Shopify’s new eBay Sales Channel and how it affects your business

Nobody Puts eBay in a Corner

eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY), the online sales giant that helps turn thousands of small businesses owners into millionaires, is joining in on the Shopify sales channel club.

Sales channels allow you to use Shopify as your home base for your e-commerce store, while still selling on other platforms to reach new audiences and keep up with the competition. Shopify has several native integrations with sales channels, such as Facebook and Amazon, as well as basically any build-your-own sales channels you want.

Shopify has just announced a full integration with eBay, so merchants can easily manage selling across multiple stores from one place.

Sell with the longest-running online sales platform

eBay started in 1995 - years before most of the prominent online marketplaces. During that time, it’s morphed into one of the largest online giants in the world, and has been the breeding grounds for other companies, like PayPal and StubHub. In fact, in many countries, eBay is the only major online marketplace where you can buy new and used things from businesses and individual sellers.

a death mask of one of the most notorious vampires in historyUnlike more focused marketplaces like Etsy, eBay is a one-site-fits-all system. You can find literally anything - from antique coins to home decorations to camping gear to. One of the appeals for shoppers is that besides the hard-to-find, eBay also boasts a huge price range because of the large amount of competition. Customers can use eBay to find cheaper versions or order in bulk. This can sometimes feel like a problem for small online businesses that can’t make the economies of scale of large warehouses - but it’s still an important marketplace to be on for more and more storefronts.

Reach millions of new customers

The biggest advantage of selling on eBay is that it has a huge amount of users. (169 million active users and counting, to be exact). Sitting just under Amazon in terms of unique monthly visitors, eBay has a massive worldwide reach and customer loyalty.

Besides selling your normal collections, eBay is commonly used by businesses to get rid of overstock, returns and out-of-box items. You can use eBay to flexibly set prices and find customers who want cheaper versions. eBay is also an excellent place to start to do some market research for product development.

Never set foot in eBay waters again

When you sell with Shopify’s eBay sales channel integration, you still can manage your inventory and fulfilment straight from Shopify. You can add products and edit descriptions, send and receive messages with eBay customers, and have orders placed straight into the same spot as all of your other sales channels.

This means you’ll have an easier time managing a complex store, allowing you to use the same process of selling and shipping as you normally do, without ever actually having to leave your comfort zone of Shopify Admin.

Setting up eBay for Shopify

Like any other sales channel, you can add eBay as a sales channel from your Shopify Admin. Just go to the Sales Channel heading and hit + then Add Sales Channel.

You’ll need an eBay Business account to sell as a merchant. Business accounts don’t cost any monthly fees, but opening up an eBay Shop does. Whether you want to sell individual items or create a Shopfront is up to you - a Shop might help improve your credibility and keep your branding consistent, but it’s another investment in time and money. You can find out more about what eBay charges here and more about opening up an eBay Shop.

Important note: Shopify is still in the process of rolling out this sales channel, and it might not be available in your country just yet. Hold tight! It’s coming.

Looking for more details or to troubleshoot? Here’s the Shopify manual.

Understanding your sales channel

One of the advantages of using Shopify and any other sales channels together is that you can understand your business data more holistically. When you sell on eBay, Amazon, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook and your own online store, you can use Shopify Reports to understand exactly how much revenue is coming from each channel. You can also find out info about which demographics are shopping from each channel and what they’re spending their money on. Using this kind of analytics can help you improve your marketing campaigns and grow your business.

Ready to get started?

Elkfox is a Shopify Expert, meaning we help merchants running e-commerce stores succeed and grow with Shopify. We can help you expand your sales channels and develop your site into something powerful. Contact us to find out more.

*Image via Wayback Machine