Ecommerce Platforms Comparison: What Retailers should look for

eCommerce offers enormous potential for retailers, with new ways to connect with a broader audience and many channels that can integrate into a sales and marketing policy.

Studies have shown that retailers that sell on two marketplaces increase total revenues by 190% over those that trade on one.⁽¹⁾

However, as the potential for additional sales grows with the addition of each new channel, the complexity of managing multichannel eCommerce grows as well. Every channel has a unique interface and processes associated with selling.

Without a comprehensive strategy, the tasks of maintaining separate processes for listing products, orders, billing, shipping, inventory and messaging can quickly become overwhelming. Additionally, without centralized data, it is difficult to manage business reporting, and analytics and optimization efforts become nearly impossible.

This is why more retailers are turning to eCommerce software solutions: applications that are designed to promote online sales activities. However, eCommerce solutions vary greatly in the features that are included, and the ways in which they help retailers to automate, integrate, manage and control business processes.

The typical features of eCommerce features include:

Ecommerce Comparison – Product Content Optimization

Manually entering and re-entering product listings across multiple channels is a repetitive, time-consuming process that takes valuable time away from higher-level activities.

Some software solutions offer a limited listing tool, allowing sellers to copy and paste or import existing listings. However, this can be unreliable, and still requires a significant amount of manual effort.

Ideally, an eCommerce software solution would streamline listings under a single user interface, where a product could be listed once and then pushed across all channels with a single click.

Ecommerce Comparison – Inventory Management Software

Optimizing cross-channel sales requires real-time stock adjustments across all marketplaces. Without real-time inventory updates, retailers risk overselling items and disappointing customers. On the other hand, splitting stock between different markets could result in missed sales.

An eCommerce solution should integrate seamlessly with all channels, with automated, real-time stock updates, synchronized across all marketplaces with every order to manage inventory.

Ecommerce Comparison – Order Management Software

As order volumes increase, so do the tasks associated with fulfilling orders and managing returns, and completing these tasks manually across separate marketplaces leads to inefficiencies and errors.

An eCommerce solution that includes order management features should integrate all sales channels with a single order book, allowing one-click processing and bulk actions for effective streamlining.

Ecommerce Comparison – Billing

Billing is not only a complicated process to manage across multiple channels, but it also represents a missed opportunity for a retailer to reinforce their brand and connect with customers.

A customised invoice that is a physical document, such as a PDF, email or message can reinforce brand messaging when used to communicate with customers. Additionally, you can calculate sales automatically, and integrate billing with accounting functions to streamline business processes, reporting and analytics further.

Shipping

An eCommerce software solution that includes shipping management allows a retailer to ship orders from multiple channels from a single interface, reducing time to send and improving dispatch, tracking, and courier integration.

Messaging and Reply Manager

Communicating with customers on different channels requires an enormous investment in time and effort, and without an overarching strategy for message management, a critical customer communication can fall through the cracks.

Ideally, an eCommerce solution would provide access to all channels in a single interface, link messages from different marketplaces with specific orders, track communications, and assign messages to a particular employee.

Not only does ChannelGrabber provide all of the features included above, but it also has the highest Trustpilot score among eCommerce software solutions. With ChannelGrabber, retailers can integrate all critical eCommerce activities into a single, easily-managed interface. Thus, streamlining business processes for maximum efficiency and sales.

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Sources
^1. https://www.stitchlabs.com/blog/stitch-data-report-why-multichannel-selling-is-a-win-for-retailers/