That doesn’t mean Amazon FBA is right for every brand, or in all circumstances. As you expand your eCommerce capabilities, the Amazon FBA vs. FBM debate can become difficult to resolve.

This post will help by walking you through the details of both options, along with some tips on inventory management and additional automation opportunities you should consider.

What is Amazon FBA Inventory Management?

Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) Inventory Management is a system that allows your business to organize, track, and optimize your store product inventory in their fulfillment centers.

The platform handles critical inventory and order management tasks like:

• monitoring stock levels
• forecasting product demand
• replenishing inventory
• fulfilling orders
• handling returns

How Amazon FBA Inventory Management Works

When a customer places an order, Amazon handles the picking, packing, shipping, and customer service, providing sellers with a streamlined and efficient way to fulfill orders and reach a broader customer base.

Amazon FBA Setup Steps:

Setting up an Amazon FBA account is the first step to leveraging the platform’s fulfillment capabilities. Follow these simple steps and benefit from streamlined order fulfillment, access to Prime customers, and the means for providing excellent customer service.

Step 1: FBA Setup 

Create your Amazon selling account and log in to Seller Central to set up FBA.

Step 2: List Your Products 

Add your products to the Amazon catalog and indicate them as FBA inventory.

Step 3: Product Preparation 

Follow Amazon’s packing guidelines and shipping requirements to ensure your products are prepared safely and securely for transportation to a fulfillment center.

Step 4: Send to Amazon 

Create a shipping plan, print Amazon shipment ID labels, and send your shipments to designated Amazon fulfillment centers.

What is Amazon FBM?

Amazon FBA isn’t the only way to manage the process of getting online orders shipped to consumers. The company also offers Amazon Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM), where sellers either manages or works with a third party to handle areas such as inventory placement, storage, shipping, processing returns and customer service issues.

Key Differences Between Amazon FBA and FBM

Evaluating Amazon FBA vs. FBM requires thinking across a range of business factors, some of which will be more important than others depending on the size of your company, typical order volumes and your strategic goals.

Startup Costs and Fees

Be prepared for a wide range of fees when you get started with Amazon FBA. These not only include per-unit fees but monthly charges for storing inventory, return fees for some product categories, package prep fees and more. In contrast, Amazon FBM only involves paying an annual subscription fee.

On the flip side, fulfilling your own orders means you’ll have to have your own warehouse (or work with a partner with more cost-effective services than Amazon’s) and other in-house resources for picking, packing and shipping your products.

Control Over Shipping and Customer Interaction

Amazon FBA is akin to many traditional outsourcing services, which free up the companies that use them to concentrate on areas like developing better products, marketing and nurturing customer relationships.

In some cases, though, staying close to customer needs and expectations can become harder when you fulfill orders through intermediaries, which is where Amazon FBM might be the better approach. Amazon FBM also means you’re not affected by sudden changes in fulfillment policies and support options that Amazon makes occasionally.

Inventory Management and Logistics

Unless you already have a background or experience in order fulfillment, option for Amazon FBM will require extensive learning and development across your company. This isn’t as big of an issue for companies when they first launch, but the complexity can increase as your volume of orders goes up. Of course, handing off everything through Amazon FBA means you’ll never master these areas, either.

Scalability and Growth Potential

Most brands want to continually add more customers, increase revenue and expand into international markets. Taking the Amazon FBA approach allows you to scale and grow without worrying about the impact on order fulfillment. If you decide to go the Amazon FBM route instead, you’ll just have to develop a business plan that takes into account the potential need for more warehouses, staff and other resources.

Pros and Cons of Amazon FBA

There’s a lot to be said for using Amazon FBA, but also a few tradeoffs:

Pro: Stress-free shipping

The process of picking, packing and transporting products from a warehouse to a customer’s doorstep can be highly complex, time-consuming and expense. Amazon FBA provides an option to completely outsource this area so brands can focus their attention entirely on marketing, selling and developing their products.

Con: Higher expenses

Selling your own products can require significant capital expense. Using Amazon FBA means you’ll be responsible for a range of storage and fulfillment fees, as well as the costs of sitting on inventory if sales don’t reach expected levels.

Pro: Prime shipping

There’s a reason Amazon has managed to develop one of the most popular loyalty programs of all time. Free shipping for Prime members can make all the difference with customers who aren’t sure whether to go through with a purchase. Using Amazon FBA means your products can offer Prime shipping too, offering an immediate competitive advantage over brands that aren’t.

Con: Policy compliance

Selling with Amazon FBA means agreeing you’ll adhere to all its guidelines. These include the way products are added to its database, packaging and other specifications. It can take time to learn Amazon FBA policies and ensure you’re maintaining compliance on an ongoing basis.

Pro: Post-purchase journey management

Customers will remember (and reward) brands that help them with customer service issues and process returns without a hassle. Brands that use Amazon FBA effectively outsource their customer service operation, and the company has a proven track record in bringing efficiency to product returns.

Con: Inventory fluctuations

The flip side of Amazon’s best-in-class returns process is that customers may send more of your products back than expected, in some cases buying multiple versions or styles to try them first. Having Amazon serve as a fulfillment partner can also make it difficult to maintain full visibility into what you have in stock.

Pros and Cons of Amazon FBM

Similarly, companies thinking about Amazon FBM should weigh the following risks and rewards:

Pro: Increased profit

If you’re a brand selling high-value products (like luxury fashion and accessories) with relatively low order volumes, using Amazon FBM could potentially mean a wider profit margin than outsourcing your fulfillment processes.

Con: Greater resource investment

Even a profitable company will have to ensure they offset the absence of Amazon resources to help manage order fulfillment, returns and related tasks. The amount of warehouse space you’ll need to store products can also vary widely during periods like the holiday season, which makes planning how much time, effort and equipment you’ll be investing in these areas even more difficult.

Pro: Flexibility for personalized experiences

When you choose Amazon FBM you retain full control over how your products are packaged, which could allow you to personalize orders for your most valuable customers. You’ll also be able to make judgment calls on whether to waive fees or other policies when a loyal customer needs to process a return.

Con: The lack of Prime status

In most cases products fulfilled via Amazon FBM are not eligible for Prime. This cuts your brand out from a large number of established Amazon customers who regularly make purchases in order to justify their monthly membership fees.

Pro: More opportunities to gather and analyze data

Managing fulfillment on your own could help deepen insights in customer shopping patterns, distribution channel preferences and more. This opens the door to creating customer segments and a more tailored approach to marketing and selling your products.

Con: Greater risk of negative outcomes

If orders arrive slowly, late or the wrong product is delivered, you’ll only have your own fulfillment operation to blame. However those mistakes can add up, having an adverse affect on areas such as customer retention and customer lifetime value.

How the Amazon FBA vs. FBM Decision Can Affect Your Multichannel eCommerce

Many brands are not only selling their products on their own websites and online marketplaces like Amazon but via additional eCommerce channels. These channels can be highly proprietary and a lack of integration can cause problems in taking and fulfilling orders. If your company has reached this level of complexity, Amazon FBA might be the desired option due to factors such as:

Managing Inventory Across Multiple Channels

Amazon FBA includes Multi Channel Fulfillment (MCF) services, whereby sellers can use API plug-ins to connect popular eCommerce channels such as WooCommerce and Magento. Amazon also offers multi-channel listing software so you can making listings from a single location.

If you go with Amazon FBM, you’ll have to address this on your own or with a trusted third party with experience in multichannel eCommerce integration and product listing.

Ensuring Fast Shipping and Quality Control

Regardless of the Amazon FBA vs. FBM question, all customers will want the same thing: to have the right product arrive in a timely manner without any damage or other quality control issues.

Beyond speed of order fulfillment, some of the most common quality control problems stem from a lack of poor inventory management. Here’s how to address them:

• Stockouts: Inadequate inventory management can sometimes lead to frequent stockouts, where your products become unavailable for purchase. This results in missed sales opportunities, dissatisfied customers, and potential damage to your seller’s reputation.> Amazon’s re-stock guide helps to keep your stock up-to-date.

• Overstocking: Poor inventory management may lead to overstocking, where you hold excessive inventory that ties up capital and storage space. Overstocking can increase storage fees, inventory obsolescence, and reduce profitability.>The Manage Excess Inventory page in your Seller Central FBA account helps you maintain the right inventory levels.

• Inaccurate Order Fulfillment: Fulfilling customer orders is only possible with accurate inventory management. You could mistakenly accept orders for products that are no longer in stock, leading to cancellations, negative reviews, and customer dissatisfaction.>Amazon’s Inventory Management Dashboard is an excellent way to track your orders and inventory.

• Inefficient Replenishment: The inability to accurately forecast customer demand and manage inventory numbers can result in inadequate replenishment. Sellers may experience delays in restocking.>Use a tool like Amazon’s re-stock guide to avoid these holdups.

How Suvae.org Can Help You to Simplify Product Inventory Management

The good news is that the right technology solutions can streamline and automate many core eCommerce processes, no matter how your Amazon FBA vs. Amazon FBM comparison turns out. When brands work with Suvae.org, for instance, they gain access to capabilities such as:

Multichannel optimization solutions to ensure seamless order fulfillment

Suvae.org turns product data optimization and product feed development into a managed service. This means you can connect with popular eCommerce channels with ease and have full confidence in how orders are collected and processed for fulfillment.

Inventory management solutions for Amazon FBA sellers

The most successful eCommerce companies have a clear line of sight into what’s in stock and what’s not. Suvae.org’s platform acts like a hub between your products and key selling channels, allowing you to synchronize data between your product catalog and Amazon’s warehouses.

Integration with popular marketplaces like Amazon

Getting set up to sell on Amazon can take a lot of manual work, which increases the risk of errors. Suvae.org’s marketplace integration services handle everything from product listings to category mappings. In fact, Amazon is just one of more than 50 marketplaces where Suvae.org can help brands extend their reach.

Contact us today to schedule a demo and discover how Highstree.io can help you automate and centralize your marketplace workflow.

The post Amazon FBA vs FBM: How Brands Should Decide appeared first on Suvae.org.

Consumers who go looking for luxury fashion in person can appreciate a well-designed space devoted exclusively to a single brand.

They might admire the tasteful décor that sets off the clothes to even greater effect.

An in-person luxury shopping experience also tends to be highly curated – in other words, retailers might only need to showcase their finest goods in order to appeal to discerning customers.

Why you should sell through a luxury fashion marketplace

The potential to grow revenues through digital channels requires luxury brands to rethink all of these principals and focus on an entirely different kind of experience.

The key priorities for eCommerce shoppers, including those focused on luxury fashion – are speed, convenience and accurate information.

Consumers expect to find the luxury brands they want instantly. They want as many options as possible in order to make the best choice. And when they’re considering a particular item, they need to feel confident that all the details – especially availability – is up to date.

This helps explain why elite brands are increasingly expanding their digital presence beyond their own web sites and featuring their products through luxury fashion marketplaces.

Far from losing any perception of prestige, adding products to a luxury fashion marketplace shows a brand recognizes that true luxury in eCommerce is all about making it easy to get what you want.

That said, luxury brands should still put the same care and attention into their presence within online marketplaces as they do setting up a physical location.

With the right approach to optimization, your brand will be:

• Discovered by more consumers
• Driving more conversions and revenue
• Encourage repeat visits and positive word of mouth

Optimizing eCommerce for a luxury fashion marketplace

The Internet is already a busy place, where it can be difficult for particular brands to stand out. A lot of the business you drive through your own website will depend on traffic you get through search engine optimization (SEO) and paid marketing tactics.

Joining a luxury fashion marketplace brings you into a more focused environment where consumers are looking for a wide range of brands to explore. However this also means you’ll want to differentiate yourself from other retailers selling within the same space.

How luxury brands can stand out in an online marketplace

If you operate physical stores, you probably thought carefully about how they were built and ensured they were easy to stroll through without getting lost. The same principle applies online.

Introduce yourself (and reinforce your brand identity)

Your logo is only one element that tells consumers who you are and why you represent a brand worth exploring.

Remember that some of those browsing a luxury marketplace may not be familiar with you at all. Make the best possible impression by including information such as a condensed version of your mission and any relevant details about your history and reputation.

Others may come on a luxury fashion marketplace hoping to find your brand included, and these details will reassure them the experience you’re offering will be consistent with what they’ve seen elsewhere.

Let each product description tell a compelling story

Offering basic details such as sizes, colors and pricing are just a starting point when you’re positioning your products through a luxury clothing marketplace.

Converting browsers into buyers is all about making them understand your brand’s unique approach to developing quality apparel and accessories. This can include the materials you use, the craftsmanship you apply and more.

The copywriting you do here can make the difference between attracting a customer who stays with you for life and one who chooses to browse another brand instead.

Ensure every image offers maximum appeal

You don’t always need ideal lighting when you’re selling products in a physical store because shoppers can touch and feel them directly. In a luxury clothing marketplace, pictures represent the most powerful way for you to convey the beauty and style of every item.

Choose images that not only provide a clear view of what you’re selling but create a sense of aspiration. This can mean showing products from different angles and incorporating lifestyle elements, such as a model wearing a product in an attractive everyday setting.

Use data analytics to inform the most meaningful changes

Retailers always keep a close eye on the number of products they sell, but being on a luxury marketplace can offer other data points that can help you continuously improve how you showcase your products.

Look for ways to measure the time spent on each product, shopping cart abandonment rates and anything specific provided by a marketplace operator to fine-tune your approach. The more data-driven you can be as a retailer, the more likely you’ll be able to reach or even exceed your eCommerce goals.

The best luxury fashion marketplace options for premium brands

Your sales strategy for luxury marketplaces can begin by identifying which platforms align best with your ideal customer profile and brand. In doing so you’ll also want to take into account the level of active users each platform offers, seller requirements and the options for handling shipping and returns.

Some brands start by integrating with a single luxury marketplace and taking a “test and learn” approach before adding others. Once you’ve learned what’s involved in getting set up – and when you have partners with the technologies to help automate the process – it can be easier to expand into other luxury clothing marketplaces over time.

Some of the most common platforms where other luxury brands are actively selling right now include:

Zalando

It’s already one of Europe’s most popular online destinations for luxury fashion, but Zalando is continuing to make changes that could strengthen its market position even further.

In early 2024, for example, Zalando announced it is working to enrich some of its existing categories, including Sports and Kids & Family through technologies that will personalize the inspiration it provides. Tools like Zalando Assistant, meanwhile, is allowing commerce to become more conversational – almost akin to the expert help luxury brands have traditionally provided in-store through expert associates.

Zalando has also said it is opening up its logistics infrastructure, software and service capabilities to help retailers sell more effectively to customers.

Asos

Luxury clothing isn’t limited to new merchandise. Many shoppers go online looking for vintage collections and the latest collections at the same time. Asos has a marketplace that has been successful in both kinds of clothing.

Brand awareness for the Asos marketplace is 65% in the U.K. alone, and 80% of its customers tend to be loyal to the brand. That could mean a lot of return visits for luxury brands who feature products on the Asos marketplace.

In the meantime, Asos in early 2024 appointed a new CFO whose eCommerce experience includes a stint at Amazon, suggesting Asos will become even more competitive in the fashion sector.

Farfetch

From the moment it launched in 2007, Farfetch has been focused on acting as a trusted partner to brands that want to be included on the top global luxury fashion marketplace.

This means Farfetch doesn’t carry any inventory of its own but provides third-party services to help other luxury brands find sales success.

In early 2024, Farfetch was acquired by South Korean eCommerce giant Coupang, which said it would invest in helping the marketplace to further improve the customer experience for luxury shoppers around the world.

Bet on the most sought-after luxury brands and increase sales

The best sales strategy for luxury marketplaces always takes into account what other premium brands are doing online. Even as you begin uploading your products to the kinds of platforms we’ve just described, you should continue to monitor and assess competitors whose activities could provide insight on eCommerce best practices as they emerge.

Some of the parameters to keep in mind here:

The most searched luxury brands online

Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Dior are the “big three” in terms of what consumers are keying into Google, according to recent data. Pay attention to the keywords these brands are using to rank in search results, and how you might weave them into your own copy.

The most profitable luxury brands online

LVMH scores the top spot in this category as well, followed by luxury brands such as Dior, Hermes and EssilorLuxottica, among others. While profitability is driven from many different facets, these brands represent the ideal in how they balance supply and demand as they serve style-conscious consumers

The most in-demand luxury fashion brands online

It may be a subjective area, but shopping app Lyst’s most recent quarterly index said Prada is the hottest luxury brand, followed by Miu Miu, Loewe and Bottega Veneta. Use this kind of ranking to consider the most creative approaches luxury brands can take in how they market themselves online as you prepare your product listings and images to upload onto online marketplaces.

The most important luxury fashion marketplace best practice of all

Luxury brands have to be good at many different things at once: designing products, creating compelling marketing content and providing outstanding customer service.

That means they shouldn’t be bogged down with the technical aspects of getting their products on a luxury clothing marketplace. Automating this process through a product feed management solution is the smartest move you can make as you prepare to boost your long-term eCommerce sales. Connect with us to find out how we can assist with integration across more than 50 of the top marketplaces in the world.

The post Secrets of selling on a Luxury Fashion Marketplace appeared first on Suvae.org.

Why inventory data is critical to online marketplace success

Ensuring a great customer experience across multiple channels relies on sending the correct stock data to each marketplace, enabling consumers to see what’s available for purchase. Accurate pricing and inventory information are just as crucial as presenting product features and an appealing image.

This is why many brands seek out marketplace integration services in the first place, though their needs could evolve significantly as they continue to expand.

Initially, a brand might update product feeds from a central warehouse hourly during the day and every few hours at night, depending on its location. Concurrently, historical sales data could determine the percentage of stock to distribute to each marketplace.

In practice, sales can unexpectedly fluctuate based on shifts in demand from one online marketplace to another. The existing cadence of product feed updates may not keep pace with purchases, increasing order cancellations. This not only impacts customer experience but also jeopardizes relationships with online marketplaces that base seller agreements on minimizing cancellation rates.

Innovation that addresses active inventory management

Suvae.org recently developed a real-time system to address these challenges. It allows brands to dynamically manage active inventory across multiple marketplaces at once. This involved changing the architecture of our existing solutions to adjust the way data is handled once a product had been ordered, but not yet fulfilled.

The functionality Suvae.org built introduces a series of dedicated “buckets” that manage inventory data in both physical and virtual warehouses, as well as a component that can calculate how inventory should be distributed based upon pre-defined business rules. Incremental orders could be “reserved” as they are created, for example, but the system also tracks when they were canceled or when the system needs to be reset.

Brands also need to store inventory values once orders have been distributed, of course, and Suvae.org’s active inventory solution added that too. It also includes a module to configure the flow of inventory data across channels and a way to visualize a brand’s inventory by marketplace and SKU, as well as the history of all updates from a brand’s product feeds.

The benefits of enhancing your ability to manage active inventory

1. Reduce your cancellation rate

Suvae.org’s active inventory solution will provide brands greater confidence that their customers will be able to find the products they want, regardless of the online marketplaces where they choose to shop. This also helps build a track record for increased accuracy, which allows brands to meet the key performance indicators of their marketplace partners.

2. Complete automation of a complex process

By calculating the precise stock value that gets sent to each marketplace, Suvae.org’s active inventory solution will also save brands from having to conduct a manual, historical analysis of which orders were canceled or the rate of cancellation.

3. Gain insight into sales performance across multiple online marketplaces

While the technology handles the heavy lifting, brands need to maintain clear visibility into the health of their business at all times. That’s why Suvae.org’s active inventory solution also provides reporting on the state of its inventory, orders, and SKUs. These reports are emailed to simplify distribution to all relevant stakeholders, empowering them to make informed decisions about the evolution of their sales and marketing strategy.

4. Ease of expansion to into additional online marketplaces

With more third parties opening up platforms for sellers, it will not be unusual for brands to make their products available across a wide range of partners. They will now be in a better position to do so, knowing thanks to the ability to dynamically synchronize pricing and inventory data across all shopping channels.

Ready to get your active inventory under control? Building your brand using online marketplaces shouldn’t be limited by concerns around what’s in stock and what’s not.
Connect with Suvae.org to learn more about the solution we’ve developed to bring greater peace of mind, and the ability to continue on your path to growth.

The post Managing Active Inventory for multiple online marketplaces appeared first on Suvae.org.

As omnichannel marketing and selling become more sophisticated, however, many of us will soon be keeping our eyes open for brands that offer another option: visual search.

What is Visual Search?

Rather than typing in text to a search engine or using a voice assistant to make a query, visual search involves uploading or somehow adding an image to browse for answers online.

The formats for visual searches could include a photo that shoppers have taken while browsing the aisles or racks of a physical store or a screenshot they’ve taken from a website, among others. Once they’ve done so, the experience is much like that of a traditional Google search, where they see similar items to whatever appears in the image and links back to the source of the content.

Launching a visual search eCommerce strategy

Though your use of visual search will depend in part on the products you’re selling and the needs of your customer base, the following steps are a great way to get started:

1. Identify visual search examples that align with your brand

Though it may be less familiar than other forms of browsing the Web, several visual search tools are already widely available to consumers. Google Lens, for instance, uses artificial intelligence such as machine learning to identify objects, translate text, and look for information by pointing your smartphone camera at an object like a dress or piece of furniture.

Depending on the image it’s scanning, Google Lens can take shoppers directly to a brand’s eCommerce website or a third-party online marketplace that contains inventory matching what’s being shown.

Microsoft has also moved into the visual search arena by adding features to Bing Chat. This means that when customers land on a site that uses it, a Bing visual search feature will allow people to upload images as part of the “dialogue” they have with the chatbot to streamline the process of getting the response they want.

There is a Pinterest visual search option as well. Pinterest Lens works by simply tapping the camera icon on its app, pinching or zooming in to an object, pressing a button, and then exploring anything similar that’s been published on other boards.

Even Apple has made sure to incorporate visual search tools into its Vision Pro headset, which complements similar capabilities on the iPhone and iPad.

2. Make a business case for visual search tools based on human behavior

The connection between online search and visual data is nothing new. Consider the fact that since launching more than 20 years ago, Google Images now accounts for 10% of the company’s daily search traffic.

Research has found that visual information makes up 90% of what’s transmitted in the brain, perhaps because 40% of nerve fibers are linked to our eyes’ retinas. That could explain why we can get a sense of what’s going on in an image in less than 1/10 of a second.

You only have to scroll through TikTok or Instagram to see how emphasizing visuals has transformed social media, which are among the top channels for trying to reach younger demographics. No wonder eMarketer published data in 2022 showing that 30% of U.S. adults aged 34 and younger have used visual search for shopping, and 12% were already using it regularly.

3. Study the brands that are already using visual search

If you’re still not sure that providing customers with visual search tools is a priority, just look at some of the leading brands that have already moved forward.

IKEA, for instance, has integrated visual search into its app, enhancing the augmented reality experience that allows consumers to create interior designs from wherever they are. Glasses USA has done something similar with a tool called “Pic and Pair” to help consumers find the best designer frames for their faces.

Nordstrom, meanwhile, has been offering visual search eCommerce for several years, and Wayfair makes it easy to use images as part of its search experience as well.

4. Check which online marketplaces are offering visual search eCommerce

Shoppers are not only depending on using images when they land on a brand’s eCommerce site but when they’re looking to promote products on third-party online marketplaces as well.

Asos, for instance, has made it easy for online shoppers to upload an image of a piece of clothing they like to its marketplace app and serve up recommended items directly from its product catalog. Amazon is also at the forefront with its Shop The Look software to shop for clothes and accessories.

5. Craft compelling images to make the most of visual search tools

Once you’ve understood the technology and recognized where your products can be found using visual search, you’ll need to ensure you have the right content to make the most of it. The art of developing product visuals that will work well with emerging search technologies isn’t rocket science. It follows many of the same best practices that brands may already have adopted when they learned about image optimization as part of creating Google Shopping Ads.

To drive more conversions, for example, you’ll want to stick with clutter-free images in common formats like JPEG or TIFF. You should also pay attention to the structure of URLs, and sizing and ensure you’re showing products in use.

Building an effective and successfull Social Commerce Strategy

Using visuals to drive sales is all part of turning your social channels into a shoppable storefront. This can be a powerful strategy whether your brand is promoting products on Snapchat or similar platforms. The important thing is to ensure you have a technology partner who can help customize your product feed data to each channel, manage your catalogs and inventory data, and monitor product performance.

This is where Suvae.org can help – social commerce is just part of the solutions we offer to some of the world’s most successful fashion and luxury brands. Another example of meeting customers where they are is being present on the most relevant online marketplaces. That’s why it’s critical to have partner experiences in integrating products across multiple marketplaces while ensuring accurate and up-to-date inventory.

Connect with our team to learn how we can help you see the big picture around visual search commerce to grow your business.

The post Using Visual Search show your brand at its best to shoppers appeared first on Suvae.org.

According to data collected by eMarketer, for example, USA marketplaces will grow by more than 10% in 2023 to nearly $385 billion. This represents more than a third of total retail eCommerce sales. That trend is expected to continue over the next five years when the rate of U.S. marketplace growth will surpass 12%.

Expanding sales into online marketplaces in the USA can help you reach a broader audience, increase product visibility, and significantly improve your sales.

While many brands are already familiar with the biggest USA marketplace players, it pays to do your research. Depending on how you set up your products and promote them, there’s a whole world of untapped potential to reach consumers who might never have discovered your brand otherwise.

Online Marketplaces in the USA: The Top Choices

The growth of online marketplaces in the USA continues unabated, accompanied by increasing competition. The oversaturation of retailers within these marketplaces presents formidable barriers to overcome.
That’s why many retailers and distributors have taken matters into their own hands by establishing their own USA marketplaces. This initiative has enabled them to reduce shipping costs, streamline product assortment processes, and strengthen supplier relationships.

One major benefit of this strategy is the consolidation of multiple product options, providing customers with a single eCommerce destination and a simpler, unified shopping experience.
Let’s delve into some of the top online marketplace options in the US where you can start selling your products, and explore how a marketplace integrator can streamline the integration process.

Amazon

Amazon Marketplace U.S. is not only the most recognized U.S. marketplace but boasts some of the industry’s biggest numbers. These include 310 million active users (80% of whom are based in the U.S.), an estimated two billion web visitors a month, and more than 600 million products.

On the flip side, there are also more than two million sellers already using Amazon as an eCommerce channel, and about 1.1 million of them are specifically using the company’s online marketplace in the USA.

Selling on Amazon generally happens in several ways. Traditionally, sellers could opt for the Vendor Central or wholesale approach, where products are sold in bulk to Amazon. While this is a straightforward way to get your products listed, it means you’re losing any control over the final price of customer lists.

• Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM) means you’ll handle logistics and delivery yourself. You’ll either need to have strong in-house logistics capabilities or another partner that can meet the requirements of Amazon’s service levels. These include selling products on time, an order cancellation rate of less than .5%, and adherence to Amazon’s return policy. FBM means fewer Amazon fees and more control over your inventory, but also greater responsibility and focus on getting products to customers rather than marketing and selling to them.
• Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA), on the other hand, means the company will not only list your products in its USA marketplace but handle storing, picking, packing, and shipping your products. Choosing FBA means you benefit from Amazon Prime shipping rates, can have products featured on the Buy Box where customers see “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” and Amazon’s customer service capabilities. The downside? There are fees associated with this, of course, so calculate your return on investment (ROI) for both options before deciding.

Amazon sells many of the products in its marketplace itself, of course, which means you have to approach it strategically.

Some best practices include: 

• Enroll in the Amazon brand registry, which offers tools to protect your intellectual property and improve your customer experience
• Once you’ve enrolled in the registry, explore tools such as Amazon A+ Content (previously known as Enhanced Brand Content or EBC), which allows you to include additional product information and images to your listing and make them more compelling for eCommerce shoppers

• Monitor Amazon best sellers to see which products might be trending and whether or not that will affect your eCommerce strategy

eBay

With 133 million active users, eBay is another of the online marketplace USA giants. It’s also a good example of how online shopping behavior is shifting from desktops to smartphones. In fact, 58% of sales on eBay’s U.S. marketplace happen on mobile devices. The company also boasts 18 million sellers, which range from everyday consumers getting rid of junk in their attics to sizable retail brands.

Selling on eBay’s U.S. marketplace means bearing in mind the various fees that are associated with the process. This includes insertion fees for listing products, “final value” fees once a product sells, and optional fees to upgrade listings such as bold fonts, subtitles, and a minimum/reserve price.

To sell on eBay, you’ll have to adopt its proprietary managed payments system, where revenue payouts can be scheduled or made on demand.

Like all major USA marketplaces, eBay continually tries to improve the seller experience. Some of the most recent updates include tools to resolve payment disputes and block inappropriate messages, for example, as well as dynamic ad rates for promoted listings and ad rate forecasts.

Integrating with eBay’s USA online marketplace can work as follows:

• Have your developers choose eBay’s Inventory API or Trading API to create or revise a product listing and match your product to those in the eBay catalog
• Include whatever product details are necessary based on the eBay product category. Common attributes of all categories include Titles, Identifiers, Descriptions, Product Aspects, and Stock Photos.
• Use a search call within the Catalog API to find products that match those within your online inventory.

Walmart Marketplace

It may be best known for its vast physical store locations, but Walmart’s online capabilities have made it a huge eCommerce destination as well. In its most recent seller playbook, Walmart said sellers on its online USA marketplace have seen gross merchandise value (GSV) skyrocket by an average of 50%. This could be because 85% of Walmart customers make at least one online purchase a month, according to the company.

Walmart tries to help brands on its online USA marketplace stand out through Sponsored Search Ads, and like Amazon, it offers fulfillment services to handle many of the common post-purchase chores.

Since it works on a commission basis, Walmart Marketplace doesn’t charge initial setup or monthly/annual fees. It also offers what it describes as lucrative referral fees. The bar for getting on board as a seller is higher, however. Its criteria include a demonstrated “history of the marketplace of eCommerce success,” a catalog that complies with its prohibited products policy, and proof you’re working with a B2C warehouse if you don’t use Walmart’s fulfillment services.

Integrating with Walmart Marketplace can take a few forms:

• Use a third-party online marketplace USA solution provider, a selection of which Walmart has curated on its marketplace site
• Manually search for Walmart’s Item Management APIs and have your internal developers test with the provided XML Schema Definition in Walmart’s API sandbox
  .
• Set up a profile on Walmart’s online Seller Center and try using Setup By Match, Single Item, or Bulk Upload Setup

Target Plus™

Target Plus™ operates as an invite-only marketplace, making it an exclusive space for carefully vetted brands and retailers. By being part of it, you have access to a wide audience of online shoppers without having to worry about the burdensome competition that a brand would experience with other marketplaces like Amazon. As of 2023, Target’s U.S. marketplace has only about 650 sellers, which may make it less competitive than other platforms. Target also enjoys 200 million visits a month on its site, which represents a sizable customer base.

This is an invite-only platform, which means you have the added benefit of SKU exclusivity, allowing a more strategic product assortment for the most value.

Integration with Target Plus™ platform:

• Use FTP or API to upload your products.
  A third-party integrator can manage product and inventory updates, as well as Target Plus™ product orders, to seamlessly and effortlessly connect you with its default marketplace side integrator.

What you’ll get?

• Reduced backorders and oversold items
  Some third-party integrators have marketplace inventory rules that can help reduce backorders and overselling issues.

• Improved reach with a credible brand
  Additional capabilities improve customers’ ability to find your products, and increase overall exposure and reach while reaping the benefit of being backed by a credible and established American brand name and identity.

Belk

Belk is an established, popular chain of department stores throughout the US that offers apparel, cosmetics, and home goods, and garners over $4 billion in annual revenue. As of 2023 it also sits at No. 7 for eCommerce an online marketplace USA ranking, with 15.2 million estimated monthly visits. With these figures, it’s easy to understand how beneficial it can be to integrate with this marketplace.

Integration with Belk:

• Product listings
  When integrating with Belk, you are required to submit your products in the form of an Excel file. Alternatively, you can use a third-party integrator to list your products, in the format of your preference. Their platform will generate the required Excel file and submit it on your behalf, saving you plenty of time in the process.

• Order shipment requirements
  Belk is known to have strict order shipment requirements; If a shipment is not made on time, you will be penalized. When you submit order shipment data to a third-party integration platform, and if you have multiple marketplace integrations, the shipment data can easily be scaled – providing a uniform and consistent shipment language across multiple marketplaces at once.

• Order side synchronization
  Thanks to its versatile transformations, some integration solutions can make order-side synchronization highly effective and simple, being able to use multiple file formats, including XML through shared folders. With this feature, you don’t need to worry about exporting certain file types or working with unfamiliar formats, as the platform handles it all ensuring consistency throughout all communications.

• Frequent product updates
  Product data updates will take place as frequently as once a day, while inventory can be updated hourly, meaning you can rest assured knowing that your product listings are always up-to-date.

Macy’s & Bloomingdales

Macy’s and Bloomingdales both have strong brand recognition and both focus on fashion apparel. These luxury department stores recognize the creativity in retailing and use their creativity to strengthen vendor relationships. Partnering with Macy’s and Bloomingdales means diversifying your customer base to include a loyal, prestigious clientele.

Retailers who offer luxury merchandise at competitive prices can greatly benefit from the integration with Macy’s and Bloomingdales.

A leading integration solution can help with the whole process. Here’s how:

• Side integration
  Macy’s and Bloomingdales use the same marketplace-side integration solution as Belk, which seamlessly integrates with multiple order management systems. Integration platforms can facilitate the entire data feed submission process, inventory update process, and every other aspect of the integration process on the back end by using any file format, including XML. This means more time saved on an otherwise manual process and the reassurance of having accurate product data
• Frequent updates
  Using standard data feeds, product data and inventory updates are done frequently and completely handled on the back-end, without the need to get you involved. Product listings are always up-to-date so that your customers are faced with the correct information during their shopping experience.

Sell More Products with Marketplace Integration

Leveraging the marketplace model has normally meant having to handle two different levels of integration: product catalog integration to cover your uploads and inventory management data, and order management integration to connect fulfillment and returns-related data.

A Marketplace Integration Service can help you ensure your product catalogs are being uploaded properly while saving time and effort.

Benefits of Marketplace Integration with Suvae.org

As a single unified platform, Suvae.org enables you to centralize your marketplace integrations, eliminating the need to create multiple, separate workflows for each marketplace.

The platform only requires a single workflow that scales up to various marketplaces and handles every aspect of the integration process.
In practice, this provides brands with significant competitive advantages, such as:

• Smooth Drop shipping Data Integration
  Easily synchronize your marketplace orders from different marketplaces through dropshipping data integration. With Suvae.org,  your marketplace orders are connected with all of your marketplace’s backend order systems.
• Simplify order management
  Streamline your order details and real-time analytics of order statuses with our robust order management platform. You can view all of your marketplace orders in a centralized dashboard as well as a more detailed view of specific orders from each marketplace.
• Reduce listing errors
  Get full insight to catch listing issues before they impact your sales.

Through detailed product views, the Suvae.org platform helps you verify a product’s synchronization status with a given marketplace.
It also allows you to :

• Speed up the product listing process
  Simplify how products are listed on multiple marketplaces, markets, and brands. To accelerate the product listing process, our dedicated onboarding team uses unique integration techniques with APIs or feeds.
• Reduce overselling and backorders
  Backorder and overselling issues are addressed through the platform’s inventory redistribution.
• Easily handle Promo events and sale pricing
  All promotion and sale pricing are easily set up, managed, and tailored to meet your requirements thanks to the dashboard flexibility.

The right online marketplace USA strategy should allow you to grow revenue faster by targeting a larger base of customers through an established program run by a retail brand that many people already recognize. You’re also giving customers greater choice on where to shop, and simplify their purchasing by offering your products alongside others they’re ready to buy.

Contact our Marketplace Integration Experts for more information.

The post Online marketplaces USA: Expand Your eCommerce Sales appeared first on Suvae.org.

Quick Links:

• Understand the Amazon Marketplace for Sellers
• Monitor Competitor Prices on Amazon
• Win Amazon’s Buy Box
• Test and Tweak Your Amazon Pricing Strategy
• Consider the Impact of Your Amazon Promotions and Discounts
• How an Experienced Amazon Marketplace Integrator Can Help

Understanding the Amazon Marketplace

As an Amazon seller, understanding how to choose the right price for your products is essential for your success. It can be a challenge to determine the best pricing strategy for your products, especially for resellers competing with other companies that may be selling the exact same product.

The following tips will help you better understand pricing on the Amazon marketplace better.

• Research Other Amazon Sellers’ Pricing: To choose the right price for your product on Amazon, research your competitor’s offering related products. You can use Amazon’s search function to find products like yours and compare their prices. Look for products with equivalent features, quality, and customer reviews. By comparing your product to other products, you can establish a competitive price range to stick with.

• Determine Your Target Audience: To decide the right price for your product on Amazon, you need to know who your target audience is. Amazon has a vast customer base, and learning who your product appeals to and how much they are willing to pay for it can help you understand the threshold of how high or low you should set your pricing. You can use Amazon’s customer demographics data to discover who your target audience is and their purchasing habits. This will help you choose a price that is appealing to your target market while also providing you with a reasonable profit margin.

• Consider Your Cost of Production: Sellers that manufacture their products need to factor in the cost of production to develop a profitable product price on Amazon, This includes the cost of materials, manufacturing, shipping, and any expenses related to producing your product. Set a price that covers your costs and provides a reasonable profit margin. It would help if you also consider your overhead costs, such as manufacturing, operations, and marketing, which will affect your pricing strategy.

• Choose a Fair Price for Your Product on the Amazon Marketplace: Once you have researched your competitor’s pricing, considered your cost of production, and determined your target audience, it’s time to set a fair price for your product on Amazon.

Aim for a price that is competitive with other sellers, covers your cost of production, and provides a reasonable profit margin. Pricing too high or too low can impact your sales and revenue, so it’s important to find the right balance.

Monitoring your competitor’s prices on Amazon

By monitoring your competitor’s product prices, you can adjust your pricing strategy according to how sellers are pricing their products. If your prices are too high, customers will choose to buy from cheaper options. If your prices are too low, you may not make a profit. By keeping track of your competitors’ prices, you can make an informed decision on how high or low you’re willing to go. Here are some tips on how to monitor your competitors’ prices effectively.

Manually keep an eye on your competitors’ prices

To monitor your competitors’ prices, one option is to manually monitor their pricing strategies by searching for similar products on Amazon. Keep track of any changes in their pricing and adjust your pricing strategy accordingly. By staying up to date with your competitors’ pricing, you can make informed decisions about your own pricing strategy and stay competitive in the marketplace.

Use automated tools to monitor competitor prices and adjust yours accordingly

There are many tools available to help you monitor your competitors’ prices and adjust your prices. Some third-party tools, such as Jungle Scout, Helium 10, and Perpetua, offer pricing automation features to help you stay ahead of the competition.

When using these tools, it’s worth considering:

1. Cost of your production
2. Overhead expenses
3. Desired profit margin

You can use these tools to monitor your competitors’ prices and update your prices accordingly.

Another option is to use Amazon’s Repricing Tool which allows you to automatically adjust your prices based on your competitors’ prices.

How Amazon’s Repricing Tool Works:

• Develop Your Pricing Strategy: First, create your pricing strategy by defining the minimum and maximum prices for your products. You can also set rules for the repricing algorithm to follow, such as a minimum profit margin or a maximum price decrease

• Monitor Competitor Prices: Amazon Repricer then monitors the prices of your competitors’ products in real-time. It analyzes the prices and data points, such as product reviews, ratings, and sales volume, to determine the optimal price for your products

• Reprice Your Products: Based on your pricing strategy and the data analysis, Amazon Repricer automatically adjusts the prices of your products. It can increase or decrease the prices within the price range and according to your rules

• Monitor Your Performance: The tool then monitors the seller’s performance, such as sales volume, profit margin, and Buy Box percentage. It provides reports and analytics to help you optimize your pricing strategy to stay ahead of your competition

Overall, Amazon’s tool automates your pricing strategy and takes the manual work out of adjusting prices. By using this tool wisely, you can save time to increase your sales and profits.

Win Amazon’s Buy Box

Amazon’s Buy Box is a coveted spot for sellers, as it is the default option for customers to add items to their cart.

Benefits of Winning the Buy Box:

• Increased visibility
• Higher sales
• More revenue

Pricing is a significant factor to win the Buy Box but it’s not the only thing that Amazon looks at when deciding what products to feature.

Focus on:

• Maintaining a high seller rating and positive customer feedback
• Fast and reliable shipping
• Having items in stock
• Fulfilling orders on time

Another factor influencing your chance of being featured in the Buy Box is using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). You have the advantage of guaranteeing fast and reliable shipping, and you can improve metrics like delivery time and inventory management which may lead to a better customer experience and more positive reviews.

Overall, winning Amazon’s Buy Box requires a combination of factors, and it’s wise to continually monitor and improve these to increase your chances of being featured there.

Test and tweak your Amazon Seller Pricing Strategy

As an Amazon seller, the set-and-forget pricing strategy may work for some brands and retailers but to maximize your profits your pricing will likely need to change.

Think about implementing the following activities to inform your ongoing pricing strategy.

• Conduct thorough market research to determine the average price range for other products in your category. This information can help you set a competitive price point that is attractive to customers while still providing you with a reasonable profit margin

• Experiment with different pricing strategies, such as offering discounts or bundling products. You can also try A/B testing by adjusting the price of your product for a short time and monitoring how it affects sales. This will help you determine the optimal price point for your product

• Pay close attention to customer feedback and reviews about their product’s pricing. If customers are consistently complaining about the price of your product, it may be time to adjust your pricing strategy

By constantly testing and tweaking your pricing strategy, it’s easier to stay competitive and profitable in the ever-changing world of e-commerce.

Consider the impact of Amazon Promotions and Discounts

While discounts and promotions can attract customers and increase sales, they can also reduce profit margins and devalue your brand. This is why it’s critical to analyze the impact of your promotions and discounts on both your short-term and long-term profitability.

Another factor to consider when setting up a promotion is the structure of your product feed and the timing of your promotion. If Amazon is pulling the incorrect promotion price or the price isn’t updated frequently enough to display the correct price at the right time, your profitability could be compromised.

To get a good ROI from your promotions, monitor how your discounts affect your customer’s loyalty and product demand. Understanding the impact of these strategies will allow you to make informed decisions that benefit your business in the long run.

How an experienced Amazon Marketplace Integrator can help

The countless hours on product data optimizations and manual price updates retailers spend can sometimes equate to a full-time job, especially when you factor in your technical team’s time to do your initial integration. By outsourcing your Amazon integration and feed management to an experienced provider, you can significantly reduce the time and effort required to manage your listings effectively.

Here are some key benefits to expect when working with a Marketplace Integration Solution provider:

• Streamlined operations: An integrator can manage your pricing updates and product data optimizations across multiple marketplaces globally, reducing your manual effort and freeing up valuable time for other business activities

• Expert support: An experienced provider can help you seamlessly connect your product data to Amazon and additional marketplaces, while also staying up-to-date with continuously changing marketplace interfaces and requirements

• Enhanced exposure: A Marketplace Integrator can help optimize your product listings and increase exposure on marketplaces. They have valuable expertise from working closely with these platforms, allowing you to improve your product listings and gain more visibility

• Scalability: After integrating with Amazon, a Marketplace Integrator can help you onboard with relevant marketplaces to expand your sales. Providers can offer insight into global and local marketplaces to help you make informed decisions to grow your product sales

Next steps

Optimizing your Amazon pricing strategy is a critical component of success on the platform. By using the right pricing tactics and tools, you can maximize your sales, increase your profit margins, and gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. It’s important to remember that pricing is not a one-time activity but an ongoing process that requires constant monitoring and adjustment. Regularly analyze your competitors’ pricing, monitor your performance metrics, and adjust your strategy accordingly. With a data-driven approach and a willingness to experiment and adapt, you can refine your pricing strategy and take your Amazon sales to the next level.

By applying these tips and insights, you can stay ahead of the competition and achieve sustainable growth in the world’s largest online marketplace.
The right marketplace integration partner like Suvae.org, can help to set you up for success and enjoy the benefits of selling on the world’s largest marketplace.

The post Your Ultimate Guide to Amazon Pricing Strategy Success appeared first on Suvae.org.

About Macy’s Marketplace

Featuring more than 20 product categories including beauty, wellness, and gifting, Macy’s launched its digital marketplace in the fall of 2022. This not only opens up access to would-be Macy’s customers who live far beyond the Big Apple. It also creates incredible opportunities for sellers that make it part of their omnichannel marketing and sales strategy.

Macy’s has said it will offer sellers tools to monitor and drive customer activity to further their growth. On the front end, the retail giant said customers should expect a seamless experience as they shop, have products shipped, or when need to process returns.

The launch of Macy’s digital marketplace was closely followed by a similar initiative from Bloomingdale’s, which debuted its own multi-brand eCommerce store shortly before the holiday season.

Why Marketplace Customer Experience Matters

Retailers like Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s are part of a larger trend that is transforming the way brands are thinking about the best ways to reach customers and expand their volume of customer relationships. Since 2020, for instance, online marketplaces have made up 53% of business-to-consumer (B2C) online sales. This has put the overall digital marketplace segment on a path to a projected $8.7 trillion in payments by 2025.

Online marketplaces are powerful tools for retailers that want to embrace curation at scale, offering existing customers a greater assortment and expanded offerings to attract new customers. These same advantages benefit the sellers who participate in online marketplaces, but only if they execute effectively as they integrate with them.

What Marketplace Integrators are, and how they can help

Integrating with digital marketplaces on your own can require significant in-house technology expertise. It also means taking your most talented technical professionals and putting them on a project that potentially takes them away from other opportunities.

Given the pace of change, meanwhile, there can be a significant effort to continue integrating with each new marketplace and understanding its particular needs.

Third-party marketplace integration services provide the expertise and experience necessary to accelerate the process of selling properties from the likes of Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s. They also have more resources to stay ahead of the technology requirements of online marketplaces as they evolve.

Macy’s Marketplace Integration made easy

At Highstreet, for example, marketplace integration services include connecting sellers to properties like Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s and capturing customer orders. Suvae.org also manages processes such as the acknowledgment that an order has shipped, as well as data around product returns.

Uploading inventory data to the marketplace is fully automated, which saves sellers time and reduces the risk of errors. Instead of disappointing customers by promoting products that are no longer in stock, sellers can avoid high cancellation rates, which on some marketplaces can lead to penalties.

A marketplace integration service like Suvae.org is also experienced in helping sellers with content mapping. This is the process of translating data about product colors, sizing, and pricing so they appear as the correct values on a marketplace such as Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s. When catalogs can contain hundreds or even thousands of products, it’s critical to map content accurately to ensure a great shopping experience on sites like Macy’s marketplace.

Final Thoughts

Marketplace integrators have proven approaches to ensure high-quality results for digital sellers. This includes testing the connection between the seller’s inventory and Suvae.org, for example, to ensure inventory is being updated at the right frequency and without mistakes on Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s, and that all orders are being properly captured. This is an important phase of the integration process that will put sellers in a better position to promote their products in these kinds of environments.

As more premium retailers like Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s develop exceptional shopping destinations online, being ready to participate in digital marketplaces will become an essential element in successful eCommerce.

Connect with us to learn more about how Suvae.org can help you master any marketplace with ease.

The post Unlock the potential of Macy’s Marketplace with Integration Services appeared first on Suvae.org.

As one of the companies of Impresoft, Kipcast has assumed in such a scenario, a fundamental role of “accompanying” company-customer towards the right plan of digital sales presence.

Impresoft, today a true reservoir of innovation, was born in 2018 and immediately set an important objective: to become the largest IT player on the market. This is a goal to be achieved also through acquisitions and integrations with other organizations, as happened with Kipcast. As a result, Impresoft has set up four competence centers to cover the various needs of customers: Business Solutions, Industry Solutions, Customer Engagement, and Corporate Resilience.

It is a change of pace in some ways majestic, which will also require a restyling of the whole brand, so that you can tell, almost holistically, what the individual legal entities do.

Kipcast Role

As anticipated, Kipcast deals with a very dynamic industry, ranging from marketing to the online presence of brands in third-party stores. The company launched the Suvae.org platform on the market in 2015, to allow the simplification and optimization of product data distribution to all corporate third-party channels: marketing, store promotions, marketplace sales

The solution, in SaaS mode and hosted on the cloud, is already adopted by over 250 brands in the fashion industry, but also targets brands from other industries.

As Federico Vittadello, VP of Business Development at Kipcast explains: «Our target audience is, in large part, that of large companies, which need to manage and distribute a wide range of data, but also to enjoy a platform that is as flexible as possible. The value which we bring to the world of customer engagement lies in the opportunity to work on software that promises a speed of execution and, as we will see, also quality». The first point deals with a non-trivial problem when the context requires quick and informed decision-making.

The market is changing

As the market is changing, it then becomes necessary to better control sales channels, also the ones different from their own, to know the competition and where the consumer aims. Suvae.org works just like that while simplifying the various steps that companies need to take to launch on the global marketplace.

The primary directives to which Kipcast points are: first of all the automation of the presence of the brand on the marketplace thereby freeing its customer from an often burdensome task both in terms of time and money. «Moreover, as subjects operating for years in the world of online commerce, we can specifically advise brands, also suggesting which architectures to choose, thus laying a solid foundation for the project. Finally, being already integrated with marketplace platforms, once the negotiation process is over, at the technological level we speed up the launch of online products, from their loading to payment, return, and refund management, including special cases».

A key advantage of Kipcast is the consulting aspect that is offered from the start of each onboarding: «Knowing downstream the needs of the marketplace, as experts in the field, we can advise what is best for each customer» the manager concludes. So fluidity but also adaptability and customization of the platform, with vertical know-how that allows a brand to approach a market that presents new everyday challenges, in a much more serene way.

What’s in the future of global marketplaces?

Kipcast sees a trend that could soon take root: the approach, at least in terms of promotion and presentation, of B2B sales channels compared to traditional B2C ones.

«The dynamics seem to replicate, with obvious differences in the quantity of the products to buy and prices, but we see a kind of alignment of the logic underlying the flow of promotions. In such a scenario, the competence of Kipcast in connecting the world of product offering with those who convey them to end customers becomes fundamental for companies which want to extend their aims beyond the traditional horizons».

Reach out to our consulting technology experts to discuss the value and the opportunities we can bring to your business.

The following post has been translated from a previous article located at DataManagerOnline

The post Kipcast: The Value of Consulting and Technology in the Global Marketplace appeared first on Suvae.org.

Extending your eCommerce capabilities through marketplace integration, on the other hand, is like attending a high society gala, where you have the chance to significantly expand your social circle with a vast number of new connections.

A more obvious analogy is a retailer that not only sets up standalone stores but opens up additional locations within major shopping centers.
Much like being present on social media platforms and search engines, multi-marketplace integration has proven key to success as an omnichannel retailer.

Why Online Marketplaces are a Growth Driver for Omnichannel Retailers

According to a survey conducted by PYMTS, for example, 61% of online merchants say they have increased their marketplace usage in the last year. This isn’t limited to a single third-party store such as Amazon, either. The research showed that 42% of retailers sell through four or more marketplaces.

The traditional drawback of listing products on sites such as Mango, Lamoda, Zalando, and others has been the cost and effort onboarding required.
Some of the potential bottlenecks have included:

• Difficulty managing inventory and orders across multiple marketplaces at once
• Managing customer relationships across more than one third-party store
• Lack of consistent branding and messaging from one store to another
• Difficulty controlling pricing, logistics, and custom interactions

What is eCommerce Marketplace Integration?

The rise of eCommerce marketplace integration services is providing online retailers a way to transcend these issues by unifying data from multiple sources.

By using an application programming interface (API) for example, marketplace integration tools can act as a two-way link that connects a single selling platform to many different third-party stores at once.
This includes connecting to inventory, mapping product uploads to their proper category, transferring data, syncing across channels, and fulfilling orders in real-time.

Once eCommerce marketplace integration has been deployed, you can syndicate your product listings and catalogs to multiple online marketplaces.
Also, you can more easily track and manage orders, keep stock of inventory, and spend more time focusing on nurturing customer relationships.

How eCommerce Marketplace Integration Services Work

Your goal with marketplace integration should be to reach a point of “agnostic eCommerce.” In other words, you want to be focused on simply driving sales, without having to worry about which marketplace your orders are coming from.

Achieving this without putting undue burdens on developers means working with an expert eCommerce marketplace service partner that can identify the best approach.

These can vary depending on the retailer but include:

Complete and thorough object specifications

While customer activity might look different from one third-party store to another, there might be common use cases in terms of what’s required to support taxation, returns, refunds, and partial orders.
Choose the order schemas that apply to the majority of your orders to simplify the integration process.

Extensible object specifications

Even in a well-run eCommerce operation, anomalies or exceptions to the rule will occasionally come up.
Talk to your marketplace integration provider about how they can handle custom properties, such as pairs of names and values, or other unforeseen data requirements.

Acceptable actions

The more you can automate eCommerce processes, the more streamlined your company is and the greater the potential for increased sales.
By specifying a list of what actions the integration tool can take depending on the API response and payloads, you’ll have greater confidence in the status of your orders.

Configurable process sequences

Talk to your partner about the way you’ll handle pre-accepted orders, or when orders are postponed after an inventory check.
Doing so will offer greater consistency in the customer experience you deliver, no matter what marketplace they’re using to shop for your products.

Escape routes

What if none of the above tactics work? The best market integration service providers know that sometimes it’s necessary to leverage specific fields in the order schema.
This is a way of programmatically determining which marketplace is being used and allowing orders to be processed smoothly.

Master the art of eCommerce Order Management across third-party stores

Suvae.org has a proven track record of helping leading fashion and luxury brands propel their online sales by expanding into the world’s most popular online marketplaces. While eCommerce order management can be relatively simple when order volumes are small, successful brands have learned they need to have visibility into control at every stage of the process. This includes the moment a purchase has been made, identifying fulfillment locations, shipping, and handling returns.

Suvae.org’s solution offers the ability to scale order management in third-party marketplaces through direct integrations. That not only means keeping up with orders as they come in but streamlining returns and analyzing performance. This can fuel growth across multiple countries.

Discover a unique approach to Marketplace Integration to help you generate more profit, and increase your eCommerce sales. Reach out to us to get started.

The post Multi-Marketplace Integration Guide: Manage Orders Anywhere appeared first on Suvae.org.

Usually brands begin a search for marketplace solutions when they encounter some of the most common roadblocks in trying to create one on their own. While there can be huge opportunities in enhancing the customer experience by curating a range of online sellers, marketplaces require skill to develop and considerable efforts to manage.

Establishing a viable proprietary marketplace means having the ability to easily integrate with a wide range of other company’s product catalogs and data. Customer service expectations can be high, whether you’re providing products to consumers or other businesses. Disjointed order management and failure to keep up with shipping policies are just a few of the pitfalls marketplace owners can encounter.

The Mirakl marketplace platform solves for all of these potential challenges, and more.

What you should know about the Mirakl marketplace platform

Headquartered in Paris with offices in Boston and London, Mirakl describes itself as a provider of software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions to manage eCommerce marketplaces and drop shipping businesses.

As of 2023, Mirakl powers more than 350 marketplaces around the world. Over the past year it has continued to invest in its platform and features, including the launch of retail media ad solutions, SEO tools driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and a globally compliant payout tool.

Overall, Mirakl estimates that approximately $6 billion was transacted across its marketplace and dropship solutions in 2022, an increase of more than 43% from the year before.

Deciding upon Mirakl as a marketplace platform solution is only the first step, of course. You also have to consider the fastest and simplest way to connect your product and inventory data, which is where Suvae.org comes in.

How Suvae.org Mirakl integration works

Depending on the number of sellers you’re working with, a proprietary marketplace could be offering consumers or B2B customers thousands of products. Each one of those items is surrounded by a sea of critical data, from product category and specifications to pricing. All of this data needs to be synchronized with a marketplace in “real time” – which can be defined by as little as half an hour or even every 15 minutes.

Suvae.org. can optimize product information in multiple formats through a SaaS data feed platform, coupled with highly technical integration services and a proven track record of experience with the Mirakl marketplace platform.

The process at a high level then looks like this:

1. A customer makes an order on your proprietary marketplace.
2. The seller receives the order through Suvae.org via an application programming interface (API) endpoint, which allows them to take action on the order. They download the order and accept or reject it.
3. Suvae.org synchronizes this information with the marketplace, along with any other subsequent actions such as fulfillment. This includes specific instructions, such as when a customer selects express shipping, for example.
4. If a product needs to be returned, the seller can apply a refund, at which point a request is sent to the marketplace, which processes the transaction with the seller’s customer.

Marketplaces running via Mirakl integration to date

Whether you’re selling luxury goods to fashionable consumers or enterprise products and services to corporate customers, the Mirakl marketplace platform can help further a variety of business objectives. These include not only web site traffic and increased brand awareness but an additional revenue stream that can scale based on demand. Access to insightful and valuable data.

Here are just a few of the consumer brands that have already shifted to a marketplace approach based on Mirakl integration:

• Yoox
• Globus
• Saks
• LaRinascente
• HarveyNichols
• Mango
• HBC

Mirakl B2B marketplaces, meanwhile, include Toyota Material Handling, which connects its customers to sellers of industrial equipment, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) and others.

Assess your Mirakl marketplace readiness

Once you’re ready to explore Mirakl integration, take the time to evaluate the existing technology and data you have in place today, as well as the talent that would be necessary to develop and maintain your marketplace. You’ll also want to weigh the capital investment that may be required, as well as the costs associated with logistics and supply chain management.

Consider some of the following factors as well:

• Are you serving one or more niches where a marketplace offering could stand out to your target audience?
• What kind of value-added services, if any, can you provide in addition to offering the marketplace itself?
• What kind of regulatory or legislative issues need to be addressed as part of your expansion?
• How will you measure the success of your marketplace and the vendors with whom you partner?

Finally, ensure your plan incorporates the power of automation, which not only streamlines operational processes and delivers a better customer experience, but can lower overhead. Opportunities to harness automation as part of a marketplace strategy include:

• Integrating with stock systems to ensure accurate and up to date availability of products
• Order management to reduce errors and maximize selling potential
• Synthesizing sales, tax, and shipping data to eliminate manual and time-intensive work.

If you want to super-charge your business growth today, don’t wait for a miracle. Contact us and reach millions of potential customers through Mirakl marketplace integration instead.

The post Mirakl Marketplace Integration Guide For Growing Brands appeared first on Suvae.org.