ChannelAdvisor Users: Your store of choice?

I have been reading a lot on Channel advisor and the other one which not as many people seem to be using, Have been waiting for ABX to finish integrating into that other new site bang4bucks but read somewhere a couple of days ago that CA is also looking at working with them.

From what I am reading it seems that CA is the more reliable program Nathan would that be right.

I will give them a try if they are available.
Would love to hear how user freindly it is and if it is suitable for multiple staff to be using.

Geoff,

There are so many features in CA it would be hard for me to list them all.

For multi channel selling, and multiple users access with good inventory management I think it is hard to go past.

Couple it with our automated shipping software (designed for CA) ReadyToShip and you have a pretty nicely automated sales system that can scale extremely well.

I doubt CA will integrate with bang4bucks.

Cheers

I don’t care how good the store is. They are overcharging for the new store. I recommend going with Yahoo stores. They have a better track record, charge less, and you can still use Channel Advisor for your inventory and feeds.

Jeremy,

The issues are more complicated than just price. We have been working on the premium store for one of our accounts and it has a lot of flexibility. Although I haven’t looked in detail at Yahoo stores, it is likely CA’s new Premium Store has some advantages over the Yahoo offering.

And the cost is all relative. If the new premium store improved your conversion rate by 30%, how long would it take to pay for itself?

I guess for some, turnover/sales may not be high enough to justify but I can see larger sellers getting a lot out of it. Maybe Yahoo Stores could offer similar returns, I just wouldn’t know.

I am going to try and collect some comparison data from some users switching from the old CA stores to the new Premium Store and try and see what improvement there can be. This should help some customers decide on the best route to take.

yes a very hard decision in deed.

We are currently only on ebay and choosing between Infopia and CA is where we are at. Leaning towards CA because of integration with an outsourced website and more multisales channel opportunities (seemingly).

In an ideal world, I would like to use CA for ebay, amazon and multisales channels and yahoo stores for e-commerce.

Why? Call it a gut feeling. I look at one of their largest (or several of their largest) customers including dell.com, eforcity etc and they are NOT using CA stores solution. It seems they integrate yahoo stores or ASPdotnet (which really requires a dedicate ASP programmer/web admin to run correctly vs a standard CMS) and use datafeeds to run their inventory, connectors to sync them up, or have created the “mother load” of programming jobs to connect inventory in a centralized location.

My take is if you are a SERIOUS business doing volume and a leading competitor, my gut tells me CA stores solution isnt where it needs to be for your fully robust solution.

Again, this is coming from someone not using their software…simply analyzing some of their TOP customers who use them for multisales channels, comparison shopping, ebay …but leave the website to an outside vendor.

This leaves us with tough decision to be made with monthly sales of 500,000.00+ a month right now, and not wanting to get “stuck” on a program that is both hard to use or lacks the features we need.

Finding the balance for our business is what will make the decision.

Dustin,

I can see where your concern lies. I don’t believe the standard CA store offering is good enough for larger volume sellers.

Companies like Dell etc had legacy ecommerce environments anyway, so redevelopment for CA probably wasn’t considered, and still wouldn’t be.

The premium stores solution from CA (ASPDNSF) is indeed a lot better. I have had a good look at it, and synced inventory, tested orders etc but as yet we have not decided to go love with it.

There are some other solutions out there that might be better out of the box and easier to maintain and upgrade (as you say, a .ASP developer might be needed for ASPDNSF).

There is the ability to connect a Yahoo store to CA, possibly you didn’t know this? So if you are leaning towards Yahoo and want inventory management and order processing in CA then that could work well for you.

Otherwise there are a number of other good stores out there, Magento Commerce, CREloaded, X-cart etc. Of the open source ones at the moment I would choose Magento.

Cheers

Yes connecting a yahoo store is possible through a data feed but does not keep everything under one roof.

From a CA comment when I asked about syncing the two, CA-Yahoo is a one way street. It will populate inventory with a CA feed but will not pull it from your inventory allocation in CA. Another connector must be used (say from Shipworks SQL database) to then connect orders outgoing from yahoo and create a feed from post sales to CA inventory levels, which could become very complicated.

I just got off the phone with Infopia and a 1 hour demonstration. I was very impressed and think their “full package” solution from ebay, amazon, PPC/shopping comparison and website features are enough to give our company flexibility till we need a programmer to develop the bells and whistles we might require a year or two down the line.

I may be missing something here from what CA told me yesterday, but at least one part is missing to allow the connector to sync available inventory and when it sells.

Likewise, CA pushed ASPdotnet as their recommended solution. However, hiring a dedicated asp programmer is not in our best interest right now.

These fortune 500 companies can sure hire them, but we are a 1/2 million/month ebay company and while this is what we consider top of the line, it’s not top of the line compared to dell.com’s inhouse resources.

Great website, I started my own blog at http://tiphut.wordpress.com and just moved it to http://www.tiphut.com but I’ve been swamped with work and needs some work :)

Dustin,

The impression I got from a CA staff member yesterday was that a full connector to Yahoo will be released very shortly…

Might be worth talking to them again.

I have no experience with Infopia, so can’t comment, but from what I have seen their package looks ok. Do some research in forums around the place (eBay, PeSA, EMCTA etc) to get a feel for service, support and reliability.

Cheers,
Nathan

I talked with a CA rep last week.

I believe I understood that the inventory syncs up with your yahoo and CA account, but you have to post products to the store manually via a csv into yahoo stores. So there is one additional step and it goes by SKU number and have to match.

This doesn’t seem to be fully connected having to upload a spreadsheet and map it to the correct space on your website.

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