When you step onto West 34th Street in New York City, there’s no missing Macy’s iconic flagship store, and experienced shoppers know exactly what to expect. Once inside, they’ll find a vast assortment of merchandise carefully selected from some of their favorite brands. That’s similar to the kind of experience Macy’s wants to offer luxury shoppers online, as they explore the premium products curated for its digital marketplace.
About Macy’s Marketplace
Featuring more than 20 product categories including beauty, wellness, and gifting, Macy’s launched its digital marketplace in the fall of 2022. This not only opens up access to would-be Macy’s customers who live far beyond the Big Apple. It also creates incredible opportunities for sellers that make it part of their omnichannel marketing and sales strategy.
Macy’s has said it will offer sellers tools to monitor and drive customer activity to further their growth. On the front end, the retail giant said customers should expect a seamless experience as they shop, have products shipped, or when need to process returns.
The launch of Macy’s digital marketplace was closely followed by a similar initiative from Bloomingdale’s, which debuted its own multi-brand eCommerce store shortly before the holiday season.
Why Marketplace Customer Experience Matters
Retailers like Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s are part of a larger trend that is transforming the way brands are thinking about the best ways to reach customers and expand their volume of customer relationships. Since 2020, for instance, online marketplaces have made up 53% of business-to-consumer (B2C) online sales. This has put the overall digital marketplace segment on a path to a projected $8.7 trillion in payments by 2025.
Online marketplaces are powerful tools for retailers that want to embrace curation at scale, offering existing customers a greater assortment and expanded offerings to attract new customers. These same advantages benefit the sellers who participate in online marketplaces, but only if they execute effectively as they integrate with them.
What Marketplace Integrators are, and how they can help
Integrating with digital marketplaces on your own can require significant in-house technology expertise. It also means taking your most talented technical professionals and putting them on a project that potentially takes them away from other opportunities.
Given the pace of change, meanwhile, there can be a significant effort to continue integrating with each new marketplace and understanding its particular needs.
Third-party marketplace integration services provide the expertise and experience necessary to accelerate the process of selling properties from the likes of Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s. They also have more resources to stay ahead of the technology requirements of online marketplaces as they evolve.
Macy’s Marketplace Integration made easy
At Highstreet, for example, marketplace integration services include connecting sellers to properties like Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s and capturing customer orders. Highstreet.io also manages processes such as the acknowledgment that an order has shipped, as well as data around product returns.
Uploading inventory data to the marketplace is fully automated, which saves sellers time and reduces the risk of errors. Instead of disappointing customers by promoting products that are no longer in stock, sellers can avoid high cancellation rates, which on some marketplaces can lead to penalties.
A marketplace integration service like Highstreet.io is also experienced in helping sellers with content mapping. This is the process of translating data about product colors, sizing, and pricing so they appear as the correct values on a marketplace such as Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s. When catalogs can contain hundreds or even thousands of products, it’s critical to map content accurately to ensure a great shopping experience on sites like Macy’s marketplace.
Final Thoughts
Marketplace integrators have proven approaches to ensure high-quality results for digital sellers. This includes testing the connection between the seller’s inventory and Highstreet.io, for example, to ensure inventory is being updated at the right frequency and without mistakes on Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s, and that all orders are being properly captured. This is an important phase of the integration process that will put sellers in a better position to promote their products in these kinds of environments.
As more premium retailers like Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s develop exceptional shopping destinations online, being ready to participate in digital marketplaces will become an essential element in successful eCommerce.
Connect with us to learn more about how Highstreet.io can help you master any marketplace with ease.