If you’re someone who hasn’t gotten into the e-commerce market, you’re missing out and you’re going to continue to miss out for the foreseeable future.
According to ThredUp’s 2024 Resale report, reselling is growing 11% annually, fifteen times faster than regular retail. (1) This is expected to continue until 2028. Further, as economic challenges loom, more people turn to online resellers for goods.
So should you quit your day job and post all your belongings on Etsy, Poshmark, and ThredUp? Not unless you’ve considered the burdens that come with selling on the internet. There are three main issues for online sellers- inventory management, price setting, and shipping.
Imagine how difficult it can be to keep track of your one-of-a-kind pair of sneakers you sold but multiple people on multiple platforms are willing to buy? What if the first buyer returns the sneakers? What selling platform has what return policies? How do you track who is next in line to buy the product? What platform were they on?
ThredUp sites the number one reason for companies or individuals not getting involved in online selling is that the e-commerce industry is too complex- people don’t know where to start. If you don’t know where to start, or you’ve already started and you’re still feeling stumped, there are some useful apps to help you through this.
Useful Apps for E-commerce Sellers
Below, we’ll get into three amazing apps for e-commerce sellers to help you streamline your business and make your life easier.
Zoho Inventory
Tired of not knowing what inventory is selling best on which e-commerce platform?
Zoho Inventory can help. This app tracks inventory across multiple platforms. This app even streamlines orders across shipping carriers and automates workflows to make your life easier. Zoho’s price starts at $11.95 per month.
Pricesync
Think of this horror story: You open a business on an e-commerce site and want to know how you should set the price for your product.
Of course, you can’t set a price too high or no one will buy your product, but if you set too low you won’t turn a profit. The only way to determine price so that you make a profit is to manually compare your competition’s prices and math. Math! The horror!
Pricesync solves this problem by tracking the prices of the same products your competitors set. This helps you figure out what a competitive price would be. Isn’t that neat? No math for you! This app will run for about $99 per month.
ShipStation
Have you ever wanted to pull your hair out when trying to figure out which orders are shipping from which sites to which destinations?
Pull no more, ShipStation streamlines all of your shipping needs- connecting all of your e-commerce businesses onto one app. Shipstation has multiple options including a free option for you to use whichever works best for your business.
Multichannel Listing
If you are not using a multichannel listing tool that allows you to cross-post your products onto multiple marketplaces, you are doing so much extra work for yourself.
Crosslist
The Crosslist app uses AI to help you post across multiple e-commerce sites at once. This also means you can de-list an item once inventory is gone at once too. Crosslist can help save you time and money by instantly cross-posting across multiple platforms instantaneously instead of having to manually post on individual e-commerce sites. Crosslist will run you $29.99 per month.
Why should you care about any of these apps for resellers?
The saying often goes “Time is money” and when you’re running an e-commerce business this saying could not be truer.
The time you spend learning how to use these apps will pay back in dividends because you will get time in return- these apps will help you streamline your business. Getting organized = saving time = more money.
Therefore, getting organized is worth every penny.
For example, the time you spend posting to individual e-commerce sites can be collapsed into one post, through Crosslist. Then you are free to either post more items, work on shipping, inventory, etc. The more time you have for your business, the more profitable your business can become.
The final word
E-commerce is an ever-increasing business. If you have just started your business or you’re a tried and true brand, you can profit from selling products on e-commerce sites.
Yet, there are several challenges that come with owning an online reselling business including keeping track of inventory, getting into technology, setting prices, and posting across platforms. However, apps such as inventory management and multi-channel listing tools can help keep you organized.
Organization is key to saving time and making your business profitable.
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