Shopware Markets and magnalister: How Can Online Merchants Profit From the Variety of New Marketplace Connectors?

Marketplace connector plugins, which link your online shop to Amazon or eBay, now count as one of the most important selling tools and system extensions for Shopware shop owners. They make it possible for your products to be transported further than you’d have ever imagined they could reach, into the hands of millions of additional buyers. And as the trend predicts, connecting marketplaces also serves you because many people who buy online start and end their product search on big online marketplaces.

If you’re thinking about using a marketplace plugin, you should consider the following three questions:

1. Will you be able to supply your products quicker and more efficiently with a tool such as magnalister or Shopware Markets than via the marketplace administration (i.e. Amazon Seller Central or eBay Seller Hub) itself?
2. Do the tools automate the most important processes between Shopware and the connected marketplaces, i.e. inventory and price synchronization, order import or delivery info?
3. Which marketplaces can you connect using magnalister, Shopware Markets, etc.? Can you connect to specialized or international marketplaces?

In case you want to sell on Amazon, eBay, and many more national and international marketplaces, magnalister has been around for more than 10 years, allowing you just that. Shopware has already called it the “plugin of the month,” because it offers merchants like you a reliable, integral marketplace management with many automation features – directly from the Shopware backend. The following are the plugin’s core features:

• Upload your products from the shop system to connected marketplaces
• Automated price and inventory synchronization 
• Automated order import from marketplaces
• Order status synchronization, such as sent (incl. tracking code)
• Product variants and attributes matching
• Invoice upload (currently available for Amazon)
• Plugin customization via hook points

magnalister is one of the most important developing partners of shop system builders and online marketplaces. All parties working this closely together furthers the development of the tools making sure the newest marketplace features and the needs of online merchants are always included. Merchants who have used our plugin were already able to make more than 3.5 billion Euro in order imports, upload 105 million products to marketplaces and thus reach more than 110 million clients.

MAGNALISTER 30 DAYS FREE TRIAL

Shopware Markets: shop system developers support merchants with their own plugins

Shopware Markets is a plugin that started in July 2020 and for which you as a merchant can apply for beta testing.

magnalister welcomes the trend of shop developers promoting marketplace connections more and more and so making merchants aware of them: Shopware Markets shows how merchants experience challenges with getting their products in front of a large enough audience when solely using the shop system rather than combining it with a direct connection to Amazon, eBay, and the like.

Economic success with E-commerce depends on so-called multi channel distribution: Using online marketplaces and diversifying your product offer allows you to invest less into the marketing of your own shop while massively profiting from the ranking chances on large portals, which, of course, leads to an increase in sales.

It’s not clear yet how many national and international marketplace connections Shopware Markets will offer. The more they would offer, the more success this would mean for merchants and the more they could spread risk because as a merchant, you shouldn’t only focus on one or two marketplaces. Think about DaWanda or Allyouneed, which had been initiated by the German post office – these two examples of marketplaces have demonstrated how quickly online trade is rising – or falling in some cases. However, we always think from the merchant’s perspective and also act from it. That’s why we are convinced that merchants can only gain from connecting a myriad of marketplaces.

The same also applies for plugin tools because more and more upcoming marketplaces arise, more laws are being passed, and improvements as well as features of the marketplaces require continuous expansion to various shop systems. Connecting all available online marketplaces including all exotic and niche ones with all their features and in the same quality within only one system, is a bold and unrealistic move.

When it comes to Shopware Markets, this means from our point of view that the tool will find its place in the plugin scene. We are excited to experience the developer’s new ideas and benefits ourselves, and are looking to refine our own product alongside theirs. We are sure that Shopware Market’s developers will do the same. That’s how there won’t be any competition, but rather a continuum when it comes to working together and motivating each other to further both our excellence.

Connect the marketplaces of tomorrow already today and sell internationally – here’s what makes magnalister great

Whether it’s fairly new marketplaces such as METRO or international branches of popular portals such as Amazon, eBay or Etsy – magnalister continuously works on offering new sales opportunities to their merchants. Start connecting the following marketplaces to your Shopware with our plugin today:

• Amazon (DE, AT, FR, ES, IT, NL, UK, USA)
• eBay (worldwide)
• Etsy (worldwide)
• Rakuten (France, formerly “Priceminister”)
• METRO Marktplatz
• Kaufland
• CHECK24
• Ricardo
• idealo
• Cdiscount (France)
• Hood.de

Within just a few more weeks, you’ll be able to connect to OTTO Market as well as to Amazon Sweden, Australia, Singapore, and Canada (as of August 2020).

START NOW

Here’s what we can recommend every merchant: shift into gear now and expand your offers to international markets. The more our world becomes digitized, the less obstacles you have to overcome when it comes to trading across borders. Services such as Amazon FBA or dropshipping models assist you with delivering your products to international buyers. If you set up your shop system and multi channel marketing for the future now, you will profit enormously from the global E-commerce trend.

magnalister’s goal is to have both small and large online merchants participate in the national and international E-Commerce trend. That’s why we not only provide extensive possibilities in the form of many marketplace connections for various shop systems, but also a fair pricing structure.

When you try magnalister for free for the first 30 days, we already include our full-on support. We actively help merchants to get to know our tool and connect the first marketplace. You receive free screen-based training from our support team.

BOOK A FREE ON-SCREEN TUTORIAL NOW

Shopware, Shopify, Magento, or WooCommerce? Gambio, xt:Commerce, or Presta Shop? The shop system trend may change, but magnalister stays!

Looking at the global E-Commerce trend, you will realize that new shop system developers appear on the market and challenge established systems with their concepts and features, i.e. as Shopify did a while ago. At a time in which almost all shop system developers used to bet on the on-premise solution (meaning systems were installed on your own servers, hosted and updated by you), Shopify started offering their shop systems completely from their cloud. They install your shop system, maintain it, and keep it uptodate and safe; thus, offer a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service). This concept and thus Shopify first established itself in the US, and Europe followed. Shopware recognized this and followed by recently publishing their first SaaS solution on the basis of Shopware 6.

Next to Shopware and Shopify, we’ve seen many other shop systems developing further: WooCommerce, Gambio, xt:Commerce or PrestaShop. Merchants should check from time to time, whether their system can still keep up with all the requirements. Technology quickly becomes obsolete, which means the community around the shop ecosystem is essential and extremely important to receive great support when it comes to technology and security questions.

magnalister pays close attention to the development of shop systems and trends. We implement our plugin into the most popular and progressive shop systems within the shortest amount of time. This makes switching super easy for merchants, who already connected some marketplaces. magnalister’s surface looks almost identical within every shop system because the same marketplaces are available. We also implement all magnalister core features that a shop system permits. That’s why merchants remain flexible to choose their shop system.

By the way: According to what we know now, Shopware Markets will only be available for Shopware 6 shops. Currently, most of the Shopware shops still run on Shopware 5, which is probably going to continue for a while.

magnalister and Shopware Markets: merchants can profit from both tools and expand their multi channel distribution

Shopware Markets has just been tested in its beta phase and proves that shop developers such as Shopware recognize the large potential of selling on online marketplaces. Shopware is not the only shop developer offering their own plugins. Trendsetter Shopify has also jumped on the bandwagon and developed their own marketplace connector.

That’s why it’s completely understandable that developers focus only on certain marketplaces such as Amazon or eBay. Connecting marketplaces with all their complexity, i.e. in the areas of product preparation and upload, attributes matching, or order processing, is a time-consuming and technologically challenging task. magnalister has known this since linking eBay in 2008. To provide you as merchants with a seamless process and process automation, we have to continuously pay a lot of attention to every detail and create a close partnership with marketplace developers.

Shopware Markets surely has good starting conditions, not only because Shopware has been a known player in the German-speaking E-Commerce realm and has been building software solutions targeted at online merchants for many years – similar to magnalister.

All in all, you can look forward to the new features that Shopware Markets will offer and on which marketplace connections Shopware will decide as soon as the tool comes out of its beta test phase. We are also excited and look forward to new inspiration.