[quote name=‘snorocket’]That will be sometime around April 2011 - Sno[/QUOTE]
Actually, the possible release time is December 2010 - January 2011. Also, if you guys really need the Checkout by Amazon payment, we can post it to the help desk as a patch as soon as it gets ready.
[quote name=‘imac’]Actually, the possible release time is December 2010 - January 2011. Also, if you guys really need the Checkout by Amazon payment, we can post it to the help desk as a patch as soon as it gets ready.[/QUOTE]
Posting it to the helpdesk as an addon would be helpful. Is there any progress towards integration of ebay/amazon seller tools ?
Ok so I thought I’d add some very useful advice for this Ebay/Amazon Integration since so many of us want it but don’t describe how the function should be. At this rate Cs will develop it and we will all complain that it sucks…why? Well, because we’re not describing in detail exactly how this should function. I’m no pro here but here is my two cents worth of advice that I do hope that Cs will take into consideration.
We definitely need to be able to easily post products from our Cs-Cart to Ebay and Amazon seamlessly. This simply means checking a product to be sent along with product description, quantity, option variants and the ability to set different pricing without effecting the price of our storefronts within CS. This ebay/amazon function has got to be kept separate from our online stores with exception to obviously keeping inventory.
Just being able to post products over to these marketplaces is only half the battle in my opinion. Anyone that sells regularly on ebay/amazon know’s there is much, much more to being successful within these parameters. You have to take into consideration of selling tools, product mapping and manipulation, listing scheduler, inventory tracking, out of stock inventory blocking, reporting and analytics, order management, communication, feedback management, shipping and finally checkout.
Also need to have the ability to import listing templates. It would be nice but not nessesary to somehow easly incorporate our on-line store design into our ebay or amazon store. Don’t know that there would be an easy way of doing this. I know both the marketplaces have weird coding standards.
Selling tools would be things like having the ability to track your sales, manage email, manage feedback to customers and some sort of profit and loss reporting.
Product mapping and manipulation Map all important inventory information requested by the marketplace to list your products through a single, category-specific template. Using dynamic rules and settings to manipulate your inventory data to match the marketplace’s format without manually adjusting each inventory item.
Listing scheduler Manage the listing duration and frequency, listing type (auction vs. fixed price), relist frequency, and quantity-per-listing through a single schedule applied to groups of eBay listings.
Out of Stock Inventory Blocking Ensure your products are removed immediately and not re-listed when inventory goes out of stock or quantity is running low.
Reporting and Analytics We really need some way to track our marketplace campaigns including, transaction data, inventory velocity, product activity and sales history reporting.
Order Management Post sales tracking would Quickly and easily track and process eBay and Amazon orders through the fulfillment cycle with the flexibility of integrating with a variety of shipping solutions. Automate the communication of shipping information with all the marketplaces and the buyer.
Communicate through Email with eBay customers automatically about upcoming events for an enhanced customer experience and increased loyalty. Shipping tables and zones to customize by weight, quantity or order subtotal for eBay orders would be nice.
Checkout through our on-line stores somehow would be great. Provide eBay buyers with our customized checkout experience through our third party checkout. Automatically cancel orders when a buyer hasn’t completed checkout to save time and reduce errors.
communication Not only do we need a way to communicate through email but also the ability to leave feedback with pre written replies. Email customers automatically about upcoming events for an enhanced customer experience and increased loyalty.
One more thing to consider. It would be beneficial to get an estimate of the cost of posting to ebay and Amazon. This way you can manipulate certain listing aspects to meet your budget.
So this is it in a nut shell. Kind of overwhelming but if you guys want to do this in a manner that truly is function, then this is what we need. I’m no expert, however I know the standards. My best advice to the Cs-cart team is to investigate and do your homework. Please don’t blindly release this ebay/amazon addition without completely understanding the standard for this type of project.
I strongly recommend you look at the companies that provide software similar to what you’re trying to accomplish. Two of the more well known are channeladvisor.com and vendio.com. They have based there software off of years of marketplace experience. You should provide many of the functions that they have created and not stray from this knowledge. I will list the pertinent links below.
[URL=“http://www.channeladvisor.com/marketplaces/index.php”]http://www.channeladvisor.com/marketplaces/index.php[/URL]
[URL=“Sell on eBay, Sell on Amazon - Vendio Marketplaces”]http://www.vendio.com/ecommerce/marketplaces[/URL]
These links outline what I have written above along with many examples of screenshots along with free demos that you can download. You should download the demo and get a good understanding of exactly how you should implement this type of functionality into CS-Cart.
Most of the function for inventory and inventory management is within Cs already; we just need to fill in the rest of the marketplace management and listing processes within Cs. Definitely do able without a doubt, but a big project no less.
I hope more people from the forum can add to this as I think it’s imperative especially of the people that already sell heavily on Ebay and Amazon. In the past as we all can attest too, if we don’t spell out every last detail we are for sure to repeat history here at Cs. With this being said I strongly believe that the links provided above will help Cs-Cart create a great addition that is so strongly needed.
Good luck and I will be more than happy to detail the design as much as I can. 
Stu
We sell quite heavily on Ebay (around 300 orders per week) a few on Amazon and around 100 on our website and definitely would NOT want this feature added to CS Cart.
We have been selling for around 5 years on Ebay and know that they regularly change the settings and parameters of their site which would lead to failure of scripts and other automated integration. This in turn would make it very difficult to continue running the business until fixes were put in place.
We have found Aimco invoicing software to be the most useful piece of software we have. This collects information from all sites and produces a unified invoice. Used with integrated labels it formats and prints address labels and postage. Fixes for Ebay and CS changes are impelmented quite quickly too.
For stock management it is possible to use Ebay’s file exchange, Turbo Lister (synchronisation) or Quickbooks. We manage over 2000 products across 2 sites using a combination of these products.
If CS cart does go ahead with this we would prefer it to be an optional add-on rather than integrated into the main cart.
Thank you
Hetha
You know as I was charting this project out, I was really thinking the same thing too. I just don’t think that this function can successful and reliably be implemented. Not just from a development stand but also as you mention from an ever revolving structure from both marketplaces.
I’d almost rather see time being spent in more areas versus this. As much as I’d really like to see it, I just don’t think it’s realistic. This would probably consume every minute out of everyday for Cs-Cart to maintain.
I’d really like to hear from Cs and see what they’re planning for this type of integration. Maybe they have something up their sleeves! Lets hope. It would be nice to hear their concerns as well.
Stu
Hi…so Checkout by Amazon is not on the roadmap will it be in 2.1.3 or?
We have both onlne store cs cart and ebay and our main issue is stock control - if cs cart could create this we are highly interested also, we concure with the comments in tbtrading and tulan post thank you
Postin gteh amazon checkout in the help will be great Imac
Heck yes, I needed this feature yesterday.
I use ebay’s Blackthorne to list items and probably will continue using it to list on ebay… so I don’t need listing software done over again.
What I do need is for CS cart to track inventory. And when an item gets bought on ebay, to deduct it from it the web store, or vice versa – if it gets bought on the store, to deduct it from ebay. (If a listing is 12 hours from it’s end, it cannot be changed but it can be cancelled).
It needs to work with ebay stores and not just auction listings.
With this feature, I can add 500 items to my store which is currently reserved for ebay (collectibles, if it gets sold out, can’t exactly order another one).
This would be a boon!
(And yes, I check a bunch of other multi channel offerings, they all have downsides.)
Heck yes, I needed this feature yesterday.
I use ebay’s Blackthorne to list items and probably will continue using it to list on ebay… so I don’t need listing software done over again.
What I do need is for CS cart to track inventory. And when an item gets bought on ebay, to deduct it from it the web store, or vice versa – if it gets bought on the store, to deduct it from ebay. (If a listing is 12 hours from it’s end, it cannot be changed but it can be cancelled). It needs to work with ebay stores and not just auction listings but they are close anyway.
It doesn’t need to list, it doesn’t need to do a million other things. I’m even willing to provide the actual auction number for the items via CSV file or other.
But please, I need the inventory tracking.
With this feature, I can add 500 items to my store which is currently reserved for ebay (collectibles, if it gets sold out, can’t exactly order another one).
This would be a boon!
(And yes, I check a bunch of other multi channel offerings, they all have downsides for the small seller.)
Dear derbytown502,
Thank you so much for the detailed explanation.
At the moment, we are analyzing different service and scripts.
For now, I can say it for sure that
a) there certainly must be a possibility to synchronize products with eBay & Amazon (detailed information and inventory),
b) this functionality should be implemented through an add-on.
in reply to “synchronize products with eBay & Amazon (detailed information and inventory)”
has anyone tried the following programs?
[url]http://www.esellerpro.com/[/url]
[url]http://www.linnworks.com/[/url]
similar to
[url]http://www.channeladvisor.co.uk/marketplaces/index.php[/url]
cs-cart team should look at the above 3 programs and see what they do.
i think only linnworks can be used/downloaded.
the other 2 require contacting the company directly and then they interrogate who you are, how much you sell, etc
i mean should cs-cart being doing this ebay/amazon functionality or not? when there are already companies out there who have already made the investment. this area seems to be huge and it looks way out the of the scope for cs-cart to move into. i.e. does it make shopping carts or back office admin program to link to ebay/shopping_cart/amazon ?
Now that some other shopping carts offers a free ebay module I think that it may be time for CS-Cart to offer the same as it has been evident for quite some time that their customers have been interested in this feature. I only offer this idea in the interest of cs-cart becoming more popular.
ExportYourStore is now offering eBay <-> Amazon <-> CS-Cart integration
ExportYourStore were established to enable sellers quickly and easily dramatically increase their sales, by expanding their online business to additional selling platforms.
We have 3 main services which now will be available also to CS-Cart users:
1) Exporting current items to eBay,Amazon,CS-Cart
We will take your current items from the platform they are listed on(eBay/Amazon/CS-Cart) and export them to the platform you wish to expand your business to(eBay/Amazon/CS-Cart).
2) Inventory synchronization - If somthing is sold on one platform we will take it off the other platform vice versa.
3) Auto export of every new item you list on eBay/Amazon/CS-cart to the other platforms.
For more info take a look at this blog post:
http://www.exportyourstore.com/service/exportyourstore-now-supporting-ebay-amazon-cs-cart-integration/
[quote name='imac' timestamp='1267624846' post='72853']
As you can see the integration with Amazon and Ebay is in great demand now. So we would like to know your suggestions about what it should be like, i.e. the functionality, interface, etc.
[/quote][quote name='imac' timestamp='1267624846' post='72853']
As you can see the integration with Amazon and Ebay is in great demand now. So we would like to know your suggestions about what it should be like, i.e. the functionality, interface, etc.
[/quote]
I think integration with amazon.com and other amazon's local sites will be GREAT! Specialy if you make some plugins like ReviewAZONE or WP Zone Builder for WordPress. That will ROCK your CS-CART selling in ORBIT for sure.
All regards to all members and cs-cart stuf!
is this still in the works or have they canned it?
Amazon integration is very much needed. Ever since we added our products to Amazon, sales there has been steadily growing. Now it makes up 50% of our total sales!
There are serious pitfalls in the process with regard to how shipping is managed and calculated, and this really prevents any sort of integration with Amazon - which rings the death knell for our use of CS-Cart - a sad day indeed.
The problem is that Amazon uses real-world shipping calculations to assess charges - these are a base fee, then per pick/pack unit, then per pound with grades. But they have different rates depending on whether your item is classified as media or non-media. And if you also participate in Fulfillment by Amazon, then you also have rate cards for the various FBA Export jurisdictions.
The problem here is the media vs non-media. If you establish rates for both media products and non-media, both sets of shipping options will appear. There is no way to have books use one set of shipping rules (for media rate) and non-books use another set of rules. Worst case scenario, you'd be forced to charge non-media rates for all customers. This is not appealing.
Second problem is that FBA/Amazon cannot export books to Canada - this is a 'Heritage Act' prohibition - but there is no way to limit the countries that a product is available to as far as I can tell. This has got to hit DVD sales also - where you would only want to make certain DVDs available to ship to certain locations, etc.
These are two essential shipping functions that CS-Cart does not provide. You should be able to determine product availability by Locations and by User Groups. This is a no-brainer to me, and functionality I assumed was tied to the Locations area.
If I am totally off-base on this, or am missing something important, please let me know. Right now Amazon integration is a little pointless for anyone who actually is trying to use FBA.
UPDATE: It looks like the code shared that controls shipping method by product can be massaged to do what I stated above… Creating shipping methods for Books, Non-Book Media and Non-Media, and then setting up locations and charges for appropriate locations. Ideally a CS-Cart native code layer would be brought in at some point.
Can we get a representative from CS-Cart here? This is, after all, why we have forums like these.
I feel Amazon integration is pretty damn important in today's ecommerce world.