Online shoppers have more options than ever before - and they don't hesitate to use them. They shop where it's most convenient, so the various marketplaces and sales platforms play an immense role in any successful e-commerce strategy. For merchants, this creates a new, extended customer journey along which they must proactively position themselves at all touchpoints. 

Our mission is to quickly connect brands, manufacturers and retailers to over 150 marketplaces worldwide to scale their business. The Channel Layer is our commitment to this mission, as it describes the novel technology of integrating marketplaces.

Advancing integrations to expand customer reach

In the past, new sales channels have been integrated using various plugins or interface solutions developed specifically for the individual marketplace. This approach presented multiple challenges, as the variety of integration options hampered maintenance and support, while the use of plugins created a dependency on external providers.

Moving forward, the Channel Layer represents the sole interface towards marketplaces moving forward and describes a combination of various microservices detached from the plentysystems core. 

Increasing speed-to-market and facilitating maintenance

The new technological architecture enables us to standardize the connection of channels, which drastically facilitates the development of new integrations, streamlines maintenance and enhances performance. Here's an overview of the key benefits:

• Streamlined development of new integrations: The Channel Layer standardizes the exchange of data, so only its connector needs individual configuration to match marketplace requirements. This drastically facilitates the development process for new sales channels.

• Quick adjustments due to new technological basis: The updated technological framework allows for rapid adaptation and implementation of new features or improvements.

• Uniform integrations, later open to the public: By creating standardized and uniform development processes, it becomes easier to manage and scale integrations, with potential for opening this technology to our partner ecosystem in the future.

• Solution to the maintenance congestion: Implementing these standards and frameworks reduces the complexity of maintenance tasks, alleviating congestion and allowing for smoother and more efficient updates and fixes.

Enhancing user experience and increasing performance

In addition to the technological basis, the Channel Layer comes with the new entity „Listings“ including a corresponding UI, which displays item information sent to marketplaces via the Channel Layer, as well as errors returned, allowing seamless updates. Here's how it impacts users:

• New entity „Listings“ for easy access: Introducing a new entity streamlines the creation of listings, making it easier for users to manage and review their listed products.

• Seamless error handling on categorized view: Improved error handling within categorized views allows users to identify and resolve issues more effectively, ensuring a smoother and more reliable experience.

• Partial updates for better performance: Implementing partial updates ensures that only the necessary data is refreshed, significantly improving system performance and user experience.

The next milestones on the road ahead

The first integration running on the new technology will launch shortly and sets the precedent for further marketplaces. With its release, the new entity "listings" and its new UI will be visible to all users. Look out for a separate announcement in the weeks to come!

Subsequently, we will gradually add functionalities to the Channel Layer and migrate existing marketplaces. Moving forward, the Channel Layer technology will be established as the new default solution. We look forward to providing you with a top-of-class user experience in sales channel development.

In this Showcase, our Product Manager Sina walks you through everything there is to know about the new technology.