Shopify's Amazon Sync Problem

very merchant actively seeks to put themselves in the best position to find new customers and increase sales. One of the mot effective ways to do that is to sell on sites like Amazon or eBay - marketplaces with vibrant, engaged user bases.

Using Shopify to host your eCommerce site allows you to completely control the customer experience, while selling on Amazon will expose your products to millions of potential customers. Being on both platforms is an opportunity to get the best of both worlds!

So how are you going to get this done?  Expanding your inventory to new channels like Amazon is the fastest way to increase your number of orders. Shopify promises to make this easy with the Amazon Channel app.

Unfortunately, it's not that simple! Scroll through the recent reviews for Shopify's Amazon Channel app and you'll find plenty of unhappy and frustrated users.

It stopped feeding my products into Amazon. I have to basically redo all the work twice in Amazon to have both platforms with the same info.

This app is not useful. My inventory does not sync properly, pictures are not included in all of my sku's (even though validation is successfully passed). I wouldn't waste your time with this.

If you don't have product listing set up exactly the same on both sites, this will not work for you.

Source: https://apps.shopify.com/amazon/reviews

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Why doesn't this work like it should?

Shopify powers more than 180,000 eCommerce sites, and accounted for over $41 billion in platform sales in 2018. It's never been easier to run an eCommerce site than it is today, and Shopify has become a very large player in the space.

One thing Shopify is not good at is synchronizing products from their platform to other marketplaces.

Let's explore some of the reasons why:

• Shopify and Amazon are very different systems, built to serve completely different audiences.
• Shopify doesn't have a fixed product category structure or taxonomy. Instead, Shopify uses collections and tags to define product relationships and attributes.
• Amazon uses a comprehensive product category structure. They also use keywords and search terms to refine product listings.
• Shopify uses the same data structure (schema) for every product, regardless of the collection.
• Amazon uses a different schema for every product category. Each category has a complex set of rules and requirements that has to be followed in order to list successfully.
• Shopify uses product variants to define parent-child relationships, like size, color, etc.
• Amazon parent-child relationships are much more complex. Child products can be very different from their parent products and may include different or additional attributes, images, etc.
• Shopify does not require or enforce a lead time on orders.
• Amazon requires lead times for each product in your catalog.

There are many more reasons syncing products and inventory from Shopify to Amazon is challenging. But let's not overlook the most obvious: Shopify competes directly with Amazon, and they're never going to dedicate resources to helping sellers use other platforms.

When we consider these differences, it's not surprising that automatically porting listings from Shopify to Amazon is difficult. It only gets more complicated when we include inventory and price sync, product changes, orders and fulfillments, etc.

How can we fix it?

Fortunately, as a seller trying to operate on multiple marketplaces, you have options!

Option 1: Sync with FeedStation

FeedStation connects to your Shopify and Amazon stores, and accurately syncs all your products, inventory, price, orders and fulfillments. Changes are picked up and synced within minutes, automatically. Listings are optimized based on your business rules and requirements. Oversells become a thing of the past. You finally get the best of both worlds that you were looking for!

Option 2: Sync everything manually

If you have a very small catalog that changes infrequently, or you have a low order velocity, you could manually sync everything manually. Listings, product images, inventory, price, and order data can all be managed via Amazon Seller Central. You will need to actively stay on top of inventory and fulfillments in particular - even on weekends and during holidays. Some sellers are perfectly happy pushing daily data syncs until the workload gets too big to handle.

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This is just the beginning.

If you're ready to start selling on multiple channels, or if you're already there and need help keeping everything in sync, get in touch.

You'll learn:

• How we help companies of every size, from new startups to established international brands.
• How our technology offers a better approach to problem solving.
• How we grow with you as your needs evolve.