Inside a Scalable Multi-Platform WooCommerce Strategy

Robbie:
Hello and welcome to Do the Woo. This is Agency Chat and I normally have Robert Jacobi on here with me, but he is on a plane somewhere who knows where. And I am Robbie, Adair with OSTraining. Today I have Natish with the agency CedCommerce.com. So Natish, tell us how are you doing today and tell us a little bit about CedCommerce.

Natish:
Yeah, thanks for introducing me. I’m doing great today. And yeah, so CedCommerce basically deals with different marketplace integration and services for WordPress and WooCommerce. From lastly, 10 to 11 years and we are having some of our products integration products listed over WooCommerce.com and we cater also services one-time services for our users who came us with their requirement and we catered that too. And we also provide some migration stuff also from different store to WooCommerce and syncing between two stores if they want to keep both the stores up.

Robbie:
Awesome. So that’s interesting. So most agencies are going to direct people to be on one shopping cart or another, but you guys are saying that Hey, you’re doing great on WooCommerce, but you also want to add another instance of Shopify, but WooCommerce is the only place you want to update products. So sure we can make that the source of truth. That’s what you guys are allowing some of your customers to do or helping them do.

Natish:
Yeah, exactly. Means encourage them to use WooCommerce, but if they don’t want to change their older platform, then we provide them this solution to provide a sync between two stores and they can sync their inventory orders and these kind of things using with the APIs they can do that.

Robbie:
So tell me, why would someone want to run two shopping carts as it were? So two full stores, even though I see you guys have made it easy as far as inventory is concerned because you guys are syncing things through there, they have a source of truth which you would need to have or you’d have a real mess, but what would be the advantage that they would see on doing something like that? I’m just curious

Natish:
For a better reach to their audience. They got a global presence over the internet using the website and WordPress provides a better and easy solution for that means using WooCommerce we can create a good website with a, you can say optimize pages and shop page there using a few steps we can create that so it’ll help them to reach to their audience in an easy step using these kind of websites.

Robbie:
I guess it would also help them when there’s issues, if they’re international, sometimes there’s issues with ecommerce in certain countries.

Natish:
Yeah, so their global presence there using ecommerce, they can list their product to the different marketplaces means like Amazon, Walmart, Etsy and so on. They can use that platform for selling their product and can read to them and their audience easily.

Robbie:
Cool. That’s really interesting. I mean really like I said, most agencies that I talk with or it’s like we help move them from this one to this one, but I very rarely hear someone saying that they’re helping them create a source of truth with one cart and update others. So I like to hear that. That’s really cool. Have you guys also been asked to sync a source of truth from an outside entity of a shopping cart into these shopping carts like WooCommerce?

Natish:
Yeah, we are having integration for Magento migration too and one is for Shopify also. We provide that.

Robbie:
So you’re doing a lot of migration?

Natish:
Yeah, a few of marketplaces which enable allow us to do that using APIs. We do that.

Robbie:
Cool. So you offer the service of migration between both open source platforms like WooCommerce and also closed source like Shopify or…

Natish:
OpenGuide is there? PrestaShop is there.

Robbie:
Oh, PrestaShop. Okay, cool. Awesome. So now you mentioned earlier said Commerce has been in business for 11 years I believe. Did you start it? Were you one of the original founders?

Natish:
Yeah, CedCommerce have two founders, Abhishek Jaiswal and Himanshu Rauthan. and they have started this company from the India and currently we are operational from India and we are having two branches here in India.

Robbie:
Wow. So about how many people do you guys have on your team?

Natish:
Currently we are having around 500 to 600 members there.

Robbie:
Wow. That is a huge team. Wow. Five to 600. Well, but I do see when I’m looking at your site and I was looking through your services and your products, you have like a 800 over 800 products.

Natish:
If we go back in 2017, we got a partnership with Walmart. We participate in some investor summit also in India. And our CEO was invited to Magento live Europe there from these things we do. And in 2020 we got partnered Google and Facebook during the pandemic we got that opportunity. And currently we are mainly focusing on the ecommerce platform to cater that part to provide a single solution for, we can say, you can say a multi-channel solution for the users who came to us so that they can sync their product from a single store like WooCommerce to the different marketplace using the same platform they can manage all the things mean, the source of truth will be the WooCommerce part and they will sync their product from that single platform to the different marketplaces like Amazon, Amazon, Walmart, and I see eBay. These kind of things are there.

Robbie:
Wow. So let’s talk about that then. So you’re telling our audience here that they can have a WooCommerce store and that’s where they maintain their inventory in stock, but you guys can help them connect out and sell those same exact products on Walmart or Amazon?

Natish:
Yeah, exactly. They can do that. They have to simply install our plugin and do some required configuration. There means the onboarding process, connect their store, their WooCommerce store to the marketplace like Amazon, eBay, Walmart and it then they can think their product there. If they are already having account over Amazon and they want to list to WooCommerce, then they can pull their products to WooCommerce also and they can provide things from their own too.

Robbie:
Wow. So with your tool, this multichannel, you could go even backwards from Amazon out back to your WooCommerce you’re saying? So it works kind of both directions.

Natish:
Yeah, we do that.

Robbie:
So this is a plugin that you guys have, but do you also offer a service to help them get this set up?

Natish:
It’s already listed over WooCommerce.com by the name of MultChannel by CedCommerce and we are having reviews around 4.3 there. So some of our users using that and some of our older clients that are using the single plugin for Amazon and for eBay Etsy, they are now moving toward this single multi-channel part so that they can manage their things from a single dashboard. So we are working on that too. The migration part for the older, you can see the users who are using and we provide their free trial for seven days. So that user can use our services for seven days and they can means check what exactly we are providing to them and then they can move to our flexible pricing plans, which are monthly, starting from $29 per month and they can do that.

Robbie:
Cool. So let’s talk about pricing. So do you just charge for the plugin or in a monthly service? You’re saying are there any fees per sale or is it just all a monthly flat rate?

Natish:
It’s monthly and yearly. Monthly is starting from 29 and for one marketplace, if someone goes with annual plan then it’ll cost around $20 per month. If they go with yearly plan them one marketplace is for $20 round.

Robbie:
Alright, well that’s cool.

Natish:
Yeah, in that we are having few plans like basic and advance. In advance, they can manage unlimited product and unlimited orders there.

Robbie:
Okay, so there’s no other fee? No,

Natish:
No, no other fees is there.

Robbie:
Awesome. That’s really cool.

Natish:
This pricing plan is live on WooCommerce dot com. If someone wants to check they can visit there and the product name is multi-Channel over at WooCommerce dot com. They can check and we provide support there means they can came up with us and raise ticket and they will get connected with them and provide demo for that, how our planning is working for them.

Robbie:
So let me ask, if someone has a WooCommerce store and they say, well I’d like to sell these same products on Amazon and Walmart and they use your plugin, do they have to also then go and establish accounts themselves with Walmart and Amazon or do you guys have with your partnership, do you have some sort of a global account that these products go through?

Natish:
No, it’s like that if Lexus has came to us and he want to sell over Walmart and Amazon, so he must have a seller account there and he will provide us the details on the onboarding part and from our team, one of our, you can see a support member will connect with them and he will provide a basic training for the onboarding part and the setting where they have to make changes in the template and the category mapping. Category mapping is simply means which category means if I’m selling a product named as clothing and I want to sell that in the category clothing, they have to map this with the category of Walmart and Amazon. Then the mapping part in these kinds of things, our support member will provide them a basic training in the first step so that they can onboard and easily move their product from think their product from WooCommerce to the marketplace.

Robbie:
Awesome. That’s really a cool concept. And when you say Amazon, does that also include things like the publishing on demand books and things like that? Does it include all the type of products you can sell on Amazon?

Natish:
Yeah, all the products that Amazon’s API allows us or eBay API allows us that are included in the integration like eBay Motors is there and eBay other categories out there they can sell.

Robbie:
So now let’s talk a little bit about what you guys then are seeing as kind of some trends and some changes in, obviously you guys are way into ecommerce, you’re dealing with all the different platforms and talking through between those with APIs. So what are you seeing as a company that are trends that we should all be looking out for in ecommerce?

Natish:
Yeah, you can say from last few years I am working with the CedCommerce, it’s around eight to nine years I am there. So in that I found that the client or you can see the seller, they want their data to be placed in a single place. From there they can manage all the thing and means some of them are not, you can say comfortable to put their data in other servers like in SaaS based system. So they need their hosting where they can protect their data from being somewhere else. So multichannel means in future the sellers so on to sell from a single store to different one like a multichannel thing so that they can manage things from a single dashboard. They don’t have to rush to the different domains for checking their sales at the end of month and fulfilling the orders. They have to go different marketplace and different URL for checking that how much orders they have and means they want a single dashboard where from there they can manage all the orders, all the sales and get the analytics report in a single place so that they can plan their next quarter or next year in a better venue in an easy way they can get a data from a single store.

Robbie:
Well and something that you said in there, I do think that is important for us to think about, especially because we’re all coming from an open source world here, is that protecting your data. So what you’re allowing people to do is not have to only have their products on Amazon, which is a closed environment or a Shopify, which is a closed environment, not that they’re not great environments, they are, but they are closed and your data is not so easily accessible by yourself. Whereas when you go to something like a WooCommerce, you have freedom of data, you own that data and you can control that data, but data you’re allowing us to then also go into those closed sources but keeping our source of truth somewhere else.

Natish:
Yeah, it means the source of truth is on other servers where we don’t have so much flexibility to make changes or do things in rv. But if you go with, we will go through WooCommerce, then we can opt any hosting service which suit us and we can manage our data according to our need.

Robbie:
That’s really cool. And so you saw that what was happening with ecommerce was the need for this and you guys have just jumped right in there with a product that does this as well as the supporting services. I love that. Are there any other things that you guys are looking towards? I mean AI obviously is a very, very hot topic right now in our world and I’m sure because you guys doing migrations and moving products around, I’m sure you’re looking at some uses for ai, right? I mean if nothing else helping you rewrite descriptions, things like that.

Natish:
Yeah, currently our development team is basically working on the, you can say the refinement and better development for this multi-channel part and a team of ours is also looking for the AI means how can we implement it in this multi-channel. It is under, you can say analysis part means currently it is under research. So it is not so much you can say develop that we can discuss here. But yeah, surely we will implement that in future we will do that.

Robbie:
So tell me as an agency, because I mean you have almost 500 employees you said. So as an agency you’re doing both services and products. How do you guys handle both sides of the house? Do you split your teams? So some are product based, some are service based, and how do the two sides work together?

Natish:
Yeah, the strength that I have told 500 is the complete strength of our office means you can see the company for the WooCommerce and WordPress around one 50 developers are there along with the support team. And yeah, the team is divided in two wing. One of them worked with our pre-developed plugin for their enhancement and update and the other team that caters the client requirement, which came to us from different medium and firstly we catered their requirement and analysis all these things, these two teams are there and the developers for the both teams are separate. We work respectively for them.

Robbie:
Have you as a company, do you ever feel like one side is bigger than the other and you need to separate them as companies or do you like having them as one company?

Natish:
No, we’ll work together means the separation is not needed for till now means we can work together as sometimes you can say a user that came to us for integration, their Amazon store with WooCommerce, he also want to optimize his website also means the service part is also there. So we can cater that client from a single, you can say single company or a single entity easily and the client must have a faith over the developer who is connecting regularly with him, a long relationship. So we generally work like this so that he can trust us and we work the business in long-term with them like this.

Robbie:
Cool. So you are in ecommerce. So I know a very, very big topic for you at all times is probably security. How do you guys handle security as far as you’re making products? How are you making sure you’re keeping those up to date and secure? Then also when you’re working with migrations and things like that, how are you working towards trying to make sure all that data is secure for your clients?

Natish:
Basically all the systems that we work with, you can say connected from this office, VPN and all these things. So the connection is already secured and the data, we try to keep it secure in such a way that you can say means the system and if as a developer I am working my system is also is under surveillance that all the things are secured in this means the proper firewall is there and all these things are there. And while working with the migration or a website development, we use the means we follow the basic standards that WordPress and WooCommerce allow us the proper, if we are using form non are there and these are standards we follow and we keep updated from the WooCommerce community and other blocks from there. Whenever we got a new update, we make changes on our plugin also these kind of steps we take and there is a project manager is also there who keep eyes on the code. So he keep on you can say refinement of the code in terms of security and in terms of optimization. He looked at if we are doing work with plugin, the code need to be optimized and if we are working on a website no such a, you can say a buggy code or a heavy, you can say laggy code is not there. So that the website need to be optimized there. These standards we follow there for the website development for security reasons.

Robbie:
That’s good to hear. I mean as an agency always, I feel like when we get projects in that have to do with ecommerce, I mean there’s always this, it takes on a next level with the project because you’re dealing with such secure data and so I feel like it’s put on the white gloves to work on this project. Right, because it has to do with ecommerce. So as you guys are working with all these different products out there, do you have preferences that you tend to sway your clients towards that you guys yourselves see all these different products out there that are doing ecommerce. So when you’re looking at types of features, security, things like that, do you give recommendations to your clients?

Natish:
Yes. Sometimes we provide basically in terms of security and in terms of hosting and in terms of you can say the premium plugin on premium teams, we suggest them. This means if you are selling these kind of products and you are having such number of SKU, then you can opt AWS or Bluehost or work with hosting these kind of things. We suggest them, you can go and use these services, they are providing a better security and these kind of things.

Robbie:
You have some consulting services basically to help a client decide where they should and shouldn’t be based on the size of their product catalog

Natish:
In the first kickoff meeting. Or you can say the requirement analytics meeting. We do this kind of thing. Where we provide consultant also is which service or which hosting they want to opt and means what they are planning in their business according to that we suggest them.

Robbie:
And do you work with other agencies out there? Do other agencies ask you to help with their client projects?

Natish:
Yeah, we are having a team who deals with Magento and a team who works with Shopify also and PrestaShop is also there. We work with them.

Robbie:
So if another agency out there had an ecommerce job for a client and they thought, well I may not be the best person to help my client here, but I want to partner with someone like CedCommerce to help me with that. You guys would work with other agencies to help them with their clients?

Natish:
Yeah, we do. That means if they are interested to connect it with ecommerce, we surely cater their requirement. And if we can do that means we are having a sufficient resources and sufficient time that they want to deliver the project. Yeah, we surely do that.

Robbie:
Awesome. That’s good to know. We have a lot of agencies that listen to the show and an agency can’t be an expert in everything and so if they need help in certain areas it’s always nice to reach out to other agencies to have the experience behind them. So glad to hear you guys do that. So what are your upcoming things that we should be looking for? Do you have new products on the horizon we should know about or changes to your current ones?

Natish:
Currently the main changes will be on the current products only means the betterment and the refining of the multi-channel part. And then maybe in future we will come with other products too for for the couple of quarters we will work on the multichannel part only for now. And in the service we will cater service as we are currently doing. But for the product part we will work on the update and the refinement of our current products only.

Robbie:
So you’re concentrating on your services and just keeping your current product base updated and with new features, you guys don’t have a new product that’s about to be released. It’s more you’ve got your standard products there that you’re just trying to make even better.

Natish:
Yeah, exactly.

Robbie:
And do you guys go to any of the conferences? Will we see you at WordCamp Europe or WordCamp US? Do you guys go to WordCamp in your area?

Natish:
I think this year our team is planning for that. They are in the process of maybe this year we will attend that children.

Robbie:
Fantastic. So tell everyone if they’re interested in your products or your services, how can they contact said commerce?

Natish:
They can connect us with our websites at CedcCommerce.com, From there they can connect with us. One of our member will get connected with them over the ticket and they can discuss their need means the requirement and we will get it there.

Robbie:
Awesome. And they also can, you said try your multi-channel plugin for WooCommerce for seven days for free, correct?

Natish:
Exactly. They can do that. The plugin is there on WooCommerce dot com with the name of Multichannel by CedCommerce. They can use that too.

Robbie:
Okay, so you’re in the Woo shop. So that’s great. Makes it real easy for everyone. Well thank you so much for coming on today and sharing some information about your agency, about the products you guys have found were needed out there and your services as well. So thank you very much for coming on.

Natish:
Thanks for having us here.

Robbie:
You’re very welcome. Very welcome. So have a great day and everyone else listening, don’t forget to tune into the next episode of Do the Woo.