Is there a downside to adding a new sales channel to your ecommerce business?
Creating an additional sales channel for your ecommerce business has many benefits and creates opportunities for growth
- -Exposure to new customers
- -More brand awareness
- -Mitigating the risks of selling on just one channel, such as your website going down or your seller account being shut down
- -More sales overall!
There are additional risks and responsibilities that come with adding a new sales channel to your ecommerce business.
First, the time-investment of creating your new website or seller account. It could take days, even weeks to set up the new selling channel. When estimating the cost, be sure to factor in the cost of your time, new merchants fees, as well as the cost of paying someone to set things up.
Second, you need to think about how you will get the new sales data into QuickBooks. Are you paying someone to hand-enter data for you? Or, do you have a tool such as Connex that will automate data entry for you?
Finally, you have to make additional business decisions. Do you need to hire more staff to manage your additional sales channel? How do you allocate your marketing budget between the two channels? Is each channel bringing enough revenue for your ecommerce business to cover the costs?
Here are some questions to evaluate new potential sales channels:
- -Does your target audience routinely shop in this channel?
- -Can you make a profit given the merchant fees?
- -Can you scale your business with this new sales channel?
- -What are the shipping fees of this new channel?
- -How will you reconcile the sales from all your channels to your accounting software?
We have interviewed 2 of our customers who sell on multiple channels for insights on growing an ecommerce business.
Insights from Successful Merchants for Your Ecommerce Business
Joseph Petruziello sells hand-made candles on his website through WooCommerce, as well as on Shopify and Amazon.
According to Joseph, keeping track of the different merchant fees on the different channels was one of the biggest challenges of expanding to multiple sales channels: “When making business decisions, I had to keep in mind that my cost of goods sold (COGS) was different on different sales channels.”
What allowed Petruziello to grow was automation. By automating data entry into QickBooks, he was able to focus on excellent customer service and high-level business decisions that have allowed to continue expanding his business.
Another ecommerce merchant, Rafael Bildirici, sells a variety of physical goods – from electronics to beauty products – on Amazon, eBay, and Walmart. While growing his business, Rafael’s main challenge was order management and making sure all his orders from the different channels were fulfilled on time.
Rafael also noticed that profits were different from different channels. “I had to keep track of all my fees from different channels, so that I knew how much money I had to buy inventory. If I wasn’t confident in my reporting, I wouldn’t be able to stay in business.”
Rafael was also able to save a lot of time and energy by automating data entry into QuickBooks.
“Syncing orders into QuickBooks, and setting up customers the right way, was challenging at the beginning, as we scaled. Things got much easier once we automated these processes with Connex.”
Overselling and inventory management present another challenge for merchants who sell the same items on multiple channels. Rafael uses ShipStation to not only consolidate all of his shipping into one platform, but also keep track of shipping fees and inventory. “Putting all orders from all of the marketplace into one shipping tool has really simplified things for us.”
Finally, Rafael also recognizes the importance of responding to customer reviews. “Dealing with negative reviews is one of the hardest things. You can’t make everyone happy. It is much easier if you accept that you will get some negative reviews. Sometimes, you just need to give them a refund and move on.”
Rafael has been in business for more than five years now, and the keys to his success included having the right tools to automate as he scaled, keeping QuickBooks up-to-date so he could track cash flow, and managing his online inventory to prevent overselling and refunds.
Steps to take moving forward
While selling on multiple channels will help you to market your products to a wider audience, there is additional complexity that you need to consider before expanding to new sales channels.
According to the three successful e-commerce merchants we interviewed, the following strategies will help you to simplify the process, delight customers, and stay profitable, as you add new selling channels to your business:
- -Implement a system to track merchant fees on each individual channel, in order to evaluate profitability.
- -Use a shipping platform, such as ShipStation, to consolidate shipping from all your channels.
- -Implement online inventory management tools to prevent overselling and refunds.
- -Monitor competitor’s prices on different channels, and price products accordingly.
- -Provide excellent customer service, and respond to reviews on all of your channels.
- -Establish good relationships with distributors to have sufficient inventory on hand, and keep your prices competitive
- -Automate data entry into QuickBooks to save time, manage orders, track cash flow, map sales tax, and evaluate profitability.
Is Connex the Right Tool to Help You Grow Your Ecommerce Business?
Most of our customers sell on multiple ecommerce channels, such as Woocommerce, Shopify, Magento, and Amazon, just to name a few.
Our customers want to grow their business, and they also value the peace of mind from knowing their books are always up to date and they can serve their customers.
Why Our Customers Chose Sync with Connex
–Developed specifically e-commerce business owners
-You can scale your business by automatically syncing sales & inventory from multiple e-commerce platforms to QuickBooks Desktop or Online.
-You don’t have to spend your resources manually entering sales, inventory, and customers into your website and QuickBooks accounts.
Recommended by Intuit itself, Connex for QuickBooks will give you peace of mind that your inventory will be updated, and you will be free of the frustration of oversells and missed items.
-When your inventory is up-to-date, you can achieve higher customer satisfaction, leading to more positive reviews, and increased sales.
-For phone orders, we can sync sales from QuickBooks to your shipping solution.
–If you sell on multiple channels, you can simplify by using our solution instead of multiple tools.
–Connex integrates QuickBooks with all major ecommerce platforms such as Woocommerce, Shopify, Magento, Amazon and ecommerce shipping solutions such as Shipworks, Ordoro and Shipping Easy.
–Click here for a full list of our ecommerce, shipping, and payment integrations
How can you decide whether Connex is right for your business?
-Full functionality for 14 days
-Sync up to 500 sales to QuickBooks Desktop or Online
-Complimentary email/chat/phone support during your free trial
Are you unsure whether Connex is right for your business?
Click here to schedule a 30 minute call with a member of our sales team.