Cross channel Ecommerce

Why is Cross Channel Ecommerce the buzz word of the year? Why can’t anyone decide what it actually is? As Ecommerce concepts go there is grounds for belief that part of the reason why Cross Channel Ecommerce has not been clearly defined is because to define it may point out a major shortcoming of many eCommerce solutions and systems available.

As eBay and Amazon Marketplace became genuine business opportunities ecommerce tended to polarise into those sellers who operated their own ecommerce website and those who used a variety of channels already setup to sell their products. This arrangement worked very well as for a seller to change their tactics was rare, partly because customers tended to show very definite loyalty to a particular channel.

As customers grew more comfortable with the idea of ecommerce, like newly moved in residents of a town, they began to explore further afield and away from their local shops and the high street. By exploring the mews and alleys of the internet customers found far more stores and selling channels through which to investigate and purchase products.

The result was that while the ecommerce industry as a whole saw a dramatic increase in spending, individual sellers actually saw their profits fall, the only cure for which was to widen their nets and ensure that wherever their customers explored they would find their old favourite seller waiting for them. Widening the net; adding multiple channels to the ecommerce network, revealed the short comings of many an ecommerce platform as it was realised that most Ecommerce CMS’s could not be easily integrated to manage listings across multiple channels and maintain efficient running of an ecommerce business with all these new directions of selling and more to the point, receiving orders.

A Cross Channel eCommerce CMS takes care of this shortcoming by allowing these extra channels to be intelligently integrated. As integration became the watch word many suppliers also saw this as the right time to integrate normally separate systems like a CRM system, Supplier Order automation and even automatic actions for dropshipping and social media management, all into one system.

In effect the Cross Channel CMS has the ability to become a central management system for your business and the possibilities this opens for the small to medium retailer, either fully ecommerce or in command of an actual shop or two, are really exciting for both the retail market and the ecommerce solutions company involved.