4 reasons why retailers should integrate their webshop with Amazon

Amazon should be considered a nice add-on to tap into a new marketplace for retailers. Photo: Courtesy of Garden Connect.

Garden Connect offers its insight into what benefits integrating an online webshop with Amazon can offer a garden centre retailer.

Retail

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25 March 2020

The team at Garden Connect seeks to showcase how and why garden centre retailers should consider integrating their webshop with Amazon and the benefits it could pose to their business

For those business that already are running RetailVista or OpSuite and have their webshop integrated with Garden Connect, they can start selling on Amazon within days. The Garden Connect platform is fully integrated with both EPoS systems and will save businesses a lot of time.

To understand how your retail’s EPoS system will be integrated with the Garden Connect platform, depending on the EPoS you use, Garden Connect will make three, near real-time synchronisations, between the EPoS and your webshop, broken down into the following categories:

Products
- Prices.
- Promotions.
- Stock.
- SKU/EAN.
- Any additional information you want to sync.
Customers
- Personal data.
- Shipping information.
- Loyalty information (if applicable).
Orders
- All order information.

By integrating your webshop with the RetailVista or OpSuite EPoS, you don’t need to enter all this information manually anymore. The team of developers at Garden Connect can develop any integration so you’re not tied to a fixed plugin or piece of software from third parties.

Now that the integration is laid out, check out the benefits it can bring to your business.

1. A wider audience

Having your own webshop is always the first step. Purely using Amazon is likened to opening a garden centre within a competitor’s retail operation. It doesn’t make sense to fully rely on a company who is very welcoming to your competitors and is selling part of your product range as well.

Instead, you should consider Amazon as a nice add-on to tap into a new marketplace.

With Amazon, you can reach customers who have never heard of your garden centre; far away from your location, yet very interested in buying your products.

Yes, you have to pay a commission to Amazon, but this commission covers all marketing involved in generating the sale. The Amazon commission is more or less equal to the costs per sale via Google Ads or affiliate marketing. It’s high, but it’s reasonable.

2. Quick and easy

Once your Garden Connect webshop launched, it’s easy to integrate with Amazon.

Just go to Amazon to open your Sellercentral account.

Once sorted, the Garden Connect support team will finalise the integration. After that, all you need to do is to link products from your webshop to Amazon.

To make this process as easy as possible, Garden Connect have made it so that adding items to Amazon is one checkbox away.

Based on the SKU/EAN, Garden Connect matches the product with Amazon. If you want, you can enter an Amazon-only price which can be higher or lower than your current price. If you don’t enter this field, the regular price will be used.

Since prices are being sourced from your EPoS, all price changes are almost instantly visible on your website and on your Amazon account.

Are you running low on stock? Garden Connect checks the stock of your products every few minutes on your EPoS. Products will be removed from your webshop and/or Amazon if they fall below a threshold which you can set.

In other words, it’s impossible to sell products you don’t have in stock.

And that’s it, just tick the box and you’re good to go.

3. Your orders are synced automatically

As explained earlier, all webshop orders are pushed back to your RetailVista or OpSuite EPoS automatically. This ensures your stock and accounts on your EPoS are always up to date.

Your team can also work from within your EPoS so they don’t need to learn different systems to manage orders.

But what about orders from Amazon?

Garden Connect automatically process all orders from Amazon and they will be available as webshop orders on the Garden Connect platform and on your EPoS. So for you, it doesn’t matter where the orders are coming from, you can just process them as usual.

All customer data and order data will be available straight after receiving the order from Amazon.

4. Increased brand awareness

Having your own Amazon store will increase your visibility and brand awareness. It’s not unusual for online shoppers to look up the webshop of a company once they’ve seen the name on Amazon.

In fact, a lot of people do that to check if they can get better prices.

Amazon is a trustworthy party. Being a partner of them helps you to build your own brand. It might not be best to hang posters in-store since it will scare away customers from your centre to Amazon, but it is worth mentioning smartly on your webshop.

The cons

Given the benefits Amazon can offer, there are a few objections you should consider.

First of all, Amazon focuses on low prices and quick deliveries. If you’re unable to accommodate that, opening an account on Amazon may not be entirely suitable.

Secondly, selling your self-imported products is a bit more complicated than described above. If you don’t have official barcodes, you need to follow a different process which can be a hassle. Once you’ve done it, however, you’re the only one selling those products which will result in a higher margin.

And last but not least, your competition is watching you. Amazon and other competitors are constantly monitoring sales and will try to compete on price or delivery options.

It’s up to you to weigh the pros and cons of selling on Amazon. At least you don’t have to worry about the technical aspect of selling on Amazon. That’s all in place and fully integrated with your EPoS.

Do you want to learn more about the options to integrate your webshop with Amazon? Contact Garden Connect via info@gardenconnect.com or call +44 203 475 5541.

Read More: Garden Connect Plants Products retail Trade