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The first day of the plentymarkets Online Sellers Congress was a huge success. The day was packed full of events and discussions. The Future Conference was an open-space event, which gave online sellers the chance to meet up and chat about topics of their choice. Knowledge Day was the perfect opportunity to tap into a wealth of expert knowledge. And the Pre-Show-Party was a chance for sellers to network and relax after a hard day's work. We've compiled all the highlights from the first day of the Congress in this review.
In-depth discussions: internationalisation, controlling and service
We held the Future Conference for the first time in 2015. Since it was such a great success, we decided to repeat the event at the plentymarkets Online Sellers Congress this year. This event is unique in that it allows online sellers to decide which topics they are the most interested in and want to continue discussing in small groups. This year, most of the participants wanted to discuss the topics internationalisation, controlling, service and consulting.
plentymarkets Online Sellers Congress 2016: Future Conference
One of the central questions was how online stores can use service and consulting - rather than simply price - to set themselves apart from the competition. The participants used concrete examples from their day-to-day business to illustrate how sellers can benefit from offering these services. The most popular topic at the Future Conference was internationalisation. The discussion mainly revolved around sales opportunities on the Chinese market. The participants heard first-hand accounts and insights from a service provider and several online sellers who have had experience with the Chinese market. Peter Höschl, CEO of shopanbieter.de and moderator of the Future Conference 2016, said that such peer-to-peer discussions helped make the event a valuable learning experience.
Expert tips, tricks and know-how about the item architecture and plugins
The Knowledge Day ran parallel to the Future Conference. Several plentymarkets developers and experts gave insider information about new features and tools in our powerful ERP system. For example, Atila Szekely discussed specific SEO tips for being ranked higher on Amazon. Since Amazon SEO is an absolute must-have for online sellers, he showed the audience how plentymarkets facilitates SEO and where sellers need to the configure the necessary item settings. Atila also emphasised the fact that sellers can make the most out of eBay by choosing the right settings. He explained the advantages of the "scarcity trick" and the "out of stock" option and showed the audience how to use these tricks in plentymarkets. For example, sellers can use plentymarkets to specify the maximum item quantity that should be transferred to eBay. Sellers can create a feeling of scarcity by intentionally withholding portions of their stock. Buyers are more likely to make an impulse purchase if they feel that the product is scarce or exclusive.
Another major topic at Knowledge Day was the new plentymarkets item architecture, which will soon be tested live in beta. The new item architecture will bring our ERP system a giant step forward in terms of flexibility and customisation. Item data will be managed differently starting with plentymarkets 7. The item data will be split into two different sub-sets. Most of the data will no longer apply to the entire item, but will rather apply to a specific variation. On the one hand, items will be composed of global data, which can be passed down to any or all variations. On the other hand, items will be composed of data that is managed for each individual variation. Item data will consist of global settings (condition, manufacturer, age rating etc.), texts, properties and cross-selling settings. Variation data will consist of photos, barcodes, retail prices, suppliers, etc. At a later point in time, the texts and properties will also be managed for each individual variation.
plentymarkets Online Sellers Congress 2016: Knowledge Day
We're still in the brainstorming phase for other menus in our ERP system, such as Customers or Orders. The plentymarkets developers Timo Zenke, Oliver Skrzipek and Emmanouil Stafilarakis sketched out their own ideas on these topics to the delight of the crowd. The audience was invited to directly participate and give their own ideas for the future tools and features.
Paul Schmidt from the plentymarkets developer team gave insight into the new plugin capabilities of our software. He introduced the technology that is used for the plugins: Laravel is the most widely used PHP framework and TWIG is an extremely powerful template engine, which offers many possibilities and includes its own syntax. The preprocessor Sass makes it easier to generate CSS documents and we use Hack as a programming language for HHVM. At the Knowledge Day, visitors learned how they can use these tools to develop their own plugins. Learn more and find out how to get started with plentymarkets plugins at showcase.plentymarkets.com.
plentymarkets Online Sellers Congress 2016: Pre-Show-Party with Turntablerocker
As the busy day came to an end, visitors were ready to kick back and relax at our phenomenal Pre-Show-Party. Christoph Brand delighted the crowd with his sophisticated culinary delicacies. Invigorated, the online sellers took to the dance floor and the bands KYTES and Turntablerocker got the party heated up. The first day of the Congress was a huge success!