Benefits of multichannel thinking

1. Acquire new customers who might otherwise not have discovered your store.
   1. Increase sales by an average of 50%.75
2. Win business from customers who prefer to shop via marketplaces.

A Worldwide Marketplace

E-commerce channels such as Amazon and eBay provide retailers with an opportunity to reach out to a far larger customer base. Although it is possible to simply open an account with such retailers and upload products, a huge benefit of Shopify is that it now allows full integration with some of the most respected brands on the planet.

At Blackbelt Commerce, we not only fully understand the many benefits of multichannel e-commerce sales, but our team of experienced Shopify developers, along with our extensive Shopify SEO expertise, means we can offer all the support and guidance you need to enter the global marketplace.

eBay alone boasts 170 million active buyers worldwide as well as 1.1 billion listings; as reported by Statista.com

Shopify launched its integration with eBay in October 2017 for merchants based in the U.S. Products and services were sold in USD. By adding this new sales channel, merchants no longer have to manually enter inventory information about product names and descriptions, quantities or prices. It is all synced instantly.

A further benefit of the integration is that all orders placed on eBay are automatically imported to Shopify. This allows merchants to process orders from the two platforms in one place. Messages sent from eBay buyers are also visible on Shopify. This eliminates the need for merchants to move back and forth between the two platforms.

Leveraging Multiple Sales Channels Means You:

• Spend less time trying to change customer behavior.

• Allow customers to shop and buy where they feel most comfortable.

• Increase social media likes and follows.

• Acquire new customer contact details for future marketing campaigns.

Customer-Centric Commerce

Competing in a wider marketplace such as eBay means improving performance when it comes to the quality of your goods and services. Although sales may be made through the new channels, a proportion of customers will also visit your store directly to check out your operation before deciding whether to make a purchase.

Blackbelt Commerce realizes that when it comes to impressing your customers, you need to combine all business practices. By integrating an effective and beautiful image gallery, offering multiple payment options such as Shopify PayPal integration and ensuring your template is user-friendly and easy to navigate, you’re increasing conversion rates. Providing stellar levels of customer service will also become of even greater importance. Always think about introducing the

Positive feedback drives sales, so turn your existing customers into your top salespeople.

While receiving positive customer feedback is always essential to your own e-commerce store, it becomes even more critical when selling on other channels. Sites such as eBay rely on feedback being given or received on every single transaction. Having such information publicly available to potential customers means that even a small slip-up can dramatically affect your company’s rating.

• Reviews create credibility for your site and products.

• Feedback allows you to adjust your offerings based on product popularity.

• Reviews can have a positive impact on SEO.

Although a slip of one or two percent from a perfect 100 may not seem like much, it could be enough to persuade a potential customer that another merchant is a better prospect and lose you sales. You can increase the amount of positive feedback you receive by indirectly asking satisfied customers and happy shoppers to leave you a review. This is done through a series of carefully constructed post-purchase messages.

The Multichannel Benefits & Advantages

Consumer behavior has changed dramatically in recent years.

Whereas once consumers purchased around 75% of their goods directly from retailers, that percentage is now significantly less than 10%.

This means that if your e-commerce business has 100% of direct sales, you are missing out on the 90% of e-commerce activity taking place on other channels.

Once you make the decision to begin selling through multiple channels, it’s important to keep track of what is being sold to make marketing spends more efficient. One way to achieve this is to make use of different discount codes and coupons for different channels. Shopify makes this easy.

You can use a Shopify discount code to:

• Increase customer loyalty.

• Boost conversion rates.

• Attract new customers.

Bigger, Better Branding

Boosting brand recognition is one way of boosting your sales on other platforms. The more recognizable the name of your company is, the more confidence consumers will have in making purchases, either directly or through integrated channels. In addition to selling on multiple channels, you can also utilize the Shopify affiliate app to raise your profile further.

The Blackbelt Commerce Shopify cheat sheet makes it easy to make a wide range of adjustments to your store. It also allows you to customize it to your exact specifications.

Adding integration to other channels means you may need to change the URLs of some of the pages of your e-commerce store. This will be done as you add new elements and redesign existing ones. If customers have bookmarked pages or received emails containing links to those pages, they will receive a page error in their browser when they try to connect to these links. To prevent this from happening, our Shopify redirect plugin, which you can find in our product page will ensure the original URL points the visitor towards the new correct address. This tool is especially helpful if you are moving to Shopify from another e-commerce platform.