The Future of eCommerce: Thriving in a Multichannel Landscape
Since the beginning of the pandemic, ecommerce has seen exponential growth, with many brands partially or fully moving online, and thousands of new online businesses being launched.
With eCommerce becoming an increasingly competitive industry, it is only natural for businesses to look for ways to cut costs and maximise profits. One of the strategies many companies found extremely effective was expanding their reach via multichannel selling.
In this article, we will be going over the top benefits and challenges of selling on multiple channels, and how Despatch Cloud can empower your business to make the most of multichannel selling by automating and streamlining the most complex aspects of your operation.
- Understanding multichannel selling
Multichannel selling refers to the practice of selling products or services through multiple online platforms or channels simultaneously. It involves expanding beyond a single online store and leveraging various channels like marketplaces, social media platforms, and third-party websites.
Multichannel selling can help online retailers reach a wider audience, increase brand visibility, and drive sales growth. By diversifying their online presence, businesses can tap into different customer segments, leverage the strengths of each channel, and meet customers wherever they prefer to shop.
Multichannel selling also helps mitigate risks associated with relying solely on one platform, such as sudden policy changes or disruptions. Ultimately, adopting a multichannel approach empowers ecommerce businesses to expand their reach, maximise revenue potential, and stay competitive in today’s digital landscape.
- Challenges
Managing multiple channels can be challenging for a number of reasons. First and foremost, maintaining consistent branding and customer experience across different platforms can be demanding. Each channel will have its own design requirements, content formats, and audience expectations, needing careful adaptation and customization.
Not only that. The more channels you sell on, the more complex inventory management gets. Ensuring accurate stock levels, preventing overselling or underselling, and synchronising inventory updates in real-time require robust systems and processes.
Coordinating and processing orders from different channels efficiently is another challenge, as each platform may have unique order formats and fulfilment requirements.
Lastly, managing customer inquiries, feedback, and reviews across multiple channels requires dedicated resources and timely responses to maintain a positive reputation. Overall, the challenges of managing multiple channels underscore the importance of having a comprehensive solution like Despatch Cloud that simplifies and streamlines these processes.
- Advantages of expanding into multiple channels
As previously mentioned, expanding into multiple channels offers significant advantages for ecommerce businesses. Firstly, it allows businesses to reach a broader audience and tap into new customer segments that they may not have reached through a single channel. By diversifying their presence across various platforms, businesses increase their brand visibility and create multiple touchpoints for potential customers. This, in turn, enhances their chances of attracting and converting more leads.
Moreover, expanding into multiple channels reduces reliance on a single platform, mitigating the risk of sudden policy changes or disruptions that could negatively impact sales.
It also provides the opportunity to leverage the unique strengths of each channel. For example, marketplaces like Amazon or eBay offer a large customer base and built-in trust, while social media platforms enable businesses to engage with customers directly and foster brand loyalty.
Overall, embracing multiple channels empowers ecommerce businesses to grow their customer base, increase sales opportunities, and establish a stronger online presence in a competitive market.
- How Despatch Cloud empowers multichannel selling
- Seamlessly process orders
Despatch Cloud offers robust and comprehensive order management capabilities that empower ecommerce businesses to streamline and automate their order processing workflows.
With Despatch Cloud, businesses can centralise their order management across multiple channels, simplifying the entire process. The platform provides a user-friendly interface that allows businesses to view and manage orders from various channels in one place, eliminating the need to constantly log in and out of platforms.
Despatch Cloud also offers features like stock syncing, batch processing, and automatic courier selection, to significantly reduce manual efforts and improve efficiency. By automating repetitive tasks, businesses can save time, reduce errors, and enhance the overall order fulfilment process.
- Stock Control
Accurate inventory management is key for smooth operations, customer satisfaction, and overall business success. Having an accurate and up-to-date inventory allows businesses to fulfil orders promptly and prevent overselling or underselling situations. It ensures that products listed on various channels are available for purchase, avoiding customer disappointment and potential damage to the brand’s reputation.
Inventory accuracy also enables businesses to make informed decisions regarding purchasing, restocking, and sales strategies. By having real-time visibility into stock levels, businesses can optimise inventory turnover, minimise holding costs, and reduce the risk of stockouts or excess inventory.
Despatch Cloud offers powerful stock control features that empower ecommerce businesses to manage their inventory with precision and efficiency. With Despatch Cloud, businesses gain real-time visibility into stock levels across multiple channels, ensuring accurate inventory management at all times.
The platform provides centralised control, allowing businesses to track, monitor, and update stock levels from a single interface. This eliminates the need for manual inventory management across different platforms, reducing the risk of errors and oversights.
Despatch Cloud’s stock control features also enable businesses to set minimum stock levels for their products and receive notifications for timely restocking as well as purchase order suggestions. This helps prevent stockouts and ensures a seamless order fulfilment process.
- Stock Syncing and Inventory Accuracy
Stock syncing is one of the top features offered by Despatch Cloud. It involves automatically updating and synchronising stock levels across multiple channels in real-time. When a sale is made on one channel, the stock level is instantly adjusted across all integrated channels, ensuring accurate inventory information.
This seamless synchronisation eliminates the risk of overselling or underselling products and helps maintain consistency across different platforms. By automating stock updates, businesses can reduce manual effort, save time, and minimise the chances of human error in stock management.
It also enables businesses to provide accurate stock availability information to customers, improving transparency and avoiding potential customer dissatisfaction due to out-of-stock items.
Ultimately, stock syncing improves inventory accuracy, streamlines operations, and contributes to a seamless and reliable customer experience.
- Integration with Leading Ecommerce Platforms
More important than selling on multiple channels is knowing where to sell. Having a good understanding of your customer base and what platforms they use allows you to tailor your marketing strategies and product offerings to each specific channel, increasing your chances of converting sales.
Not only that. Having a flexible solution that empowers you to meet your customers where they shop will ensure your multichannel efforts actually pay off. This means being able to seamlessly integrate with different marketplaces and sales channels, regardless of their specific requirements or technical complexities.
Despatch Cloud offers support for over 40 marketplace and sales channels integrations, including all the major ecommerce platforms, such as Amazon, Ebay, Etsy, WooCommerce, Shopify, and more. We have also partnered with Mirakl to provide our users with additional access to 300+ channel integrations upon request.
We are constantly testing and updating our APIs ahead of time, providing users seamless connection between all their channels and marketplaces, at no additional cost. No more manual API updates or hefty development costs.
By leveraging Despatch Cloud and our powerful channel management solution, you can streamline your multichannel strategy, save time, and focus on what matters most – making sales. This will empower you to better serve your customers, increase conversions, and drive business growth.
- Optimised Shipping and Delivery Processes
Shipping plays a vital role in the overall success of an ecommerce business. Efficient and timely shipping is crucial to meet customer expectations and maintain a positive reputation.
By consolidating all your orders and couriers in one place, Despatch Cloud helps businesses streamline their shipping operations, ensuring all orders are accounted for and shipped in time.
Through our easy dashboard, you can access a breakdown of all your orders and shipments in real-time, and secure full visibility and control of your operations. Instantly track down problem parcels and underperforming couriers to prevent missed or late deliveries using our smart heat mapping technology, and stay on top of your delivery performance by courier, region and shipment.
Despatch Cloud gives you access to over 120 domestic and international couriers, giving you limitless possibilities on how you choose to handle your shipping. Having flexibility on the couriers you use can help you negotiate more advantageous rates and leverage the different strengths of each courier. You can configure shipping rules to automatically assign couriers to specific deliveries, and ensure you always get the best carrier for the job.
It also allows you to customise and automate post-purchase communications to be sent to your customers at every status change. This way you can ensure your customers stay informed at every step of the way and provide an elevated brand experience, increasing chances of returned business.
- Conclusion
Despatch Cloud empowers ecommerce businesses to succeed in multichannel selling by automating and streamlining operations. With features like centralised order management, smart stock control, seamless integration to channels and couriers, and optimised shipping processes, businesses can expand their reach, increase efficiency, and enhance the customer experience. By leveraging Despatch Cloud, businesses can leave the complexities of multichannel management behind, and focus on making sales and growing their brand instead, all while saving money and time.
Join the hundreds of successful businesses that are leveraging Despatch Cloud’s multichannel management solution to streamline their operations and elevate their customer experience.
Book a demo today to learn more about the functionality and integrations we offer to take your business to the next level.