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Multichannel selling

Multichannel selling is selling one catalogue through several sales channels at once, such as your own website, marketplaces and social media shops.

How it works

Each channel keeps its own copy of the product data: price, stock, title. A unit sold in one channel has to disappear from every other copy before someone else buys it. Overselling happens in the gap: two channels sell the last unit, and one buyer gets a cancellation. Shopify’s guide names this risk and recommends handling every channel’s orders in a single back office.

Google Shopping is one more copy. The feed tells Google a product’s price and availability, and Google also reads the product page. With automatic item updates on, Google corrects price and availability from the page. With them off, Google doesn’t show products whose data doesn’t match the page.

Both modes compare the feed with your own site, so a product sold out on a marketplace keeps getting paid clicks until the new stock count reaches your site.

Omnichannel is a related word. Shopify uses it for a kind of multichannel selling in which the shopper moves between channels without starting over, for example ordering online and collecting in a shop.

Our guide to multichannel inventory sync shows how to keep stock in step without breaking the ads.

Example

Example store, not client data.

The tableware shop has 6 teapots of one model and sells them on its site and on a marketplace. The two sync stock every 4 hours. Between two syncs, 4 teapots sell on the site and 4 on the marketplace: 8 orders for 6 teapots, so 2 orders can’t be shipped. Until the next sync, the site still shows 2 teapots in stock, and the shop keeps paying for Shopping ad clicks on them.

Not to be confused with

  • Feed syndication — the plumbing: one master catalogue that produces a feed for each channel. Multichannel selling is the business set-up those feeds serve.
  • Channel cannibalization — your own channels competing for the same buyer. It is one possible cost of selling in several channels.

Right and wrong readings

  • Wrong: “Stock is synced between the site and the marketplace, so the Google feed is right too.” Right: the feed is another copy with its own schedule. A feed sent once a night can still say in stock hours after the last unit sold elsewhere.

Sources