Shopify Plus: How to Easily Create a Multichannel Strategy

With all the technology available today, a single consumer can be found on multiple devices. Meet your customers where they’re at with multi-channel selling. During theirf research, Shopify found that selling on additional channels increases revenue. On average it increases by 38%, then 120% and 190% with each added channel respectively.

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Shopify is a platform where you can build and host your eCommerce stores. They have over 20 channels available for integration which allows you to expand your reach while streamlining your operations.

Go multi-channel: Sell everywhere your customers are

Why Should You Care?

People shopping for clothes and accessories are all over the internet. A survey of American shoppers found that:

• 54% shopped at eCommerce marketplaces,
• 74% shopped at large retailers,
• 44% shopped at web stores,
• 36% shopped at category-specific online retailers. 

Types of Sales Channels 

By taking advantage of Shopify's integrations, you increase the chances of consumers coming into contact with your products.

Marketplaces

A study by Digital Commerce 360 showed that in 2019, marketplaces made up 58% of online sales.

Social media sales

These include shoppable Instagram posts, a Facebook store, and buyable Pins, which are great for showcasing apparel & accessory products.

Comparison shopping pages

These channels make it possible to view many products at once and compare information between different retailers, like with Google Shopping for example.

Top-selling channels for eCommerce

These are two of the biggest players in the eCommerce game that you should consider.

Amazon

Astudy by NPR found that 44% of U.S shoppers start their product searches on Amazon. Google ranked second at 33%.

If you’re selling less than 40 items a month, you can opt into the pay per sale plan, or go for the monthly plan. They have a cost calculator to estimate how the fees will factor in for you.

eBay

eBay has 167 million active users. And while they’re well known for their used auctions, about 80% of all merchandise sold is new. You can stand out on eBay by creating the perfect listing.

How to Start - move with your Shopify products to a multi-channel strategy

If your products are already stored in Shopify, you can export your product feed:

• Go to your admin page
• Click on Products > All Products
• Export
• Decide which products you want to include
• Choose which file you’d like to use

However, this method isn't a recommended long-term solution because it's not possible automatically update the file.

Making sure that your products are up to date would require you to manually re-upload the file on a regular basis which could become time consuming.

For automatic updates, connect them through a third party. By using DataFeedWatch you can simply create a connection by adding a shop and inserting your Shopify URL. Your data will then be downloaded on a daily basis and sent to the channels.

Another way to generate your Shopify feed is by using a direct API connection. This method will also let your current product data be sent regularly to the channels you're using. The only drawback here is that you won't be able to optimize your feeds for specific channels beforehand. Rather, they'll be sent exactly as they are in your Shopify store.

You might not want to show all of your products on every channel. Determine which items will sell on which channels and if you’re able to compete on price with the other sellers.

Some principles to keep in mind when creating your multi-channel strategy include:

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Multi-channel selling: Opportunities and challenges

Inventory and Logistics

Challenge

The two biggest obstacles you’ll probably run into when scaling to new channels is inventory tracking and forecasting.

If you’re selling in more than one place and there’s no communication between your channels, you run the risk of advertising out of stock items.

Another potential problem is running out of inventory itself and losing out on sales to other retailers.

Solution

Shopify has a ‘tracking inventory’ feature that lets you hide out of stock items automatically.

If you’re using the Shopify POS then you can continue to sell out of stock items because the system assumes that you have the products with you.

Create rules within your feed for each channel that will prevent products that are out of stock or very low in stock from showing. You can do this by creating a simple exclusion rule in DataFeedWatch:


These rules can give you some buffer room so you're not waiting until the product is completely out of stock to stop advertising it. Once your have those products in stock again, they'll automatically begin to show.

Inventory forecasting lets you predict which items and products you need to restock and when. To do this you need to take into account:

• Past data on quantity of sales 
• Any promotions you plan in the future 
• Predicted trends for that product in the future
    

Pricing

Challenge
Each channel you use has both its out set of costs and competitors, so each requires its own strategy.

For example, some channels might have a higher revenue share than others, meaning you’ll need to pay more per product you sell.

You might also notice that there is a higher demand for a product on a certain channel. In this instance you could create a competition-based strategy by selling your products a little below the competition to direct more shoppers your way.

Solution
Adjust the pricing for each channel you're selling on in an easy way. Keep in mind that it won't be possible for all channels because of specific requirements they have. For example, with Google Shopping, your products will be disapproved if the price doesn't match how it's listed exactly on your website. But with Amazon or eBay it won't be a problem.

Here we increased the price for products on Amazon by 10% to offset the cost of fees that tend to be higher than on other channels:

Promotion

Opportunity
Know the right time to show the right promotion to the right shopper. One example of this is to use entry and exit overlays on your website. When a shopper enters your site you can show a pop-up with a time sensitive promotion that will encourage them to complete their order in the same browsing session. This gives them a unique experience based on the actions they’re taking.

Shopify has a section of their website called 'Automations'. It contains a large variety of free and paid plan apps to automate your marketing.

To find them:

1. Go to the 'Marketing' tab
2. Click on 'Automations'
3. Click the 'Create Automation' box
4. A screen will pop up. Click on 'Visit Shopify App Store'
5. Search away! As you can see, there are a ton of results 

Selling on the wrong channels 

Challenge

Before committing to a new channel, ask questions like:

• Will this platform give exposure to the right audience?
• How much time will it take to set up and maintain?
• Does this platform fit into my budget?
• Does the channel fit into your existing order fulfillment plan
  
  

Feed

Opportunity

Your product data feed will act as a foundational building block when creating your multi-channel marketing strategy.

Channels typically have slightly different feed formats and requirements. For example, Facebook Product Ads require the ‘condition’ attribute while for Google Shopping it’s optional for new products. Create a master feed to reduce manual work. Rather that creating a whole new feed from scratch each time, simply clone your feed and make tweaks from there.

DataFeedWatch allowsyou to create master feeds simply by using internal fields. Then you can optimize the cloned feed and make sure the data appears correctly. All the required fields will be displayed so you can be sure that you’re not missing anything that’s mandatory.

To copy the mapping from one channel to another:

1. Go to the channel feed you want to create & optimize
2. Click on the 'Mapping' tab
3. Click on 'Copy from Other Channel'
4. Choose the channel you'd like to copy from

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Conclusion

By using multi-channel eCommerce software you can organize and manage all your channels with one dashboard so it doesn’t become overwhelming.

From there you’ll be able to edit listings, change item descriptions, and most importantly, measure bottom-line effectiveness.

By pairing DataFeedWatch and Shopify, store owners can take their product feed and then seamlessly sell and advertise on multiple channels.

Read More About How to Increase Your Shopify Store Sales:

• How to Properly Match Shopify Fields with Google Shopping Attributes
• An Introduction To Optimizing a Shopify Product Feed -Increasing Sales
• High-Impact Strategies To Drive Traffic To Your Shopify Store
• 5 Proven Hacks For Google & Facebook For Shopify Store Owners
• Shopify Plus vs. Magento Commerce 2: Which Is Better in 2021?

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