Its that time of year when youre making resolutions, setting goals and finalizing budgets. As we all know websites and store operating system updates are usually somewhere on your New Years Resolution list. Below are the most helpful business resolutions for multichannel retailers.
1. Update your Website to Increase Traffic and Sales
Updating web stores involves adding latest content, new images and using the latest technology to ensure that your website(s) and back-end systems are optimized for your customers and your retail operation.
Your website needs to easily and effectively communicate what you do and promote your products and services, announce events and ensure front- end and back-end systems to work seamlessly together.
So what website updates, are recommended for 2013? You can find these answers in a 2013 Checklist to Optimize Web Store Sales which references trends and best practices to help keep your website relevant in 2013.
2. Streamline to Save Time and Get Products to Customers Faster
If youre expanding your business to include additional eCommerce, marketplaces or brick and mortar stores you need to need to know how to make your multichannel business run smooth and leverage, existing systems.
For companies that currently sell on eBay, Amazon, web stores and or brick and mortar locations, integrating to Microsoft Dynamics GP, NAV, RMS or eCommerce can save companies lots of time and streamline item listings, synchronizing inventory, processing orders, pricing and creating item attributes. Push item data from one system to other channels helps easily populate eBay, Amazon web stores, brick and mortar stores or other channels with item information to get product to market faster.
The faster you can get product to customers the quicker youll be able to sell them!
3. Sync, Syndicate and Automate To Keep Customers Happy
Automatically syndicating or pushing items that reside in one system to other channels such as a web store, eBay, Amazon, or brick and mortar stores reduces duplicate manual order entry and errors associated with manual data entry, re-keying information or manually importing or exporting data between separate applications such as shipping and accounting systems.
Synchronizing inventory between channels improves inventory accuracy, keeps items updated, and avoids out-of-stock situations. Inventory that resides in one system can be easily pushed to one or more channel so customers can get what they want when they want it.
Pushing item data from one system to other channels easily populates eBay, Amazon, web stores, brick and mortar stores or other channels with item information.
Pricing, descriptions, even attributes can be easily ported from one system to another without manually importing and exporting files.
4. Inventory Visibility Means Increased Sales
You can manage inventory with complete visibility on all your channels and view inventory availability at all your inventory locations from a web browser. Seeing inventory from any location allows you to make quick decisions about routing orders, locating available inventory, running sales, and moving product to other marketplaces or web stores to satisfy customer demand and sell more.
5. Centralized Sales, Orders and Customer Data Keeps You in Control
Online and offline sales and customer information is kept consistent through an integrated solution. You can collect orders from eBay, Amazon your web store, or other brick and mortar stores and have them routed to your accounting or ERP system. You can even create orders in a portal and have those routed to the system of your choice. This is great for taking orders in the field like at a customer site, tradeshow or festival.
You can take control over your site design and easily manage product descriptions and images while seeing the benefits of centralized item and inventory management.
6. Save Money, Move to the Cloud
Many multichannel companies managing online and brick-and-mortar stores have moved to a cloud-based, centralized platform that manages your entire business in real-time.
By using a cloud-based platform, for instance for Microsoft Dynamics GP or NAV that has connectors for eBay and other marketplaces you can achieve full integration and half the cost of doing it yourself. Because most of the integration work is already provided, customers can be up and running with integration in eBay or Amazon in a matter of days vs. weeks or months.
Integration allows you to extend promotions and discounts quickly to the web and get product visibility to customers the faster. The faster you can get product visibility to customers the quicker sales occur.
7. Weigh Your Options
If you are a new online seller aiming at quick selling or an established retailer who wants to grow your business, integrating eCommerce with POS and ERP is the ultimate solution to keep everything in sync and stay in control. Less disruption to the business improves sales opportunities!
Cloud based solutions with connectors to your existing systems that have done much of the work for you and will usually be cheaper and faster to implement than solutions involving Scribe or other integration tool sets.
See what the industry experts use to manage their web stores. Check out the 2013 Checklist to Optimize Web Store Sales.
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