Would you like to hear how the successful marketplace businesses started?

I met Matt and Dave few weeks back through skype and had an opportunity to look into their idea of 3rd Generation Multi channel Software. I can’t see any reason why this cannot work for any SME as there are easy options to add on feature as you like. Recently I got message from Matt and here’s what Matt says – 

Would you like to hear how the successful marketplace businesses started?

Find out the real story, spoken by the business owners themselves, people just like you.

How they started, where they are right now, their expectations for Christmas, the challenges they’ve had & overcome and what they’ve got planned for the future.

I asked them all (there is 4 interviews available right now, more soon) the same question, “What one piece of advice would you give other business owners?“, the tips I received back were amazing.

There are four interviews live at UnderstandingE.com/podcasts/ and if you have an iTunes, you can download them immediately here.

In the interview published this morning (see here), you’ll hear how Ian went from clearing his house out, to a multi-million pound business and why he is expecting 50% growth this Christmas compared to last year.

You might be tucked away in your office, at home & at this time of the year it’s probably bordering on chaos. Escape this for half an hour with a cuppa or on the drive home and tune-in & hear from cool people just like you.

See you there,

Matt

Which Multi-Channel Software should I go for ?

UK eCommerce is expected to rise by 12% in 2013. We have seen quite a lot OFFline retailers jumping in and those selling on one platform, extending their reach to other platforms. Those retailers will only survive who is “anytime anywhere”. They need to be on eBay, Amazon and Rakuten Play. For obvious reasons we have seen many multichannel software coming to the market with an aim to simply the life of retailers combining inventory, orders and listing management; reducing labour cost and ultimately raising efficiency of the operations with incremental sales.

These multichannel sales software come in all shapes and sizes. Here are five of them:

1. Channel Grabber
2. Seller Express
3. Seller Dynamics
4. Store Feeder
5. Linnworks

Each of them have their own way of saying they are the best. If you are in confusion, simply list what your business require and match them with the software features. You are sorted!

When I look at these software I see more similarities and than differences. They all do the same function because most of the businesses want similar things. However these are some differences you will see on them:

1. Level of Customer Support
2. Account Management
3. Ability to customise
4. Cost

Personally, I would like to see high level of customer support initially to walk me through setup and usage. I would prefer to talk to one person so that he/she knows history of the problem and we understand each other. Secondly, I would like my account to be looked at every now and alert me if there is something wrong or if I am doing well with incremental sales generated due to this software. I would also like to have some bits customised due to technical reasons which would help me not to change much in my 10 years operation. Finally, it would be great to have all these above at the best price possible. A big NO if I have to give away 1.5% of my hard earned sales!

I would love to know what you want your multichannel software to do and if you have used one let me know how you got on with it?

Note: You can follow poll on LinkedIn “What is the best Multi-Channel Software you have seen so far?”

Increase your online sales on eBay and Amazon

Do you sell exclusively on eBay or Amazon? Maybe you’re only selling on Rakuten’s Play.com or your own eCommerce store? Whatever your current strategy, your sales could be greatly improved by selling your products across multiple marketplaces and channels.

The obvious reason for this is perhaps obvious—selling into more marketplaces increases your potential buying audience. But the often over-looked advantage of adopting a multi channel eCommerce approach is recognising what products sell best on what marketplaces. You may realise that a category of your inventory simply sells better and at a higher margin on eBay than Amazon, or that particular goods sell exceptionally well on Amazon Germany. You simply won’t know until you try.

And here’s the really good bit—there is software out there called SellerExpress that can help you sell across multiple online marketplaces, including Amazon, eBay and Rakuten’s Play, as well as your ecommerce webstore, allowing you to reach a larger market of online shoppers. It synchronises your inventory and brings stock management, order processing and auto repricing for your multiple channels into one easy-to-use online solution.

Features include rapid data entry, bulk data importing, stock synchronisation, inventory splitter, auto repricing, currency conversion, automated order processing tasks, picking options and advanced reporting.

SellerExpress offers a free 15 day trial and free managed setup to help customers get up and running as quickly and easily as possible. Give it a try—what have you got to lose?

Other sellers are already enjoying the benefits—here’s what they have to say…

Simple to set-up, easy to use and most important of all; it increased our sales and profits. I wholeheartedly recommend the team at SellerExpress.

I’m new to SellerExpress. I was immediately impressed with how advanced the software is. I’ve never seen anything as good or as easy to use as this. The email support I’ve had is very good with rapid responses to my questions. They have some great features – especially the intelligent re-pricing tool. SellerExpress makes the competitor I was using look prehistoric!!

I signed up to Sellerexpress a few months back. I’m now listed on 6 Amazon Marketplace places (UK, DE, FR, US, JP, CA) and Play.Com. Free trial is good as it lets me play around with the system and get everything setup and the staff are amazing they really know what they are doing and very helpful during setup.

I have used this system for approx 10 months It is very easy to use, has saved a lot of time listing and repricing. The back up service is excellent. It is a good value excellent tool to help grow your business as it has done with mine.