?
There's no one-size-fits-all approach to multichannel selling. Each store has unique needs and requirements for its product listings, and your listing software should give you space to customize the offering based on your specific situation.
How Will Our Brands Partner Together?
The best solutions are the ones that work with your brand for success. Software alone will help, but it gets better when you have a team of dedicated people looking to simplify the lives of their clients.
That's our vision for StoreAutomator. We created our listing software to help online sellers thrive in today's business environment. Our dedicated team works with you to ensure your success.
Schedule a free demo with us anytime if you'd like to see how our platform can serve you. We'd love to hear about your company and see how we can help.