How to Integrate your eCommerce Website to Online Marketplaces?

What is an eCommerce marketplace integration?

Ecommerce marketplace integration is a tool that connects your eCommerce website to an online marketplace (like Amazon, eBay, or Walmart). It takes your product data like pricing, inventory amounts, and shipping policies, and syncs it with a particular marketplace.

Sometimes it's a one-time sync where you do all future edits directly on the marketplace and sometimes it's ongoing and you are able to edit information on the tool for multiple marketplaces.

If you're using one of the top eCommerce platforms (BigCommerce, Shopify, Magento, or WooCommerce) then you have hundreds of plugins and extensions that connect your site to various marketplaces and marketing channels. Here are the steps you need to take to integrate your site to a third-party marketplace:

1. Go to the extension or plugin store (Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento)
2. Search for the specific marketplace you're looking to connect
3. Install the app
4. Create an account on that marketplace
5. Apply to be a vendor/merchant
6. Once you're approved login with your account on that app
7. Sync your products, prices, and shipping policies
8. Launch your listings

Pro tip: if you're using Shopify, you can find a comprehensive list of marketplaces and marketing channels under Shopify's sales channels collection.

To learn more about which marketplaces and Amazon competitors you should sell on, read our Guide to Online Marketplaces.

What is eCommerce API?

Sometimes you are able to integrate your eCommerce site directly to the marketplace through an API integration. There are many API integration providers like one of our favorites - CedCommerce. They have built many apps that integrate via API to marketplaces like Walmart, NewEgg, Sears, Jet, and Amazon.

What do you need to integrate to launch on a marketplace?

There are several elements of your eCommerce store that you need to integrate in order to launch on a marketplace. Depending on the app you use, you may be able to

Shipping policies

Integrate the various shipping policies you have. These should include the price, the type of shipping, and the estimated delivery times.

Return policy

Next is your return policy. This is usually a paragraph that you can easily input into a field on the integration.

Inventory

The most challenging part of the integration is the inventory. You need to sync each product field correctly and categorize everything correctly by categories and subcategories on each marketplace.

Product images / videos

Even if you are using an app to automate the process you often have to upload your images and videos manually into each listing. That's the biggest time crunch for most integrations.

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