A marketplace listing consists of 2 main parts:
- Product information (title, description, images, attributes etc.)
- Offer information (price, stock, delivery time, product condition etc.)
On a marketplace, in many cases there will be several offers for the same product, and the best offer will win the Buy Box.
In case your products are already integrated in the Marketplace Catalog, it’s enough to create offers to start selling.
We already covered the catalog integration topic, which is related to product information. Now it’s time to talk about the offer updates, which can be quite different in dynamics and complexity.
While product information does not change very often, prices and stock levels need to be updated pretty much on a daily basis. If your stock levels are relatively low, you might need to update them several times per day. With a small catalog you are still able to do this manually, but with more than a few SKUs, it’s recommended to automate this process. Sending an offer is much easier than creating a new product, as there are fewer required data points. In the table below you will find a comparison of the most popular offer update methods.
| Update type | Recommended if | Prerequisites | PROs | CONs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manually in the marketplace backend | 1. You have a small catalog (under 100 SKUs) 2. You have high stock levels and stable prices 3. You have no other option available | 1. None | 1. Easy to use 2. No prerequisites | 1. Very time-consuming 2. Requires constant monitoring |
| File import | 1. You have a small or medium-sized catalog (up to 1000 SKUs) 2. You have (almost) no products with risk of out-of-stock | 1. Spreadsheets (Excel, Google Docs) 2. Data manipulation skills (XLS, CSV) | 1. Easy to use 2. Few prerequisites | 1. Can be time-consuming depending on frequency of changes 2. Requires constant monitoring |
| Feed syncronization | 1. Any catalog size 2. You can generate a XML / CSV feed from your stock database and update it regularly | 1. Feed generation and update capacity | 1. Easy to maintain 2. Eliminates the need of manual actions | 1. Requires a feed management tool connected to your internal applications |
| Integrator | 1. You have a medium-sized or large catalog (500+ SKUs) 2. You are already using an integrator | 1. Subscription with a supported integrator | 1. Reusable data to sell on many marketplaces 2. Eliminates the need of manual actions | 1. Relatively difficult to set up 2. Requires investment 3. Develops a dependency on the integrator for multiple processes |
| Custom API | 1. You have a very large catalog (5000+ SKUs) with very dynamic price and stock updates 2. You have a software development team 3. Your internal systems are not connected with a feed solution or an integrator | 1. Software development team 2. Product information database | 1. Can fully automate the offer update process | 1. Very difficult to develop and maintain 2. Requires investment |
Tip: If you have low-stock SKUs (with less than 5 units), it is a good idea to introduce a safety stock buffer. This means that you send a number of units which is lower than the actual availability in your warehouse. It will help you avoid out-of-stock cancellations, especially in busy shopping periods when several units can be sold in a matter of minutes.
Picking the right solution will be critical to maintain good Account Health, ensure the right profit margins, and optimize your conversion rate.
Your offer information might come from several different sources:
- Warehouse management system – for stock levels, product condition (new / refurbished / used)
- Pricing application – for the price and taxes
- Delivery time – from your ERP or carrier integration tool
Ideally, you want to combine them in one database to use this on all your sales channels. If you don’t have a proper solution for this, you might consider connecting to an integrator solution, which will combine the necessary data points and send them to the marketplace.
Need help setting up your offer updates? Contact Marketplace Agents.