eMarketplace autoloaders

[foliedouce]

As a newbie to the whibbly whobbly world of online, I have the lovely task of 'sorting out our eMarketplace presence' I've started with Amazon UK and I'm shocked about how rubbish the customer journey is for a seller.

We have a proseller account and also an eBay shop and even uploading the small number of 60 SKUs seems like a massive task, then I have Amazon US to sort then other countries then other eMarketplaces.

Surely there has to be an easier, more efficient way to do this?

I thought Channel Advisor was my saviour but they replicate a big part of what BrightPearl does and we have only just gone live with that, so I can't exactly rip that out.

HELP! Do any of you ecommerce experts have any pointers for me PLEASE!!!

[DSLiverpool]

Bright pearl will manage your amazon country stock but it needs to be created first, are you saying it's hard to create stuff on amazon?

[foliedouce]

Thanks for the response, and yes I am struggling with uploading things onto Amazon in an efficient way.

I'm new to this, so no doubt making some mistakes, however in the last week I have discovered that you need to learn HTML to stop your product descriptions being truncated (really?, surely something as established as Amazon should have a basic editor)

Even if you size the images as per Amazon guidelines, they often 'hang' as you're trying to upload them. The thumbnail sometimes uploads, but then 5 mins later it says "sorry could not upload your photo".

When you publish a listing, it says that it's been successful but then it never appears in the marketplace (this happened to me 5 times yesterday, I nearly threw the PC out the window)

Apparently it's against Amazon policy (according to the sometimes contradictory advice in the Seller centre) to upload videos, but I see people do it, although I can't work out how to do it myself. You'd a thought video would be value add to selling products, yet Amazon is not clear on this point and certainly doesn't make it simple.

Blah blah blah

Anyway, I've spent a week to get 5 SKUs online in a format that I'd be happy for our customers to view, which is not a constructive use of my time.

I need to get 50 online (low number I know compared to others) then do the same for Amazon US and Europe, then eBay and other eMarketplaces.

Ultimately I'm looking for a system that automates this and I can manage our products in one place, hence the question.

I had a chat with the sales guys at Channel Advisor late yesterday and it seems that they can help with the above (although it ain't cheap) and it will integrate with Brightpearl which manages all of our stock control & fulfilment.

[jas xjr]

Something I used to do to speed up the process was to use a barcode scanner to enter the code.
We had 20-25 pages of products

[foliedouce]

jas xjr said:

Something I used to do to speed up the process was to use a barcode scanner to enter the code.
We had 20-25 pages of products

Thanks, but excuse me being thick, how does that work? So you use the EAN to link the rest of the data and then that auto populates Amazon?

[DSLiverpool]

Sounds like you picked a poor upload time try doing it mid day - we can create, upload etc in a few minutes. Videos are for premier sellers or Amazon partners your not there yet.

Note the copy across feature and the variations feature ie we do a phone exchange of 2 lines with 2,4,6,8 phones on one one listing - saves time.

Note - I am not a PC genius but for some reason Amazon seller central works better on a really fast PC can anyone tell me why as its all web based ?

Another tip - my favourite, create your own bar codes and listings and when another 5% on cost knob jumps on change the listing to a Fabergé egg or 10 of the items etc and remove your price so they sell it causing no end of grief and they know not to mess with you. Did one last month it was a 5 set of phones we changed to a 10 set of phones and cancelled our offer leaving knob seller as the only seller and at amazing value so they would obviously sell them and make a loss plus in this case the max number on the set was 5 so it was a loss maker that wouldn't work. Owning your own listings allows this.

If you have a hot item Amazon will notice and try and buy it to sell it against you, beware of this and make sure you never sell anything easily sold against you - mild customisation is the key. eg We have branded our own broadband filter and offer it with all our phone packages whilst bigging it up as a premium filter in the listing - obviously no other seller can offer the exact filter

[foliedouce]

Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it, especially the cost one. We have too have a premium product and all of our products are own branded but we do have competitors with similar products who could undercut.

On the variation one, interesting, we have 1 product with 20 variations, I was planning to do 20 different listings to get more exposure / better SEO.

[DSLiverpool]

foliedouce said:

On the variation one, interesting, we have 1 product with 20 variations, I was planning to do 20 different listings to get more exposure / better SEO.

Do both with a small variation ? beauty of the variation is the buyer can see all options on one page, again add in something that your competitors cannot easily replicate to stop them jumping on.

[northwest monkey]

The only HTML you'll use on an Amazon listing is:-

"<p> and </p>"

Ebay is different - you can have fonts, colours, sizes etc.

[DSLiverpool]

northwest monkey said:

The only HTML you'll use on an Amazon listing is:-

"<p> and </p>"

Ebay is different - you can have fonts, colours, sizes etc.

In some cats you cant even use that, platinum listings allow a bit but best using a upload feed once approved it will allow full "rich" content as they call it.

[northwest monkey]

DSLiverpool said:

northwest monkey said:

The only HTML you'll use on an Amazon listing is:-

"<p> and </p>"

Ebay is different - you can have fonts, colours, sizes etc.

In some cats you cant even use that, platinum listings allow a bit but best using a upload feed once approved it will allow full "rich" content as they call it.

Didn't know that. How can you tell if you're platinum or not?

When I create a listing, I can use the "search keywords" bit for platinum sellers but I've no idea if I'm "normal" or not. People often tell me I'm special but I'm not sure if that's the same thing.

I only sell things on Amazon nobody else does, so I've never "piggybacked" onto another listing.

[DSLiverpool]

northwest monkey said:

Didn't know that. How can you tell if you're platinum or not?

When I create a listing, I can use the "search keywords" bit for platinum sellers but I've no idea if I'm "normal" or not. People often tell me I'm special but I'm not sure if that's the same thing.

I only sell things on Amazon nobody else does, so I've never "piggybacked" onto another listing.

Easiest way is look in the search terms when creating a listing you will see two sets of fields, one for normal search terms and another set for long tail search terms that may be greyed out - if you can enter text in here you have been upgraded

[northwest monkey]

DSLiverpool said:

northwest monkey said:

Didn't know that. How can you tell if you're platinum or not?

When I create a listing, I can use the "search keywords" bit for platinum sellers but I've no idea if I'm "normal" or not. People often tell me I'm special but I'm not sure if that's the same thing.

I only sell things on Amazon nobody else does, so I've never "piggybacked" onto another listing.

Easiest way is look in the search terms when creating a listing you will see two sets of fields, one for normal search terms and another set for long tail search terms that may be greyed out - if you can enter text in here you have been upgraded

Looks like I've been "upgraded" then. I'm off to buy a badge so I can let everyone know how important I am.

[jas xjr]

foliedouce said:

Thanks, but excuse me being thick, how does that work? So you use the EAN to link the rest of the data and then that auto populates Amazon?

I should have made it clear,we used to sell toys,so these products,mostly had been sold before.so by entering the ean, via the scanner,if the product had been
listed before,it would bring up the description and photo.you could then add quantity and price plus condition.
I think you might be looking at some sort of CSV file,which is not something I am familiar with

[foliedouce]

DSLiverpool said:

Easiest way is look in the search terms when creating a listing you will see two sets of fields, one for normal search terms and another set for long tail search terms that may be greyed out - if you can enter text in here you have been upgraded

Wow, we are a platinum seller then! God knows how, I actually left that box blank as I thought it wasn't for us.

jas xjr said:

I should have made it clear,we used to sell toys,so these products,mostly had been sold before.so by entering the ean, via the scanner,if the product had been
listed before,it would bring up the description and photo.you could then add quantity and price plus condition.
I think you might be looking at some sort of CSV file,which is not something I am familiar with

That makes sense, thanks. We actually manufacture our own products (well, we're the legal manufacturer but outsource the actually doing) so have to issue our own barcodes.