Create and Manage Price List Feature
nChannel now offers subscribers the ability to create and manage an unlimited number of price lists unique to each channel you serve. Apply price lists to stores, web sites, or both!
Look what you can do with this cool new feature:
– Select items manually or apply a unique price list for items by manufacturer, supplier or brand
– Set start and end dates for your price lists which will revert back to the pricing you choose when your promotion is over
– Create and store unique formulas to quickly apply a percentage or dollar amount discount
– Determine which channels youd like to apply to your price list
– Set the type of price youd like to change – sale price, regular price, supplier price
Manually managing pricing and promotions was one of the biggest challenges we needed to solve -Paul Donnelly, Ohio Mulch
In Ohio Mulchs case, they sell through 21 stores and 5 web sites. Each of their websites serves a regional market where products can differ, and weekly promotions are unique to that market. Weve heard from many companies over the years lamenting this same challenge – and were excited to announce our new pricing feature designed to help companies manage pricing promotions.
Once a price list has been published it can be edited at anytime and if you make a mistake, fixes are simple and best of all – immediate! Weve got lots more to share – Take a look at our calendar for upcoming webcast, visit our connector pages, or call us for a quick demo.
Multi-Channel Reporting at 35,000 Ft.
Southwest Airlines offers Internet service for just $5 bucks. Steve and I are making our way to Vegas for the Magento Partners Conference and with a 4 hour plane ride ahead of us, I couldnt resist logging on. Im writing this on Sunday from about 35,000 feet – pretty cool huh?
Heres something cooler.
Im so jazzed about our new reporting tools that I logged into one of our customers accounts just to see whats going on. This particular customer has 21 retail stores and 5 – yes 5 – web sites. From the friendly skies I can tell you what todays sales looks like in each of their stores. I can tell you which store is doing the best, which location is leading sales for the week, month, and even what their sales year-to-date are. Right now its 3:45 pm Eastern Standard Time. The stores will be closing at 6pm and I see that our customer did a little over $21,000 in Visa transactions today. Even on a crappy day like today (45 degrees in April!!) they had a healthy $55,000 dollar day. Kudos to Stores #5 and #3 too – – they had double the sales of other stores today. Woo-hoo!
So while this Internet connection is just a bit slow – how cool is it to know that if I was the business owner for this customer – I could be anywhere – on my couch, in a plane, in a car (ok maybe not in a car) and get up to the minute information on how my business is doing? I didnt mention that I could check what todays receivables look like or look at inventory across all my locations – because honestly – – Im ready to get back to playing solitaire (and my battery is about to run out). Before I sign off though, check out this weeks webcast hosted by Retail Realm which will feature our new Magento connection. Well show our new reporting feature as well as a few other goodies. Where else can you create a new Magento website and feed items to it from RMS in under 40 minutes?….only from nChannel of course!
–Lisa
Take a Look at Our New Magento Conector
Retail Realm will feature nChannel in their upcoming webcast series on April 26th at
10 am PST |1 pm EST. If you didnt get an invite yet, you can register
In this 45-minute webinar presentation, well give an overview of our cloud-based management platform and show you how to connect RMS to eCommerce solutions like Magento in less than a day. Our newest connector for Magento is now in General Release, putting the power of connection in your hands for a fraction of the cost, and a fraction of the time it takes to configure and install other solutions.
nChannel Portal Now Features Field Orders
nChannel now offers subscribers the ability to take orders in the field and have orders routed to Microsoft Dynamics RMS (or another system that acts as the item master). For those customers that would like to be able take orders at a trade show or at a customer site, this feature provides a simple way to do so using just an Internet connection and a tablet, smartphone or laptop! Field orders are a standard feature in our platform and included with every subscription.
Heres what you can do with this new feature:
– Look up or create a new customer
– Easy search and select features to add items
– Apply and change sales tax for each order
– Add notes specific to the order (Deliver between 1-3PM or Hold for pickup)
– Add attributes – great for custom items that require monograms, logos, etc.
– Add shipping costs
– Select payment methods – including credit cards
Once the order is submitted nChannel will send it to the system and inventory location you wish to use to fulfill the order such as a specific store or warehouse. Today nChannel can send field orders to Microsoft Dynamics RMS or your AspDotNetStorefront or Magento Website if thats where you master your items. Coming June 1st, youll be able to send field orders to Microsoft Dynamics GP and QuickBooks. Well be previewing these connectors and some more new features (like price lists!!) in the coming weeks so stay tuned for details.
eCommerce: How to Get More Product Reviews
I commented this morning on a discussion group I follow for eCommerce merchants. One of our members was asking how to get more product reviews (and if there is a solution for pulling product reviews across multiple sites).
Thought I’d share a strategy that seems to work well for one of my favorite online stores:
By continuing to have a dialogue with your customer after the sale, you can incent them to review their purchases (and buy more stuff). Your timing has to be spot on however. Here’s a strategy one of favorite online store uses (and it’s suckered me in).
The best time to solicit a product review is within 24 hours of your customer receiving the product. Your buyer is either ecstatic or disappointed – emotion spurs a better chance of soliciting action. This merchant sends me a personalized email the evening I receive the product (never fails!) asking me if everything was ok? Was it delivered on time, did it meet my expectations…To respond, they give me a link that enables me to comment on the product.
They also send me a small discount coupon as a thank you for commenting (which of course spurs me on to buy again). I don’t know of a way to drag comments across sites – but if the strategy works, you wouldn’t need to find a solution to do this.
Some might say the process is too labor intensive, but if you build templates and get the timing right, you could partially automate. If you’re sending out newsletters or promotions, don’t forget to address your buyers again, asking for their feedback (and incent them with a discount)
