{"id":15453,"date":"2018-09-27T10:05:09","date_gmt":"2018-09-27T07:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.x-cart.com\/?p=15453"},"modified":"2024-12-25T18:29:25","modified_gmt":"2024-12-25T15:29:25","slug":"inventory-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.x-cart.com\/blog\/multi-channel-inventory-management.html","title":{"rendered":"The Ultimate Guide to Multi-Channel eCommerce Inventory Management"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This blog post was originally contributed by Jillian Huffed, a Marketing Analyst at nChannel<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s shoppers easily bounce back and forth between online and offline channels. To keep up, merchants must extend their presence across multiple channels and create consistent experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem is that multi-channel marketing and selling is difficult, especially when it comes to tracking and managing your inventory. For retailers, inventory is accurate<\/a> just 63% of the time, on average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That number isn\u2019t good enough. Inventory mistakes lead to overselling, upset customers, and lost sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To help you build a more profitable business, this post discusses what multi-channel eCommerce is, why you should care more about your multi-channel inventory management, and steps to start improving your processes today.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n What is a Multi-Channel Inventory Strategy? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s more important than ever that merchants sell where their potential customers are. Shoppers want to shop whenever and wherever they want. For merchants, this often means expanding to new sales channels whether its eCommerce, marketplaces, physical stores or social media. Why do so?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Multi-channel shoppers spend more. A Fluent survey<\/a> found that 49% of shoppers who engage with retailer across 10 or more channels make purchases from their favorite retailer\u2019s eCommerce site at least once a week, compared to just 21% for those engage across one to four channels.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Undertaking a multi-channel eCommerce strategy doesn\u2019t mean blindly focusing on being everywhere though. It means understanding two things: the multiple places you need to sell for your customers and the backend processes necessary to make that happen. For example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n