So, Magento to eBay extension. Now it’s a reality… I bet Magento users will be interested in this!
eBay has been a great platform for us, and so is Magento. Bringing them closer together is an interesting strategy, and for some of our websites, a Magento to eBay Extension would be great.
Being long time users of ChannelAdvisor software to manage our listings for mulitple accounts and countries, I think we have been able to make good use of our inventory and the few channels available to us in Australia.
Magento became our online store of choice about a year ago, and we have since become quite adept at Magento development.
And as times change, you naturally look at longer term solutions to problems, and we have started investigating a Magento to eBay connector that has recently been released.
It makes sense to centralise inventory control in your business. We know this, you know this. We develop connectors for clients (connecting inventory systems together, interfacing ChannelAdvisor, Magento etc) but ideally one central system would be best for us (and many of you too).
In our case, we have a separate storefront (Magento) and disparate invetntory on other systems like ChannelAdvisor. This presents it’s own issues. How much inventory should we assign to each channel? how should we keep them in sync, and how often?
These days the eBay marketplace is different too, with 50% or so of transactions being Buy It Now or Fixed Price sales. And in Australia with Store listings appearing in search results, many sellers are moving to a fixed price listing model.
A Magento to eBay extension like the one we are trialling keeps inventory in sync. So, my 10 widgets in the store are also available in my eBay store listing. If an eBay item sells, my Magento store inventory is reduced, and vice versa. eBay orders are imported into my Magento store, customer account created, and order processing happens in Magento.
Seamless, neat, simple. And good for customer acquisition. Only a few small bugs, but the extension is already proving pretty good in our testing.
So it looks like we might try it in production soon, and also help some of our Magento customers get onto it as well. It doesn’t offer the sophistication that ChannelAdvisor offers, but for those looking for a simpler integrated eBay – Magento, it could do the trick.
Hi Nathan,
Just wondering how the Magento to eBay extension has worked out for you?
Is it working as you would like, or have you foudn something else?
Would love to hear how it is going.
Max
Hi Max,
We have been using the extension since early versions (which were quite buggy), but now the current version is quite stable. There are certainly some best practices that should be used when setting up, and or larger sellers we have custom code that provides faster and more reliable sync with eBay among other things. We also developed some technology to use Magento SKUS and data to then display featured items, related items and other more ‘webstore like’ product sets on eBay listings too. So you can build a nice solution.
This can be done by yourself, with simple theming and implementation, or by a Magento Partner like ourselves as a project.
At the moment we have a number of Magento to eBay integration projects underway, and each of them requires a slightly different setup due to the product types, client requests and volume of listings and theming.
This one for example that we recently launched for a client : http://stores.ebay.com.au/fresh-fragrances-and-cosmetics, has a range of 25,000 SKUs!
Thanks Nathan – I see someone else is also up late ;-)
I’ll have to talk to you about this for an upcoming project; running on Magento. We are looking at using a (unirgy) multi-vendor plugin and would be interested to see if it would still bring in the orders and send them out to the vendors – but can’t see why not if the orders just come into the system as if someone had placed the order normally.
Personally, I hate selling on eBay, as the verndor interface is so clunky; but I think Magento pushes the shipping info and such to eBay with this pulgin; so theoretically after setup you never have to login to eBay for order fulfilment? I hope that’s the case anyway.
That eBay integration is awesome – really great cred’ to yourselves and/or the folk who made the plug-in.
I wish I was a real programmer and understood how that worked so well – from my understaing must be a SOPA API or something – but awesome – two thumbs up to you guys.
Hi Nathan,
The new store looks on eBay are awesome . . you’re right up there as far as I can see (also nice to see eBay have done some work on their atrosious user interface).
Did you have anything to do with the http://stores.ebay.com.au/Costume-Collection shop – it looks great also.
Can one tell if it’s from magento?
For general info of all us reading your posts, how much would a “stock” good looking integration cost, of course plus the cost of the extension also. Does thre number of items make any difference, or is it just a field mapping issue?
Max,
We price on a case by case basis as you are right, it does depend on design, any custom code/features, and the setup of the original data. Stores with nice quality data, good attributes/attribute sets and a fixed price selling strategy would be easiest to set up. Designs can vary, but there are some cheap options out there to convert your current store theme into an eBay template which we could integrate.
I recommend people get in touch with use for a discussion if they are interested.
Cheers,
Nathan
Max, Costume Collection is not Magento.
Thanks for sharing great information.
Monty
ilovemage.com
Hi
I’m interesting with the extension : eBay-Magento Integration – Order Import and Stock Level Synchronization
I use the Magento v 1.4.1.
I would like to get this extension to link my website under Magento and a site on Ebay.
I have heard a lot of information about your extension : it seems that we can send iformation from Ebay to Magento but not from Magento to Ebay.
My main purpose is to send information for product (I must be able to choose what products I send to Ebay) from Magento to Ebay : SKU, Designation, price stock etc, send orders and paiement from Ebay to Magento.
Can you confirm all these possibilities ?
Where can I find a complete documentation to understand what we can do ?
Thanks
Regards
Didier
Didier, We do not make the extension. For more information, visit the extension website here : http://m2epro.com/.
Cheers.