Want to grow your e-commerce store quickly?
Then you need to master the art of selling on multiple channels.
The e-commerce industry is extremely competitive, with 80% of Americans having completed an online purchase in the last month. Overall, Americans spend 36% of their shopping budget online and spent $365.2 billion on consumer products online in 2019 alone.
Even brick-and-mortar retailers like Walmart have transitioned into strengthening online sales, as people are increasingly heading online to shop. Businesses like grocery stores commonly use apps and their website to offer features like in-store pick-ups or delivery. Demanding work schedules or increased variety makes online shopping a common part of American culture. Smartphones have made online shopping more popular and easier than ever, as mobile browsers and apps can cut down on the time it takes to complete a purchase.
With so many businesses competing for traction, the best way to stand out, increase sales, and improve your customer experience is by using multiple channels.
A multi-channel strategy can involve both marketing and sales.
For marketing, you can use different streams—like email and social media—to advertise or engage with your customers.
With a multi-channel sales strategy, this means listing your products on several different platforms, like Amazon, eBay, or Shopify.
When you decide it’s time to benefit from using multi-channel selling, it’s imperative to ensure that your inventory and listings are accurate and automated. Using multi-channel listing software is one of the most effective ways to make sure that your e-commerce business is ready to take the next step.
What is Multi-Channel Listing Software?
At first glance, listing your products on multiple platforms, apps, and websites might seem complicated.
For example, if you’re selling headphones on Amazon, Facebook, and Shopify, when you sell out, you have to manually change the inventory to zero on each separate platform and listing. Another difficulty in manually overseeing multi-channel listings is that it can create pricing inconsistencies, which can lead to lost sales or inaccurate pricing.
This is where helpful tools come in.
Multi-channel listing software automates the process of simultaneously posting your products on several different platforms. Additionally, this software can help you track analytics, such as where your products are selling best. Since each selling platform has its own unique setup, listing software can make it easier to keep up with sales and organize invoices.
By utilizing helpful software, you can cut down on the amount of time you spend managing and selling your products, allowing you to invest additional hours into other parts of your busy e-commerce business. It can also save you money in the long run, as it can decrease the number of accounting and shipping errors. Using software can even help prevent you from needing to manually complete tasks like invoicing.
The Best Multi-Channel Software Tools
Finding the right software to manage your multi-channel listings requires that you first identify what your needs are.
Understanding your target market is also an important element of selecting the right listing software. Your target market plays a large role in deciding which platforms to sell your products on, which in turn can help you make the best decision for what software to use. Be honest about your level of computer skills before finalizing your decision for software, as some options are better for beginners, while others are far more advanced and require some more computer proficiency.
Listed below are some of the best multi-channel software tools that can help strengthen your e-commerce business.
1. Skubana
First up, Skubana.
If you’re looking to reduce the amount of time you spend managing your inventory and sales posts, Skubana is among the best automated multi-channel selling software available. This program can automate your inventory while tracking sales and offering detailed analytics. It quickly and easily synchronizes your entire inventory and is compatible with a variety of selling platforms, including Shopify and Amazon.
Another great feature of Skubana is that it allows you to automate various functions of your e-commerce business, such as automatically selecting a specific shipping service for each order placed, even if they’re on different platforms. You can even add custom labels and tags to products, such as attaching a return label or scheduling a specific day for shipping.
Skubana can also help you automate returns and allows you to pick how you provide shipping labels. So, if a customer initiates a return, you can use it to automatically email a return label. Detailed analytics and reports are another one of its strengths. Within the dashboard, you can view detailed data like what items are selling best (and which platforms they’re selling best on), as well as low inventory and profit per sale.
2. SellerCloud
SellerCloud offers more user-friendly software to help you manage multi-channel selling effectively for your e-commerce business. With SellerCloud, you can view all of your products—regardless of how many platforms you’re using to sell your items—on the site’s dashboard. Since multi-channel e-commerce can become overwhelming when you have to manually oversee all of your product listings, SellerCloud allows you to automate a significant portion of the process.
When using SellerCloud, you can ensure that your inventory stays accurate and up-to-date across multiple platforms, as well as set one price for your products so that all of your product listings are accurate. The listing tool function makes it easy to use the same product description across all platforms, saving you a ton of time.
Another great tool SellerCloud offers is restocking features, which can allow you to automatically reorder products even before they sell out! Automating inventory in this manner prevents you from running low on your best-selling products, which ensures your customers aren’t disappointed.
SellerCloud’s shipping tools work with a variety of carriers and you’re able to successfully view and manage all of your shipping needs within the site. That means you can use different carriers depending on the item or platform you’re selling on.
SellerCloud is also integrated with QuickBooks, which can help automate accounting functions for your e-commerce business.
3. StoreAutomator
While other software providers allow you to request demos of their product, StoreAutomator actually offers a 15-day free trial! This gives you some time to play around with the software before making a final decision about whether it’s the best tool for your business. StoreAutomator also offers specialized software for dropshipping, which can help you more easily compete against competitors.
This software works with a variety of selling platforms, including eBay, Shopify, and Etsy. Besides allowing you to manage listings across multiple channels, StoreAutomator also has a built-in tool called Amazon Repricer. The Amazon Repricer automatically checks current marketplace conditions and can either suggest or change your product pricing based on that information. You can completely automate the price checking process and set your own rules and parameters.
The Amazon Repricer feature makes sure that your products are priced competitively, which can help boost sales and prevent your e-commerce business from losing out on potential customers because your prices aren’t adjusting in real-time to current market conditions. For example, seasonal sales lead to discounted prices. StoreAutomator can notify you or adjust your product sale prices so that your store isn’t overlooked during the holidays or special sales like Black Friday.
Like most multi-channel listing software, StoreAutomator also offers analytics and performance tracking features, which can help you learn more about how to efficiently operate your multi-channel selling.
4. Sellbrite
Sellbrite is a beginner-friendly software that, like StoreAutomator, also offers a free trial. With Sellbrite, you can manage listing across different websites and apps. A nice feature Sellbrite has is that they provide various templates, which can make it easier to create your product listings. These templates make Sellbrite a great choice for novices.
Sellbrite provides constant live updates and synching of inventory to prevent backordering, and can help automate most aspects of your e-commerce business. Another great feature is that you can automatically update and refresh your listings. If prices change, you can add settings that automatically adjust your product prices.
Sellbrite can help you centralize your shipping and customize your carriers. You can also set your shipping to be fulfilled by Amazon, which can cut down on time and save money.
5. Sellware
If most of your e-commerce business involves Amazon sales, Sellware is an excellent choice, as it is especially popular for managing Amazon listings. You can manage listings across websites like eBay and Amazon while seeing live updates of your current inventory. The dashboard allows you to track how your products are selling on each platform, including your own website!
Since Sellware integrates using multiple WordPress and CMS plugins, you can also automate many of the selling tasks on your e-commerce website. The analytics also track which products are selling well, and which ones aren’t. Analyzing the data can make it easier to decide which products to continue selling and which ones you should consider cutting from your offerings in the future.
Easy-to-read graphs and charts make tracking your performance simple, which can provide you with the information and time necessary to continue building your e-commerce business and multi-selling channels successfully.
6. inkFrog
inkFrog is one of the most affordable software options available, with plans starting for as little as $11 a month. inkFrog helps you more efficiently list your products on eBay and Amazon, which can make it easier to jumpstart your e-commerce business. The software works with eBay, Amazon, Bigcommerce, and Shopify.
The listing tool for eBay and Amazon makes adding SEO terms easy, even if you’re new to e-commerce and marketing. Using SEO terms in listings—especially the titles—helps your products rank higher when customers search for products on eBay or Amazon. Making sure your product descriptions feature the right words and details improves your ability to sell, especially across multiple channels. Inaccurate or poorly written listings can easily get flagged or ignored by potential customers. Likewise, using the wrong title can cause your product to not show up on the first few pages of search results.
InkFrog also offers templates, which can make your sales posts look more appealing and professional.
You can add custom features to the templates, which can help your listing stand out from competitors.
When using the listing features, you can choose to upload your own photos or to use stock images, which can ensure that your products look the same across multiple platforms.
Like others, inkFrog also offers a free trial.
7. CedCommerce
Finally, CedCommerce not only helps you manage inventory and sales, but the software can also help you make an app for your e-commerce store! If you have difficulty learning how to master multi-channel software, CedCommerce provides services that can save you time. While moving your online store to other platforms or websites can seem overwhelming, CedCommerce makes the transition easier. You can easily add all the features and products from your store to other websites, like Shopify.
Their software works with every major e-commerce platform, including eBay and Amazon. With the ability to track and automate restocking, prices, shipping, and inventory, you can easily manage your multiple channels using CedCommerce’s dashboard. They also offer 24/7 technical support, which ensures that any difficulties you do experience are resolved quickly.
If you need help redesigning your website, CedCommerce offers additional services to help. CedCommerce is a subscription-based service that starts at $30 per month, with more expensive plans offering additional services targeted at larger-scale e-commerce businesses.
When you decide to take a multi-channel approach, it’s important to accurately track your inventory and sales. Failing to keep track of all of your listings can undermine your business and cut into your profits. It can also be difficult to efficiently analyze what products are selling best when you’re using a multi-channel selling structure.
Finding ways to automate aspects of your e-commerce business can help you scale your company without sacrificing profits. Taking advantage of multi-channel listing software tools is one of the best ways to do that.
Finding the right software is important, but sifting through the programs takes time. If you’d like to make short work of multi-channel listing software tools, visit Data Feed Automation today. See our top picks and choose from the highest reviewed multi-channel listing tools!