Ecommerce businesses that sell many products across different channels often hit a stage in their growth where their systems start to hold them back. Having multiple suppliers and orders going out through Amazon, eBay and other channels can be a nightmare to track and control without a multichannel management solution.
This is where a tool like StoreAutomator can make all the difference. StoreAutomator helps ecommerce businesses to automatically list products, run advertising campaigns and fulfill orders across multiple marketplaces, shopping carts, and advertising channels. There is no need for spreadsheets, and repetition is completely eliminated.
StoreAutomator is used by ecommerce businesses of all kinds, including retailers, brands, manufacturers, and agencies, particularly those with numerous product lines and high order volumes.
Here’s where StoreAutomator came from, what it does, and what makes it different to the other multichannel solutions out there.
What does StoreAutomator do?
In a nutshell, StoreAutomator helps clients advertise and sell their products through multiple channels, including:
- Marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Jet, Walmart, Mirakl sites, Google Shopping Actions (including Google Express), with Otto, Wayfair and Etsy coming soon.
- Ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce and BigCommerce.
- Advertising channels like Google Shopping PLA and Facebook Product Ads.
Other ecommerce integrations include Klaviyo, Bronto, Nextopia, SLI Systems, Celebros, Olapic and Pixlee.
The main parts of the system are:
1. Product Data Management
Users can create and update product data directly within the system. This includes variants, bundles, multi-packs, and kits. All data including price, cost and quantity can also be imported and exported in bulk, using CSV or Excel files.
Users can also create categories and custom fields, manage brand information, link products to suppliers, and control minimum advertised price (MAP) and manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP). Restrictions can be set up for specific brands on specific channels.
2. Multichannel Listing Management
This is where users create product listings, list on multiple channels, include or exclude products on specific channels, and synchronize stock quantities.
They can also map product data to channels, so they do not have to enter different product descriptions, categories and attributes for each marketplace, shopping cart or advertising channel. Users can automatically customize data by channel with title and description templates, and create rules to adjust the shipping and handling costs. There is also a channel override to set data manually if needed.
Price management features allow sellers to automatically adjust prices based on the channel, with automatic currency conversion and customizable price rounding. A full repricing module exists for Amazon listings – more on that below.
3. Order Management
After the sale, StoreAutomator provides an order management module with multiple warehouse support, Amazon FBA integration, and automatic order routing. Users can integrate StoreAutomator with their 3PLs and dropship suppliers for complete fulfillment automation.
Merchants can also print invoices, packing slips and shipping labels directly within the system, triggering order notification emails and updating the order status on marketplaces. StoreAutomator also works with ShipStation and ShippingEasy for those who prefer separate shipping tools.
4. Analytics
StoreAutomator has strong reporting and analytics features, providing data at the business, brand, channel and product levels.
Reports can summarize information on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, including order volume, revenue, profit, channel performance, best sellers, variant performance and more.
5. Amazon Repricer
StoreAutomator’s Amazon repricing tool monitors marketplace conditions, analyzes prices, and reprices your products in real-time using customizable price or profitability-based rules.
Where did StoreAutomator come from?
Gokhan Erkavun and his wife started their ecommerce journey in 2004. Their business BeautyBridge was one of the first brands to start selling in Amazon’s beauty category, very soon after the marketplace began accepting third-party sellers in that area.
Fifteen years is a long time in ecommerce, and it was not unusual back then to have little or even zero competition on your products. But the industry evolved rapidly, and the needs of ecommerce companies changed as well..
The BeautyBridge founders began to realize that selling on just one or two channels was becoming a thing of the past, and they started to add additional sales channels to their business. The demands of multichannel selling soon became clear. In 2008, Onur Okyay joined the company as CTO, and helped the company create their own marketplace management tools to list products and automatically download orders.
In 2011, Gokhan and Onur saw the need to consolidate these tools and create a single system that could be used by both themselves and other companies with similar needs. That was when they founded StoreAutomator together, and it has been evolving rapidly ever since.
Today, BeautyBridge remains a successful business, but Gokhan and Onur focus most of their attention on StoreAutomator. As online retailers themselves, they have fifteen years of hands-on experience facing and solving the many challenges of multichannel ecommerce.
What makes StoreAutomator different to other solutions?
StoreAutomator has been a long time in the making. It has been created and molded from many years of ecommerce business experience. The driving philosophy behind it is that selling on multiple channels should be as easy as selling on one channel.
Some of the standout features include:
- A “generic” feed channel, allowing users to create any kind of feed from their inventory data, including CSV, XML, and other data structures which can then be published in many ways, allowing integration with channels not already built into the system.
- International ecommerce, providing the ability to translate content and sell products anywhere in the world, handling currency conversion in real-time using the latest exchange rates.
- Subchannels, a feature which takes content from a parent channel (such as a Shopify UK store) and feeds it into a subchannel (such as UK Google Shopping Ads). This makes it easy for retailers to connect channels to each other without any duplication of work.
- Adaptability, making it possible for users to configure and leverage the system wherever they need. The StoreAutomator team are often surprised by all the different ways their customers have tailored the system to their needs.
- Free training, so users are not left struggling to learn the system on their own. Training and support are included in the cost, and optional onboarding services can be taken up by businesses who want everything set up for them.
What kind of businesses use StoreAutomator?
StoreAutomator has a varied customer base, including:
- Manufacturers and brands who sell direct to consumers
- Retailers who require advanced tools, or have a large catalog or order volume
- Manufacturers with a wholesale model who want to start selling directly to consumers
- Ecommerce and brand agencies providing managed services to manufacturers, brands and retailers
- Dropshippers who work with multiple suppliers and need a centralized dropshipping management system with advanced product input and order output/input capabilities.
Why do brands use agencies, and how does StoreAutomator support them?
Managing multiple ecommerce channels is technical work, and many businesses find that using an agency works better for them than trying to recruit and train their own staff. Market demand for agencies with ecommerce management capabilities is growing fast.
Agencies manage the online presence and ecommerce activities of multiple clients, and need a solution that allows them to run all of their channels consistently and reliably. They also need to report back to their clients with clarity.
StoreAutomator has recently started working with ecommerce and brand agencies, and has built a new agency module to help meet their needs. The system lets agencies log in and manage their clients’ multichannel businesses from one place, with flexible reporting to keep clients informed in a way that works for them.
How do sellers get started with StoreAutomator?
Users that are interested in trying out StoreAutomator can sign up for a free 15-day trial. Only a name and email address are needed to get started, and free training is provided.
StoreAutomator is a big piece of software with many capabilities, so it’s important that users learn the most efficient way to use it to its full potential. The team does this by providing free training, live demos, and personalized guidance.
After the trial, pricing is based on the number of channels, products and orders that the business has. There is no revenue share at any price level, so users don’t start paying more just because their sales have grown.
What’s coming next for StoreAutomator?
The system continues to expand and add new features as the ecommerce market evolves. New channels, marketplaces, and shopping carts are planned in the near future, with a focus on European and niche marketplaces, like Wayfair and Houzz.
On top of that, there are powerful new features in the pipeline including AI-based decision support and direct integration through Shopify App Marketplace.
Partnerships are an effective way to provide users with access to many more sales channels. For example, working with Mirakl, a platform that companies use to start their own marketplaces, allows StoreAutomator to open up dozens of new sales channels to its users.
The three most important things in multichannel ecommerce
In the world of property, they say that the three things that matter most are location, location, location. The three most important things in multichannel ecommerce? Automation, automation, automation.
Selling online through multiple channels has a lot going for it, including:
- Higher sales – you can reach customers wherever they like to shop
- Higher profits – products may have higher margins on other channels
- Diversification – you have a lot less to lose if sales drop on one channel
But with those benefits comes a lot more complexity. Every channel works differently, and creating variable product data and management processes for each one will quickly become overwhelming.
Automation takes all those differences and accommodates them in one system. Instead of duplicating information and having slightly different processes for each channel, you’ll find that:
- Rules are set up once, then data is mapped between channels automatically
- Orders are downloaded to one central system, so they can all be processed the same way
- Reporting works across all channels, so you can see how well products and brands are doing as a whole
Once the system has been configured, StoreAutomator makes selling on multiple channels as straightforward as selling on one channel. That’s the power of automation.
Try StoreAutomator free for 15 days or call 973-542-2213 for more information.
This post was sponsored by StoreAutomator.
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