A Competitive Advantage for eBay & Amazon in Plain Sight

Howdy,

For any product based business there is a competitive advantage hiding in plain sight, it’s so obvious when you spot it and lethal when you implement them into your business.

As you’re about to find out, kits (also known as bundles) are lethal.

Kits help your customers, kits help you sell more products, kits help you increase your average order value and kits also help you gain an advantage over your competitors.

So what are Kits?

Kits are simply bundles of products that are put together with products that would normally be bought at the same time.

The best way of showing you how they work is you give you an example.

One of my tasks for today was to buy a network cable testing kit and a pokey-thing to push down the wires into network cables (a punch tool), so straight onto eBay and I filtered to UK only sellers.

You can take a look at the eBay category here http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/Cabling-Tools-/51169/i.html and below I’ve included a screenshot of the page I could see.

Notice how 2 of the top 4 items are actually for more than one product?
eBay Kits Example

If we take the upper item as an example, this listing contains the following tools:

  1. A punch tool
  2. Cable test tool
  3. A crimp tool & stripper

That was me sold. The listing had everything I needed, a UK seller and promptly went off and purchased it.

Make things easy for your customers

Making kits of products aren’t just confined to networking tools, it works in any category on any site. Bundling products together “just makes sense” when done right, there are 3 simple reasons for this:

Firstly it helps your customers.

So using my purchase as an example, that eBay listing had everything I needed in one go.

The seller had taken the time to put everything I would need (bar the cable, which I already had) into a single listing and made it super easy for me to make a single purchase.

No waiting around for separate deliveries, one purchase, one delivery and job done.

This genre of product & related eBay categories is a brilliant category set to use, because if you dig a little deeper you’ll find many businesses have already caught on to this and are making listings that contain cable, sockets, wall plates, jacks, cable ties, punch down tools and even including the screws needed!

The word we’re looking for here, is “convenience”.

It makes the purchase more convenient for your customers to buy a bundle of related products in one go, rather than buying separately.

Note: Are you already thinking of two products that you have that would go together nicely? If you are, jot them down on a piece of paper and keep it to hand so when more spring to mind, you can record them quickly.

You sell more.

Instead of, sorry “as well as” (woohaa that was a close shave there, always do both!) listing each product separately, putting products that naturally go together into a single listing, means that the price goes up, yay!

Not only do you gain a higher average order value, you’re also getting through more products, more quickly (which means you order more frequently from your supplier(s) and thus potentially savings to be made there).

At no point so far have I mentioned that you should discount the pricing because you’re putting two or more items into a kit.

When you start to spot these on eBay, Amazon or on websites, when you look more closely, you’ll frequently spot that some kits have a higher price than what they would be when bought separately.  

The first reaction is always to push the price down, however, do keep in mind that customers will pay for convenience and that because there is now more than just one product in the listing, that the final delivery weight & dimensions go up. Thus you’re likely to be paying more for the delivery to your customer.

A huge tip here is to price upwards when you first start creating your own kits.

It’s all about making profit at the end of the day, so go upwards first. If a customer queries it (which they won’t and I’m adding this line to reassure you), just say it costs more to pick & ship them together.

Other Considerations

I felt it important to highlight a couple of considerations when it comes to kits, because it’s not all champagne and roses.

Firstly factor in that it will take extra time to create the kits.

This is as simple as picking two separate products at picking time in the warehouse. In more complex kits, this could mean many separate picks and even the pre-building of kits to speed up the dispatch process.

Not all multi-channel software supports the creation & stock control of kits.

For example ShipWorks, an American shipping tool didn’t manage bundles from Magento properly for a while. So do check that they are supported in the software tool you’re using.

Quantity is and is not a kit.

Let me explain this one a little further.

According to Amazon, you’re not supposed to make kits of products based just upon quantity. However, this loosely interpreted even by Amazon themselves, such as these batteries, they’ve separated quantity out into separate ASIN’s, it’s the same product, just packaged in different boxes (in multiples of packs of 4 too!).

Note: And yes this does mean a new barcode (EAN, UPC etc..) and ASIN for Amazon, which means a separate product.

The same for eBay too, but many products come in packs, say a dozen or more. If you’re going to create an eBay listing that has quantity as a variation option, don’t call it quantity (eBay won’t let you do this anyway), instead call it something like “Pack Size”.

Side note: I’m thinking of a mastermind webinar we did a couple of weeks back on researching products to sell on eBay. “gold tea lights” was the product suggested by one of the sellers who attended. We soon worked out that while tea-lights are sold in packs, weddings were a consideration, several times a month customers would buy loads of them.

So packs of 12’s would be a pain for those types of customer, so one of the suggestions was to make wedding packs for 48, 72, 96 and more. This pushed the pack value above £100 in several cases.

Gain an Advantage

Kits are all about convenience for your customers and if you haven’t already, you’ll start to spot them being used everywhere.

Manufacturers cottoned on to this a long time ago, this is while you’ll find assortment packs. Using washers as an example here (yes you guessed it, I’m a bloke so most examples here are tool related) you’ll find O-ring’s rarely sold as packets of just 1, they’ll be in assortment packs. Higher value and more convenient for someone like me & you.

For me, buying the cable tester and punch tool together, saved me from multiple purchases, most likely from multiple sellers and means I get one package delivered.

The seller I purchased from, they gained an advantage by selling the tools separately and (note the AND here!) together in a kit. They doubled or more their chances of making a purchase by doing this.

Creating unique kits of products that go well together gives you an advantage over your competitors.

They won’t have the same kits as you for a while at least (well until they cotton-on to how successful you’re going to be with them! Which could be weeks or months, while you’ve been nailing them in the meantime).

Here are a couple of examples to get your creative juices going:

  • A Nerf gun and an extra pack of darts (maybe two extra packs of darts)
  • A dress and a matching handbag
  • A set of pliers, bull-nose, pointed and nippers
  • Drain rods and attachments
  • Sanding pads in multiple grits
  • A whiteboard rubber and a set of marker pens
  • A fancy dress outfit, a wig, a mustache and face paints

Think about your products, how could you create a kit of two or more products, that naturally go together?

If you’re already using kits, how have you found their success for your business?

Let me know in the comments below.

As always, to your continued success,

Matt

Co-Founder of UnderstandingE & Founder of WidgetChimp

 

Magento 2.0 Released – Should I Upgrade Before Christmas?

Howdy,

Magento 2.0 was officially released yesterday, however…

Before you run away and think “ooooo shiny new toy” with Magento 2.0 there are a couple of practical things to consider.

Before we start, basically Magento 2.0 is the following:

  1. The user interface in the admin area has changed a bit
  2. A rewrite of the same features as Magento 1.X but using jQuery
  3. It now uses Composer for managing packages/updates

Note:

If you’re wondering what jQuery & Composer are: jQuery is the defacto standard for making Javascript work across all the different browsers types. eBay, Amazon & LinkedIn use jQuery. And composer, that is a tool for dependency management in PHP (what Magento uses) and makes updates easier to manage.

It’s really important to note, we knew a long time ago that they would be releasing Magento 2.0 at this time of the year and our advice has been explicitly:

“Don’t consider upgrading at least the middle of 2016.”

The reason for this is that there isn’t a clear upgrade path from 1.9.X to the new 2.0 version. Extensions will need to be migrated and also it’s unlikely your theme will be completely compatible with the new version.

And then if we take into consideration the time of the year, November, changing anything at this time of the year is never suggested.

Also as you’ve learned from myself & Dave over at UnderstandingE during the past 2-3 years, with Magento updates, always let someone else find the hidden features and wait for the minor updates to come out before upgrading.

With that said, I’m personally excited about the release.

The admin area is a lot, lot easier to use and yes things have moved around quite a bit, once you get over the hurdle of working out where setting x or y or z has been moved too, it’s actually a lot faster to make changes, update products and so on… I like it, you’ll like it.

But keeping one foot on the ground, it’s completely the wrong time of the year to even think about using Magento 2.0, theme and extension developers won’t have caught up yet. While Magento 2.0 is a huge step in the right direction, but just hang back a while and let the dust settle.

As always, to your continued success,

Matt Ogborne
Co-Founder of UnderstandingE

The Ultimate Guide to Multi Channel Software Book

The Ultimate Guide to MUlti Channel SoftwareHowdy,

I know that Multi Channel software can help you work smarter, save you time and help make your business grow.

However… Do you find Multi Channel Software confusing too?

One of the challenges that I have had and I’m sure you’ve struggled with over the past few years is working how which Multi Channel software is right for you and your business.

So I’ve written the Ultimate Guide to Multi Channel software especially for you.

If you already know myself & that any such book is going to be worth the read, click here to download your free +70 page copy.

If not, here’s an insight into the book you can currently download for free and have in your hands in seconds.

Use the form below to download your +70 page, Plain English guide to Multi Channel software:

Enter your details to download immediately:

We respect your privacy

The Ultimate Guide to Multi Channel Software

Honeycomb-of-magento-ebay-and-amazonThe book is broken up into 12 chapters and first five chapters explain everything you need to know about Multi Channel software.

In chapter 1 you’ll learn:

  • What is Multi Channel software
  • The typical path that businesses follow to using software
  • The “Be Everywhere” strategy (more on this shortly)
  • What is the “Best” Multi Channel software
  • And how Multi Channel software can help your business

This entire book assumes no prior knowledge to Multi Channel software and I don’t stop at just an overview, you’ll also learn that:

  • You need a key, aka the Stock Number to keep stock levels in-sync
  • There are risks to being everywhere & that these can be reduced by using rules
  • An inventory management system can help you manage small & large numbers of products
  • Templates will great speed up the listing process and add “quality” for each and every listing
  • By combining orders into a single screen can help you process orders in bulk, saving you time
  • Couriers can be integrated and you can apply business rules to orders to change the delivery method

I’m keeping this brief as there are over 70 pages explaining how Multi Channel software can help you, how this software works and how it can help your business in 100% “Plain English”

Then together we’ll look at the different generations of Multi Channel software and I’ve included two simple to use tools that you can use for your business to help you work out which Multi Channel software is right for your business today and in a years time.

The Be Everywhere Strategy

In the previous book that I wrote on the “One Simple Rule to Sell More Online” we homed in on how your business is being seen by customers.

The “Be-Everywhere” strategy is the other side to this, this is being everywhere where your customers are when they’re in buying mode.

So this isn’t social media marketing on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc… where your customers are in “social mode”, this is on eBay, on Amazon and on your own eCommerce website where your customer is in “buying mode“.

The math here is really simple:

More sales channels
= More eyeballs looking at your products
= A higher chance of selling
= More sales
= More profit

It helps you “be everywhere” your customers are and manage the processes in the background to help you work smarter each day.

Be there with them too.

Grow Your Business

I know that that Multi Channel software can appear confusing to begin. However, Multi Channel software can help you and your business grow.

The Ultimate Guide to Multi Channel SoftwareIt’s a decision that I personally put off for several months and it cost me thousands. Ask anyone in this industry and they’ll tell you immediately that the businesses, that employ the tools that you find in Multi Channel software will help you and your business grow.

With Multi Channel software you can:

  • Create better quality listings
  • Leverage templates to expedite the listing process
  • Open your business to cheaper resources, such as outsourcing
  • Sell on eBay, Sell on Amazon
  • Sell on your own website(s)
  • Manage orders from ALL your sales channels
  • Keep stock levels correct across them all
  • Work smarter each day

And I’m only scratching the surface here for everything you’re about to learn in your copy of this book.

Which Software is Right for You?

The simple to use tools in this book will help you work out the true cost of how much Multi Channel software is going to cost you.

You can compare one provider against the other and while it will take you a couple of weeks to fully leverage the tools you’ll find in Multi Channel software, it doesn’t need to be expensive anymore. You can start on a tiny budget of just £302 for an entire year (or £25.17, 31.36€, $42.09 USD or $45.07 AUD if worked out monthly).

I’ve also included a tool that you can use to compare the features by giving you all the questions you need the answers to and compare any 2nd Generation Multi Channel software this includes Linnworks, Seller Express, StoreFeeder, ChannelGrabber, BrightPearl, ChannelAdvisor, eSellerPro, Cascade, ChannelUnity, Seller Dynamics and the 3rd Generation too.

Download Your Copy Right Now

Use the form below to download your +70 page, Plain English guide to Multi Channel software:

Enter your details to download immediately:

We respect your privacy

You can start reading this book immediately and I’ll also email a copy over to as well so that you can read it at anytime you wish to.

I want your business to be a success too and I’ll be in touch a few days after you have downloaded the book to see how you’re getting on and including some extra tips & suggestions to accompany the book.

This really is the “Ultimate” guide to Multi Channel software, nothing like this has been written before and with that said,

To your success!

Matthew Ogborne
Author of The Ultimate Guide to Multi Channel Software

How to Sell on eBay using Magento Webinar Recording

Howdy,

Below is the recording in full HD of the webinar held on Friday.

We show you how easy it is to sell on eBay using Magento & the eBay endorsed extension called M2E Pro in just 60 minutes.

There were over 200 questions asked and while we did our best to answer them all live, sadly many were missed. So if you go here http://understandinge.com/ebay-magento-webinar-recording/ you’ll be able to read every single answer to the questions asked.

If you’re tight on time and want to get to the meat of the webinar, skip the fluffy starter stuff and get stuck in at 16 minutes in or follow this link.

Enjoy :)

 

We’ll show you:

  1. How to install Magento live with you ( takes 2 minutes and 5 or so clicks )
  2. A tour of Magento for the first time
  3. How to create your first product in Magento
  4. How to install the M2E Pro extension
  5. How to configure M2E pro following their advanced setup wizard
  6. List a product live on to eBay
  7. Revise the item live on eBay
  8. Purchase the product
  9. Process the order
  10. Confirm that the shipping details have been updated on eBay

All in 60 minutes without a “degree in nerd” being required.

And remember:

  • No sales person will call you
  • You pick & choose what you need “off the shelf”
  • M2EPro is the only eBay endorsed extension for Magento
  • Magento is Open Source & there are thousands of extensions available, this is just one of them
  • There is a community of over 1,000 business owners just like you on UnderstandingE to help you out ( if needed )
  • And of course, over 70 full HD video tutorials right here to show the how and the why to setup your own multichannel software

Matt

Sell on eBay using Magento in 60 Minutes – Live Webinar

Update:

Howdy,

The webinar took place on Friday 2nd May. A recording will be made available this week and I’ll pop a blog post up for you the moment it’s ready.

The blog post is now ready, see here http://lastdropofink.co.uk/tools/magento/sell-ebay-using-magento-webinar-recording/

Matt

Howdy,

This Friday, 2nd May at 2pm myself & Dave are holding a free webinar and you’ll learn how easy it is to sell on eBay using Magento.

We wanted to make it a challenge for us and for you to be able to get the most out of 60 minutes. So we decided that starting from scratch would be the most challenging for us, but also help you the most.

eBay Magento and M2E ProAfter all the best place is to start from the beginning right?

We’ll be starting from nothing and you’re going to learn the following:

  1. That Magento only takes 2 minutes to install
  2. The basic UK settings for Magento
  3. How to create your first product in Magento
  4. What attributes are and how they’ll help you list smarter on eBay
  5. How to install the eBay endorsed M2E Pro extension
  6. How to list onto eBay using Magento
  7. And how you can revise live eBay listings easily
  8. How to process orders from eBay in Magento
  9. And heaps more

All in just 60 minutes.

< Sorry registration is now closed, check the UnderstandingE blog for the recording once live. >

Sell on eBay Using Magento?

You might not have known this, back in 2011 eBay bought Magento after having a 49% stake for quite some time.

Not a bad choice if you ask me, as Magento powers over 26% of the top 1 million eCommerce websites so it was only natural considering Magento’s open source base that sooner or later an extension would be created to allow business owners like you to sell on eBay using Magento.

M2E Pro (which stands for Magento to eBay), an extension for Magento does just that and the cool thing about this extension, it does everything you would expect from multi-channel software, but without the whopping monthly fees or a cut of your sales (and no sales person will call or nag you either).

eBay have been subsidising the extension for the past few years and is set to continue for the next 3 or more years or so. Other marketplaces such as Amazon are supported too.

M2E Pro has been downloaded over 50,000 times by business owners like you across the globe and has a rating of 4.5 stars out of 5 over 179 reviews (really high for a free extension!).

Here are just a few things that Magento & the M2E Pro extension can help you achieve:

  • Sell on ALL 23 major eBay sites
  • Manage stock levels & prices across your marketplace accounts
  • Help you sell internationally, locally into the other eBay sites (Cross Border Trade)
  • Sell on eBay using custom listing templates with comprehensive keywords available
  • Revise live eBay listings
  • Collect and manage eBay orders from your Magento sales orders dashboard
  • Everything you would expect from 3rd Generation multi-channel software

Magento ConnectMagento CE is Open Source, there are thousands of extensions available on Magento connect (the online library of extensions) off the shelf.

If you need something that doesn’t exist (most cases, unlikely), because it’s written with the two internet staples, PHP & MySQL that’s not a problem. There are millions of developers available that can help you.

Oh and of course, you can have a Magento website too, but that’s optional.

So just because you’re using Magento, you don’t actually need to use it for your website, what I’m sure you’re most interested in right now is the stock control, inventory management and sales order processing abilities for eBay (but more on the website in a few moments).

All the major couriers have integrations to Magento, including extensions for Royal Mail DMO, the same goes for accounting too, Sage, Xero, QuickBooks, Kashflow, they can all be integrated with Magento.

magento-website-themeBack onto the topic of using Magento as a website.

Owning a Magento website doesn’t need to be expensive or complicated.

The one thing you cannot skimp on is decent web hosting, so none of that £1.99 hosting. You’ll need web hosting in the £20 mark per month and the good news is that there is specialised Magento web hostings all over the world, SimpleServers in the UK or SimpleHelix in the USA for example.

As for a great looking Magento website design.

If you’re on a budget, how’s $100?

There is a Magento theme called Ultimo which has been sold over 7,600 times and comes with free support & updates. Plus we’ll be including a step by step video course on how to design your own Magento website with zero coding over at UnderstandingE.

The Webinar

I’ve got all excited and gone slightly off topic. The webinar….

< Sorry registration is now closed, check the UnderstandingE blog for the recording once live. >

It’s free to join and we’ll show you how easy it is to get started.

The webinar will be held live and that means if you have any questions you can ask them there and there.

So with that said,

See you on Friday, it’s going to be fun!

Matt

A Different Take on Multichannel Software

Howdy,

Two questions for you:

  • What if multichannel software didn’t have to cost the earth?
  • What if you knew of a way to deliver multi channel software that can meet the needs thousands of cool people?

What would you do?

Sit on it? Work out a business plan to bundle it up and sell it as typical 2nd generation software? Or would you go a different route after trying both?

I’d like to share a story of what happened last year, when looking for multichannel software to launch a new business onto eBay, Amazon and to build their own website and the typical options out there, just didn’t work.

 

Backed into a Corner

backed into a cornerBack in March 2013 we were looking for multichannel software to launch a new business onto eBay, Amazon and to build their own website.

The natural option eSellerPro wasn’t an option and neither of us were fans of ChannelAdvisor, plus both of these were really expensive for a start up (you’re talking +£500 a month and £2,000 upfront costs), so we picked the next best option.

After 3 weeks in all the stuff I took for granted was missing.

  • What do you mean we can’t import 61,000 products in one go?
  • What do you mean we’ve got to assign one of the variations as being the parent sku?
  • And where on earth are child sku’s?

As we dug deeper we soon realised that the normal alternative wasn’t going to work (I’m doing my best not to name them), it was so far away from what I was used to. What I took for granted that should be in multi-channel software, well… was missing.

This just isn’t working out is it? What are the options?

I don’t know we’ll try a different provider, after a phone call they also wanted £500 a month and 1% of sale because we had soo many products (61,000 is apparently lot for most companies).

This is just nuts, how could you start a multi-channel business without the software that was so sorely needed? There was no way this could be done manually. There was just too many products to do it with.

What about?

Magento Usage Statistics Feb 2013Magento?

It can cope with that number of products easily, it can handle complex product relationships, variations, multi variations and so on…

After all it’s the most popular open source software to build eCommerce sites with and powers 26% of the top 1 million eCommerce with (see here), so it’s at least got to have a decent founding.

So that’s the inventory & order management part taken care of. Ok what about the eBay & Amazon part?

Why don’t we give M2E Pro a whirl? It can’t be that bad and hell it ain’t going to cost us £500 smackers to get started with is it?

So that’s what we did and what we ended up with something quite different.

Note: If you’ve never heard of M2EPro before, it’s an extension for Magento that allows you to use Magento for the order & inventory management and allows you to sell on to the marketplaces using the same inventory. Oh and it’s subsidised by eBay too.

Sipping Coffee

CoffeeDid we just replicate eSellerPro?

As near as dammit we had.

Yea not everything & all the bells & whistles, but it was close. Scarily close.

An import system that could take all 61,152 products in one hit, a templating system that allowed us to make comprehensive listings onto eBay with keywords, the stock levels were kept up to date pretty much in the same manner as what the Channel Profile does.

And for orders, well the framework was there to automatically deliver the orders to the supplier, then once the order was shipped, grab the tracking numbers and delivery back into Magento which in-turn, M2E Pro would pick up and notify eBay & Amazon.

Holy moo-moo, what if we bundle this up into a business?

So we did, we put the numbers down on paper, moved them, added, removed and that’s where we got stuck.

The numbers just didn’t work.

It wasn’t really until year 2 where after a huge amount of risk a lot of unknowns that such a business would hit any form of black. And that’s where it got curious…

If we couldn’t make the numbers work on software that was basically free, how the hell do the existing providers actually turn a profit? And that’s where things started to make sense, they do but they don’t. SaaS products/services tend to be highly lucrative,  however the life is being sucked out of them by bloat.

So to support N number of businesses you need N number of support staff, N number of developers, N number of account managers and so on… Humans need humans, especially if you’re looking at a high monthly fee product and especially one that takes a percentage of their sale. It just doesn’t scale very well.

Basically, none of us particularly liked the numbers, great idea but we were all out.

Now What?

Icon-round-Question_markI’m sat there with the tools and the knowledge to make a massive, positive difference to the world. But the normal thinking of bundling this up doesn’t work.

WTF now?

Dave, what if we gave it away for free?

Dave looked at me oddly.

Yea seriously what if we gave away the knowledge on how to do this?

It’s not the original business model, but we know that won’t work, the numbers say it won’t. So why don’t we take a completely different tack and share. I know that if you do something with passion, the money part kinda sorts itself out, I’ve seen this time and time again. I know it works.

Note: This is not for the faint of heart, you have to have some heavy form of commitment to even consider doing something like this, a topic for a different day

So that’s what we decided.

Show the world how they could gain access to low-cost multi-channel software, that didn’t cost £500 a month, didn’t come with all the expensive bloat and if you needed something extra then you bought it off the shelf, without paying oodles to support 100% of a product for which you were only likely to be using a mere 40%.

We hammered out a vision that encapsulated this, a goal for us to follow that followed this line of thinking and we came up with this:

“A hybrid of both free and paid for open source software where multi-channel business owners can pick & choose the tools that suit their business, both now and in the future.”

Quite a hefty goal, but that’s where we’re swinging for.

Last Year

And that was back last September.

Since then we’ve been working our little socks off, mainly because I set such a ridiculously high goal that we’d have to think differently. Did we hit the final goal? No, but we got bloody close though.

We called it “UnderstandingE”, a name that I been sat on for a few years, it seemed perfect for what we wanted to do and that’s what we rolled with.

What I needed TEN Years ago

When working at Marketworks & eSellerPro, I always kept in the back of my mind, what did I need when selling online. “How does this port to what the person to I’m speaking to right now?” and crucially “How does that port to the multichannel software that I working with right now?

I think that’s the key reasons why working at eSellerPro was like being a pig-in-poop, if it was a good idea and the demand was there, then it got put in. That was some wild times, but ultimately ended up in a product that has issues dealing with such a veracious amount of development being applied to it.

Basically in hindsight, it was overkill. Really good overkill I hasten to add and nothing has even got anywhere near it since.

Stuck in a rut

The thing is, businesses that are using current software tools they’re used to paying silly amounts each month and there does come a time where the brighter business owners work out that they’ve just paid way over £30,000 (say $50K USD) for software that yes has helped them to get them to the stage where they are at, but for that kind of money it’s starting to hurt and hurt bad.

Some of you reading this you’re just too far down the line, you’re too comfortable with paying this kind of money, as much as you hate it, you’re stuck with it.

And my advice for a long, long time has been not to move software providers, it’s painful and doesn’t happen over night. It’s really up to you to work out how much of a difference it would make to you and your business.

A Different Way

But what we can do is make a difference to the businesses that have not got to this stage of lock-in yet, that can still be nimble.

So thinking back to the original questions:

  • What if you knew of a way to deliver multi channel software that met the needs thousands of cool people?

Yea I’m standing up (Dave too) and are firmly planting ourselves off the fence and are saying there is a different way. It doesn’t have to cost oodles, we’re not saying it’s free, but we’re saying that it’s a damn-sight cheaper than anything else out there and it’ll get you far, wayyy far down the line.

And there is nothing quite like putting money-where-your-mouth is, so that’s what we’ve done.

UnderstandingE went live on January 1st 2014 at around 4pm (kicking & fighting, we had to do an emergency site move the day before).

It’s not finished, it will never be finished. But we’ve started and that’s what matters.

Rabbit Hole

rabbit holeLet’s see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

I don’t know where it leads, but to be honest it doesn’t matter where it ends, as it’s about the journey to find the end.

Fancy coming along for the journey?

Whack the button below and get dug in.

[button size=”large” style=”round” color=”blue” url=”http://understandinge.com/”]Say Hello to the 3rd Generation[/button]

Matt

PS. If you’re looking for me to write anything about eSellerPro over the next year, it’s doubtful. Even with my ability to remember screens and how things interact, that knowledge has been put aside, what’s been left undocumented is just that undocumented. It’s time to move on.

Why is Content Marketing Like a Bicycle Wheel?

This very topic came up earlier as we recorded another Podcast for The Entrepreneur’s Corner with John Hayes and it’s the metaphor that was used to explain the step into email marketing with using a blog for your business as the hub of the activities.

You may remember John from two other Podcast’s we did together, “Social Marketing Is a Waste of Time” & also we discussed one of the books he published “Becoming THE Expert“, if you haven’t listened to these yet you can pick them up on iTunes here.

John is covering “Why is Content Marketing Like a Bicycle Wheel?” in a free Webinar next Wednesday at 2pm GMT how to leverage content and treat it as a bike wheel. And because it’s John we know it’ll be in plain English and you’ll have lots of actionable take-aways.

  • How to find the inspiration to create compelling content
  • How various content marketing channels work together to build a watertight strategy
  • How to use email to generate leads, sell more and maintain relationships while reducing your reliance on (high cost) paid advertising
  • How to engage your prospects with social media as well as win local, national and global media coverage with well-placed PR Campaigns
  • How to improve your rankings on the major search engines, shorten the sales cycle and reduce the need for cold calling techniques

When & Where?

This is taking place on Weds 27th November at 2pm GMT.

To register, click the monstrously huge button below:

[button size=large style=round color=blue align=left url=https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=704413&sessionid=1&key=69B1E7EEE514DDBDC2DCB335F1A067EE&sourcepage=register]Register to Join the Free Webinar with John Hayes [/button]

We’ll see you there!

Matt

 

30 Seconds of Silence as the Penny Dropped

We were on a call yesterday with what you could say is your “typical” multi-channel business owner, in many ways he’s probably just like you.

Business is doing well, it’s been a slog this year and literally this weekend has just started to show signs of picking up. One eBay account, one Amazon account, a website that could do better and nothing really that complex to put high demands on pretty much any of the 2nd generation multi-channel software providers.

But why on earth did he go completely silent on us, for what felt like hours?

Read on and you’ll find out why.

 

Typical Business As Usual?

Being in the most demanding categories for the marketplaces, fashion, he has to deal with complex inventory, sizes, colours, mixed sizing, demanding buyers, demanding marketplaces and most of all, the challenge of seasonality.

Fashion has to be the #1 toughest category to do well in online and this chap is rocking it & is set for his highest turnover Christmas ever.

On the other hand, in many ways it’s not a complicated setup they have, we’re only talking one eBay account with a couple of thousand listings, Amazon does really well for them now they’re settled in and from an operational standpoint, the team is experienced.

The booking in system for new lines is fast as they use excel & a couple of macros to create the variations & the order processing system is simple, no real warehouse control per-say, but a simple system that works and can manage 200-400 orders a day with ease.

Curiosity

As the conversation progressed he brought up the project me & Dave have been working on. He had seen a couple of the emails, read some of the articles and was wondering what was keeping us so busy. So we told him.

For the sake of this article and because he’s switching providers in January to the 3rd Generation we’re going to call him “Mohammed”, plus the numbers quoted are vague to protect his business.

The conversation went something like this:

Dave: “We’re building the training guides for the 3rd Generation of multi-channel software”

Mohammed: “So what does that mean exactly?”

Dave: “Well you know you’re using <removed> right now to manage, eBay, Amazon & your website?”

Mohammed: “Yes”

Dave: “Matt found a way of using Magento for exactly the same thing. You’ve heard of Magento?”

Mohammed: “Yea, I want to move our website to that after Christmas. We’ve been frustrated not being able to add anything to our current site”

Matt: “If you’ve looked at Magento, you’ll have seen it can handle fashion products just like yours, sizes, colours, shoe sizes etc… It has basic stock control and does pretty much everything you’re used to right now on your website.”

Mohammed: “Yes, my cousin uses it for his site and it does well”

Dave: “Matt was asked earlier this year to set up an eBay/Amazon & website business for a friend, he couldn’t use the software you were using as it’s too expensive so we had to look alternatives. He had already been working on Magento for a connector for eSellerPro, so knew it well. What he ended up realising was that Magento & an extension called M2E Pro could do pretty-much the same as the software you’re using”

Matt: “That’s right. They aren’t too dissimilar to your setup, but they had more products. Well 61,152 to be precise and roughly 2,400 variations. We were quoted £500 a month + 1% from one of the providers, it was a new business and there was no way that the business could afford that. So we have to look at other options

What I found was as Dave said, pretty much exactly what you have set up right now and we automated the supplier feeds in and the orders go off to the suppliers directly. We downloaded Magento for free and M2E Pro is also free because eBay subsidise it. He’s only just added his website now, as we’re using Magento not for the website part, but for the inventory & order management capabilities”

Mohammed: “Free & Free, I like the sound of this already”

Dave: “Yea we thought you would. The thing is besides the work the that Matt & the client put in, they’re only paying £114 a month for a server”

Mohammed: “What no commissions?”

Matt: “No commissions and the only reason he using such a ludicrously expensive server is because he complained about speed of one of my small servers. They’re not built for Magento, plus I didn’t want the hassle, so I got him a pair of xenon quad core processors, 16Gb of RAM and two SSD disks with hardware RAID 0 and dared him to complain about speed again. After that he never did, probably was a little over-kill if I’m honest”

Mohammed: “So he runs his business using Magento & M2E Pro, the same channels, has more inventory than us and pays £114 a month?”

Dave: “How much did you pay <removed> last month?”

Mohammed: “I’ll get the invoice, it’s here somewhere”

Mohammed: “Got it”

Silence

We heard the chair creak in the background, the sound of paper shuffling and then a deeply exhaled breath.

It must have only been 30 seconds or so.

But it felt like hours.

Finally

Dave finally asked, “did you find it?”

Indeed Mohammed has found his invoice, it had £1,500 on it  (approx $2,400 USD).

What I had set up for a client earlier this year can scale and for Mohammed came in at a tenth each month of what he’s paying right now and is set to save him around £17,000 – £19,000 next year.

UnderstandingE goes live on January 1st, what do you think he’ll be doing that day?

The Pieces are Almost a Picture

We’ll be open with you, the pieces of the puzzle are not all there yet, but we’re getting close, very close.

For Mohammed’s business, he’s going to need a couple of extensions to get all the backend features into place, two order extensions & two courier integrations (Royal Mail DMO was one of them) and a couple of the extensions we’ve been building to get him going. Plus we should never forget the training of the staff (which is where UnderstandingE comes in) and the time to migrate products between systems.

And on that note.

Say Hello to the 3rd Generation

We silently put the UnderstandingE site live a week or so ago. The reason why is simple, it doesn’t matter what you do for a launch party, it’s what you do for the next 6 years that truly matters.

While the guides are not published yet, they’re being released on January 1st, the forums are open and we are listening.

We’re listening to business owners like Mohammed and business owners like you.

Tell us what you need
Tell us what you cannot live without
Tell us how you want to innovate in your business once again
Rid your business of bills costing tens of thousands each year

And the best thing is…. We will show you how for free.

The 3rd Generation, everything you’ll need to know. It’s a click away (click here!!!!)

Come over & say hello to the 3rd Generation.

And we’ll see you there.

Matt & Dave

Sneak Peek at the 3rd Generation #2

We just received the following mockup from the team over at dZine-Hub and I have to share this with you as we think it looks Amazing!

Click the image below for full-size yummy-ness

UnderstandingE Login Page

What do you think?

Let me know in the comments box at the bottom of this page.

What’s The One Thing Missing from the 3rd Generation?

We’ve been working hard in the background trying to fill in as many blanks as we can so that when we go live in January we have all the bases covered for both new businesses, but established businesses as well.

However there is one thing this is missing and we need your help.

 

Keywords!

If you’ve used any of the current multi-channel software providers, most, if not all of these offer keywords (also known as macro’s or variables) that help you create informative & comprehensive eBay listings.

Even simple keywords like the image URL’s help you make great looking image galleries in your listings or maybe a keyword to bring through your domestic shipping cost, so you can add a simple line of text saying something like this:

“Our UK Delivery is just £1.99”.

The uses are almost endless.

How Big Sellers Manage Their eBay Listings

This is how the really big sellers on eBay make fantastic looking listings that look like they have uniquely made each listing, but they separated their data out in the management tool so that only the small bits of information, like a product title or bullet points need to be added.

This saves them countless hours each month when adding new products and when it comes to redesigning an eBay listing template, because the product data is removed and keywords are left in their place, upgrading or tweaking designs is made sooo much easier.

Note: If you have never come across this idea of keywords before, I’ve written two articles on this to show you exactly how they could work and reverse engineer a live eBay listing, you can find part 1 here and part 2 here. And if you’d like a glimpse at what you can potentially do with such keywords, see this article.

We Need Your Help

help-imageM2E Pro, one of the core components of the 3rd generation supports all the common Magento attribute values and you can even in add in an image gallery within a few clicks that looks great. But we’re missing some vital keywords and that’s where we need your help.

I’ve put together a comprehensive list of keywords that I know that you will need for the 3rd Generation (huh? 3rd generation, see here for that that is).

This is using my experience from the past 10 years, as a business owner that used eBay, two multi-channel software companies and hundreds of business I have  had the pleasure working with. We need these extra keywords and we need your help making the point to the development team over at M2E Pro that you need these too.

So… Myself & Dave need your help.

This is How You Can Help

Note this is not only for yourself for when you migrate to the 3rd generation, this will help every business owner that also moves to the 3rd generation, globally.

M2E Pro Vote for Keywords to be Added

  1. Go to this page: http://support.m2epro.com/forums/137040-m2e-pro-ebay-magento-integration/suggestions/4720248-m2epro-system-keywords-variables-for-ebay-listi
  2. Check over the specification I have written and add a comment you feel appropriate to the bottom
    (something like “OMG we need this” would be appropriate)
  3. In the top left-hand corner there is a “Vote” button
  4. Press the “vote” button
  5. Enter your email address
  6. And press “3 Votes”

This shouldn’t take more than 1 minute of your time and in doing so, you can help make the world a better place with new functionality for everyone to use.

Again the direct link to this feature request is here: http://support.m2epro.com/forums/137040-m2e-pro-ebay-magento-integration/suggestions/4720248-m2epro-system-keywords-variables-for-ebay-listi

Make your contribution to the 3rd generation today, and for that myself & Dave, thank you.

Matt & Dave

Does This Look Familiar to You?

If you were unfortunate enough to miss out on the no-holes-barred history to the 3rd generation at the eCommerce Expo two weeks ago, it’s about time we give you a little teaser to the 3rd generation (if you missed this, see here for part 1)

Today’s article is a sneak-peak at the progress being made & what the 3rd generation could look like, if you want it to look like this at all.

 

Order Processing

If you’ve ever used or seen eSellerPro the image below should be familiar to you. If not, it’s really simple to follow, I’ll cover the colour codes with you in a moment

Multi-Channel Order Processing

This screenshot is from a test system that shows orders in different statues, each row is an order. Here is the breakdown on the order colours:

  • Pink is pending a PayPal payment
  • White is processing and good to be processed
  • Brown, well those orders are brown for a very good reason, they’re fraud or reversed payments
  • Green is shipped or complete
  • Yellow the order is pending payment
  • And the blue, the order is on hold

As a business owner you now know exactly which orders should be processed and where they came from too.

But….

There’s a caveat, I didn’t write a single line of code to do this.

It already exists, the whole 3rd Generation already exists.

But there are some people that don’t want us to tell you what it is…

A Different Way

Hit play on the video below:

Then go to UnderstandingE.com/NOW and change your business forever.

See you there!

Matt & Dave

Meet the UnderstandingE Team @ eCommerce Expo (2 Oct)

By now you’ll have heard quite a lot of buzz about UnderstandingE, we believe it’s going to put you back in control and change the world of eCommerce forever and we bet you’d like to know more and here’s your only chance before January.

This is something never done before, we have a clear vision and a single goal of what we are going to achieve and using the passion we have for eCommerce we truly believe that what we launch in January will be of benefit to soo many online sellers like you.

 

Find Out What UnderstandingE is

Myself and Dave Furness will be making our first appearance as UnderstandingE at the eCommerce Expo next week.  We will only be there for few hours on Weds 2nd October because of the epic challenge we have set ourselves between now and January 1st and need to get back the grindstones.

We are arranging a special meetup at one of the stands at 2:00pm.  This way we can get to share with you, the cool people, the business owners what exactly it is we are up to and how with your help, together we’re going to create something amazing.

Here are just a few of the comments we’ve had in the last few days:

“We never considered using it like that before”.
We know, we didn’t realise this ourselves until earlier this year when we had no other option

“You telling me that this will work?”
Yep, we’re using it ourselves, we know it works

“That’s going to save us thousands”
Yup, that’s us off the Christmas card lists

So Which Stand?

To find out which stand we’ll loitering on at 2pm, pop your name & email on the UnderstandingE site here and we’ll let you know on Wednesday morning.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Matt & Dave