How to Expand Your Reach with OpenCart Multichannel Selling

OpenCart store owners are making great efforts to gain maximum product visibility to boost their sales and conversions. The OpenCart multi-vendor module allows store owners to turn their stores into a full-fledged marketplace by adding as many product categories as possible to multiple channels.
Online retailers that opt for OpenCart development consider multichannel selling right from the beginning. Additionally, multichannel selling is projected to be the future of the eCommerce industry and will gain much hype in the coming time. You must leverage OpenCart’s multichannel capabilities to extend your reach, bring more traffic to your OpenCart store, and tempt visitors to stay loyal to your brand. This post will discuss some critical aspects of OpenCart’s multichannel selling benefits that you can leverage to gain maximum profitability.

Why Is the Practice of Selling on Multiple Channels Gaining Worldwide Recognition?

One of the primary reasons why multichannel selling is soon going to be the next big thing is changing consumers’ expectations. To get the most desirable outcome, OpenCart store owners must understand what it is like to sell on multiple channels and how it affects a customer’s journey.
Social media channels are becoming a preferred way to choose products for an online purchase, and people tend to explore more new products and concepts on these channels. Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram allow online retailers to tag their products while channels like Tik-Tok and Twitter feature some most prominent channels that are known well for customer interactions.
With OpenCart, you get multiple options to increase brand awareness and your store’s conversions. It lets you customize shopping experiences with relevant content and resolve users’ queries promptly.

OpenCart’s Functionalities That Support Multichannel Selling

• You can manage different marketplace products & orders right from your OpenCart admin page.
• You can directly list as many products as you want from different categories on eBay and Amazon.
• Make necessary updates to the inventory and product prices on multiple marketplaces.
• You can directly list products on eBay with user-defined options along with custom templates.
• You get native support for product variations.
• You can update marketplaces with real-time shipping/tracking information.
• Access to real-time Inventory and Channel Synchronization.

OpenCart Extensions That Can Make a Difference

By adding the extensions mentioned below to your OpenCart store, you can gain maximum product visibility across multiple channels and witness skyrocketing figures in your conversions.

OpenCart Akeneo Connector

This connector supports top-notch API technology to integrate your OpenCart store with Akeneo Product Information Management (PIM). It is a one-stop platform to collect, control, and manage your product information. By using this extension, OpenCart store owners can easily manage ample products along with creating a product catalog and allocate it across different channels.
You must create an API key in the Akeneo panel and connect it to the Akeneo connector configuration in your OpenCart admin panel. This module supports OpenCart store owners to fetch Akeneo data including attributes, categories, configurable products, and media files to get them imported to their OpenCart store.

Akeneo Connector- Key Highlights

• Export multi-lingual content to your OpenCart store.
• Export products and product models.
• Filter data and products to add them to your online store.
• Export multiple images to your OpenCart store.

UVDesk- OpenCart Help Desk Extension

It offers SaaS-based helpdesk solutions for OpenCart store owners to deliver exceptional customer service. The multichannel support and third-party integrations offered by UVDesk help you track customer issues and facilitate the support team to resolve customers’ queries on time.
It allows only registered users to create a ticket from the front end and the reply can be sent either using your store’s back end or through your UVDesk dashboard. Now you can distribute these tickets to various groups, teams, and agents to deliver a prompt response to any user’s query. Your OpenCart store’s admin can easily integrate UVDesk with the help of an access token and the company’s domain name. All customers’ conversations and files are recorded so that you can quickly view them and respond to them accordingly.

UVDesk- Key Highlights

• Offering a free ticketing system for the helpdesks
• OpenCart back-office support desk that allows store owners to manage customer service tickets
• Facilitates better engagement between the store owner and customers
• Track all customer interactions in a systematic way
• Multilingual support to offer a responsive and reliable customer service

OpenCart eBay Connector

eBay does not require any introduction, and by integrating the OpenCart eBay connector, you can import ample products, categories, and images to your OpenCart store from eBay. Using this connector, online retailers can easily add, edit, and manage multiple eBay accounts to track products, categories, and orders along with additional information on exported products.
You can easily track products based on their colors, sizes, names, prices, descriptions, quantities, and variations. When your exported products get unlisted on eBay, you can simply create a new list or relist those products on your OpenCart store. You can also add additional information for exported products including eBay specifications, conditions, tax, shipping, return policy, dispatch time, and other listing details.

Highlighted Features

• Synchronization with multiple eBay accounts
• Import products, orders, and categories from eBay.link section
• Set price quantity rules for all imported and exported products from eBay
• View the entire list of eBay categories, specifications, and conditions that you have imported along with an option to delete any specific category, condition, or specification
• Track complete information on your imported products and orders and link section categories accordingly
• Clearly define the return policy details for exported products

OpenCart Amazon Connector

This extension allows OpenCart store owners to integrate an Amazon store with their OpenCart stores. Just like the eBay connector, you can easily import products, orders, and customers from the Amazon store to your OpenCart store and vice versa (export products from OpenCart to Amazon). The extension offers real-time updates for synchronized products’ prices and quantities on the Amazon store.

Highlighted Features

• Connect multiple seller accounts (Amazon) with the OpenCart store
• Set default quantity and weight for exported products
• Update the price and quantity of imported and exported products on Amazon
• Offer currency exchange rates as per the Amazon store
• Add and modify price and quantity rules for both imported and exported products
• Store owners can also customize source code
• View customers’ data including their name, address, and phone number from Amazon orders

Tips to Ensure Optimal Results from Multichannel Selling

• Connecting your OpenCart store to multiple channels and managing different aspects can prove to be quite daunting for most online retailers. Hence, you must consider the following factors to ensure optimum results from your multichannel selling.
• You must get acquainted with the requirements of each channel and plan your branding and marketing campaigns accordingly.
• Store all your images, graphics, and messages in one place so that they can be easily managed and reviewed.
  Make a robust strategy to update messages and branding across all channels as and when updates are required.
• Inventory management becomes much more complex for multiple channels, and you must consider using inventory management techniques like Barcode data collection and ABC analysis for prioritizing stocks.
• Customer Support is another critical aspect that needs to be handled proactively during multichannel selling. ChatGPT API integration with the OpenCart website can ensure a responsive chatbot, answering all customer queries efficiently.

Endnote

Modern-day consumers are getting much more inclined toward the concept of multichannel shopping. Third-party sellers on Amazon and eBay are getting good responses from online shoppers because of the trust factor that people have in these brands. Hence, you must strategically plan to leverage the fullest capabilities of your OpenCart store and add the above-mentioned extensions to enhance profitability and brand value.