Marketplace Integration: What most brands underestimate

1. What’s something most brands underestimate when integrating with a marketplace?

There are usually two options when you want to automate.
You either build a custom direct integration between the brand’s e-com and a specific marketplace, or connect through a marketplace integration platform (iPaaS).

I’ve seen clients active on multiple marketplaces using different integration methods for each one. This often leads to maintenance issues and manual tasks because the integrations are not unified and have different flows. That causes extra manual work in areas like order management, bookkeeping, and product creation, which should be avoided.

Good custom direct integrations can be complex to build, especially if you're selling on multiple marketplaces and want to automate article creation and updates, offer creation and updates, and full order management including import, cancellations, fulfilment, and refunds.

In many cases, it's better to use a proper marketplace iPaaS provider where the e-com connects to the iPaaS and then to the marketplaces. You usually want an iPaaS provider with a solid mapping solution or PIM functionality that includes a UI for troubleshooting and ways to manually fix article creation issues, especially when validation errors or rejections happen during marketplace onboarding.

To summarize, a common thing brands underestimate is the article creation process on the marketplace. They don’t fully understand how different marketplace content requirements are compared to their own e-com. Because of this, I often see brands rushing that part, which affects sales.

2. Everyone talks about ‘real-time syncing’ but what does that actually mean in practice?

And when is “good enough” not good enough?

The time-critical tasks in an e-com integration are usually stock updates and order imports, especially for deducting sold stock.
A “real-time” sync means the time from a stock change in the e-com until it hits the marketplace API. You want to keep that delay as short as possible to avoid overselling. Nothing is ever fully real-time. There’s always some delay, but the goal is to minimize it.

Some notes on integration architecture and sync timing.
The more integration jumps the data takes, the more time is added to each event. Try to keep the number of jumps low to avoid delays and complexity. Each jump adds processing time. The more systems that need to communicate, the more jumps are added.

Feed or EDI-based integrations can never be faster than a good API-based integration.
Always choose a modern API-based setup with good throttling, error code handling, and built-in retry functionality.

Avoid systems that rely on cron jobs running every 1 hour, 30 minutes, or 10 minutes. It’s fine to use cron jobs. They’re just scheduled triggers. But they should run every minute for article changes like stock updates, or every 10 minutes for orders.

If the system runs cron jobs only once an hour for stock updates, there’s no real benefit in using an API compared to a feed-based integration.

Make sure internal scheduled tasks are properly configured and run quickly.

So, what is “good enough”?
It depends on volume, meaning sales volume compared to stock volume.
Low stock levels and high sales volume increase the risk of overselling when doing omni-channel from a shared warehouse. It varies case by case. But if I had to give a general answer, keep the sync delay under 15 minutes from the stock change in e-com until it reaches the marketplace API.

3. What’s one thing you wish more teams understood about keeping integrations clean over time, not just at launch?

Quick fixes to larger issues often result in bad integrations. Try to avoid this and dedicate proper time to maintaining your integrations. Sometimes, a complete overhaul is needed.

Things change. APIs evolve, and your team gains more experience over time.

Also, make sure someone owns the integration and is accountable for it.
When starting an integration project, study the APIs thoroughly and plan properly.

4. What’s the most common mistake you see when brands try to integrate with marketplaces on their own?

Choosing the wrong “experts” can lead to poor integrations with low levels of automation and a lot of manual effort when orders get stuck or articles aren’t created on the marketplace.

This can damage the brand, especially if the order integration is faulty or if stock and price updates don’t sync correctly, leading to cancelled orders.

Choose the right integrator, someone with deep knowledge of e-commerce marketplaces.
Some marketplace APIs are very complex, and picking the wrong consultant or service provider can lead to extra time spent on development simply due to a lack of understanding of how to manage the channel.

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Looking for more tips from our integration expert? Part 2 is on the way.
In the meantime, if you have questions or want to learn how Sello can support your marketplace expansion, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Nils Muhrén, Integration expert