Solutionists Advanced Webstore ecommerce platform mow offers marketplace integration for Australasian online fashion retailers, delivering higher exposure, traffic, and sales for their clients. The fashion specific platform, which already had built in POS integration for many retail management systems such as dolFIN, Counter Intelligence and Infinity RMS, now boasts plug ins that create Ebay, TradeMe, Westfield and Facebook stores that utilises their client's existing product data and frameworks.
Now that sites such as Westfield, Facebook and Ebay are offering retail specific store fronts, it is important that retailers consider their marketplace integration strategy in order to take advantage of the high levels of traffic these sites receive - Ebay.com.au alone attracts 7 million Australian viewers a month, 40% of the Australian internet.
"Solutionists marketplace plug-ins mean that our fashion retail client base can simply pick which product categories they want to show on these sites, and all of their existing product data and images will flow through automatically" says CTO James Gilbert. Sales from the external sites flow back into the website CMS for easy order handling and fulfilment, meaning no extra systems are required to handle the additional sales. Certain features unique to these sites, such as question and answers, are also handled within the webstore CMS, delivering a seamlessly managed solution to integrating with the wider retail marketplace.
Australian designer and multi-channel success story Lisa Ho are rolling out a full marketplace integration strategy - leveraging their webstore to deliver integrated store fronts across Facebook, Ebay and Westfield. While branding considerations may have previously been a drawback for high end designers such as Lisa Ho, Ebay's 'Fashion Gallery' and Westfield's 'Designer Collection' deliver Australasia's biggest fashion brands under fully designed store fronts that set them apart from the original trading model.
The advice is that Australasian retailers should be considering the benefits of a locally optimised webstore platform when picking an ecommerce provider. "International platforms are unlikely to contain features that integrate with Australasian specific sites, meaning retailers face the risk of covering the full cost of custom development to make these systems work to their advantage" Gilbert says. "While many of these global platforms seem cheaper up front, there are often significantly higher costs at a later date when retailers need custom work, or features specific to their local industry, which then must be developed from scratch."
Solutionists will be demonstrating their integrated ecommerce platform for fashion retailers on stand 1350 at the Online Retail Expo and Conference in Sydney, 17-18 July 2012.
Solutionists Ltd is a leading ecommerce provider - specialising in integrated ecommerce websites for fashion retailers. They deliver world-class e-retail solutions based on best practise standards, which allow their clients to compete at an international level.
