Ecommerce platform for selling electronics and appliances
In electronics retail the specification decides the sale. The customer compares capacity, consumption, dimensions and efficiency class before looking at the price, and leaves a site where those figures are missing. The trouble is that a single item carries up to thirty attributes and the catalogue holds thousands of them - manual entry stops being an option there.
The second complication is margin. It is thin in this trade, and purchase prices change from week to week. An error of a few percent in the selling price eats the profit on an entire category, so the price has to be derived from the purchase price by a rule rather than typed in by hand.
{ Where the problem starts }
Obstacles specific to selling electronics and appliances
Specifications cannot be entered by hand
Thirty attributes per item across a catalogue of five thousand products is a hundred and fifty thousand data points. No team enters that, so items stay without data and never appear in filtering.
Prices change faster than you can react
The supplier changes the price list and your site sells at the old price for days. If the new price is higher, you sell below cost and do not notice until the accounts come in.
The same model from three suppliers
Without a rule that picks the source, the same item enters the catalogue three times, with three prices and three stock figures. The customer sees duplicates and you buy at a randomly chosen price.
The customer cannot narrow the choice
Without filtering by attributes, a customer facing two hundred washing machines gives up. Filtering only works if attributes are entered cleanly as data rather than written into the description.
Warranty and service are part of the sale
Warranty details, service network and serial number are asked for after the purchase. If they are kept apart from the order, every complaint begins with a search through paperwork.
{ What the platform solves }
An answer to each of those obstacles
Importing specifications in a single pass
Attributes are imported from an Excel table for the whole catalogue at once, not item by item. The same attributes immediately become filters in the store.
Calculation instead of manual price entry
The selling price is derived from the purchase price, with currency conversion, duty, transport and the margin you set per category, brand or supplier. A change in the purchase price pulls a new selling price automatically.
Duplicate detection on import
Items arriving from several suppliers are merged into one, with the source chosen by price or availability. The catalogue stays clean without manual tidying.
Automatic description fill-in
For items that arrive from a feed without a description, the description and specification are generated automatically. The catalogue stops having empty pages that no search engine ranks.
Protection of manual edits
A price or description you corrected yourself is not overwritten at the next synchronisation. Automation and manual control work together instead of cancelling each other out.
Terms we use
So there are no misunderstandings in the first meeting, here is what we mean by the terms that come up most often in this industry.
Attribute
A single product characteristic recorded as data, not as a sentence in the description. Only in that form can it serve filtering and comparison.
Calculation
The procedure of deriving the selling price from the purchase price, with all costs up to the shelf and the intended margin. Replaces typing a price per item.
Landed costs
Duty, transport and forwarding that enter the cost price. Without them the margin looks larger than it is.
Supplier priority
The rule deciding which supplier an item is taken from when several offer it - by lower price or by availability.
Common questions from this industry
How are specifications imported for the whole catalogue?
Through an Excel or CSV table, in a single pass. Columns are mapped to system attributes once, after which the same procedure repeats with every catalogue update.
What if the supplier changes prices every day?
Synchronisation can be scheduled hourly, daily or at any interval. The selling price is recalculated from the new purchase price using the margin rule you set, with no manual work.
Can I change the price of a single item by hand?
You can, and that edit is protected from being overwritten at the next import. Automation and manual control work together rather than undoing one another.
Can customers compare products?
They can, provided the characteristics are entered as attributes. The same data drives both filtering and comparison, so it is entered only once.
How large a catalogue does the platform handle?
We build the solution for catalogues from 1000 items upwards. Catalogue size does not affect store speed, because search and filtering do not traverse the whole catalogue on every query.
Do you have a catalogue of 1000 items or more?
For a first estimate we need the number of items, your suppliers and the system you use today. The call takes fifteen minutes, after which you get scope, price and timeline.