Connecting supplier products to your online store
Product integration is the link between where product data originates and where it is sold. On one side are suppliers with their price lists, feeds and APIs. On the other is your store on Shopify, WooCommerce, OpenCart, PrestaShop or another platform, plus marketplaces and feeds. The integration decides how data travels between them and what happens to it on the way.
Three ways to integrate
Manual files
Download the supplier's file, convert it, upload it to the store. Cheap to start, expensive to maintain, and the first thing to break when you add suppliers.
Direct connectors
A plugin or app that connects one supplier to one store. Convenient for a single supplier, but each new supplier or channel needs another connector, and they do not share data with each other.
A central hub
All suppliers feed into one catalog, which is then exported to all channels. One place for mapping, linking and pricing, regardless of how many suppliers and channels you have.
What the integration has to handle
- Receiving data in whatever format and way each supplier provides it.
- Mapping fields and categories to your structure.
- Linking the same product across suppliers.
- Calculating prices with your rules.
- Updating products in the store without overwriting your own content.
- Running on a schedule and reporting problems.
Choosing an approach
For one supplier and one store, a direct connector may be enough. From two or three suppliers, or as soon as you sell on more than one channel, a central hub is usually simpler to run and cheaper in the long term.
Integration with YfiFX
YfiFX works as that central hub. It accepts supplier price lists in Excel, CSV, XML, YML, JSON and from APIs, by link, e-mail, FTP, Google Drive or Dropbox, and can collect data from supplier websites. Products are mapped, linked and priced in one Master price list, which is exported to Shopify, WooCommerce, OpenCart, PrestaShop, CS-Cart, Shop-Script, Horoshop, Prom.ua and feed files. Platforms that are not on the list can be connected through an API, a feed or directly to the store's database.
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