Why you need to backup: a guide for multichannel retailers

Why do you need to backup your store?

If you sell online, you probably know that sometimes unexpected happen: connections break, servers have problems, marketplaces update their APIs, your cat plays around the keyboard, accidentally making your listings disappear. Or maybe you make mistakes due to oversights, perhaps remove some listings of products still for sale.

Therefore, there are many many things that could occur and mess up with your listings. Chances of such situations are rare, but still, it is better to be safe and sound. Because in case it happens, it could be very painful to start over.

Having a backup can save your business and avoid the hassle.

Let’s see cases in which you may need a backup:

• Before you make a major edit.

Whenever you decide that it’s time to make some bulk edits to your listings: changing description, prices, creating a variation family or merging listings, changing the name of your items, or other edits, make a backup first. Better to be safe. Otherwise, the wrong button can be pushed accidentally and overwrite your content. You don't know what can go wrong and mess up your listings. But with backup, you can always return to that status and start over. Better than starting from scratch, right?

• Regular backups.

We suggest to all e-commerce sellers run backups on a regular basis. Every week, every month, or every season. Choose a fitting timeline and just do it. If something happens. Unexpected. Like website crushes. Or your eBay or Etsy get suspended (I hope not, cause I am sure you follow their house rules), or the server you hosted the data for your photos, listings, and templates is gone or moved to the other address… You risk ending up with broken listings on your channels. And then years of work are gone and you’ll need to redo everything from zero. No one wants it. It is not fun. So don’t do it. Have a backup and have a place to control 100% of your listings. It is your safety plan.

• If you want to secure your listing data and keep your original data in one place.

Let’s imagine you list on multiple channels. You imported your products from eBay, listed on Etsy and Shopify. Now you want to keep the content differentiated on them. Before going and doing so, make a backup of your original data. So that you can go back to it anytime you want. Better to keep this backup in one place, possibly in the app you used to originally cross-list your products. Check this video to see how cross-listing can boost your sales:

• If case you decided to stop with e-commerce for a while.

Let’s imagine that you need a pause. It can be a seasonal pause or maybe something unexpected happened in your life and you need to stop your activities for some time before you are ready to return back. Before doing so, make a backup. You can freeze all your content in this specific moment and then go back to it anytime you are ready.

So you need a backup.

Let’s focus on the last 2 points.

Where and how can you do such a backup?

• You can do so directly in each marketplace. But please note that each channel has different restrictions and limitations regarding the product data you can backup. Which may create a major mess if you sell omnichannel. For example, Amazon allows backup only prices, ASINs, and quantities. And will allow you to restore all data only if you use a template you used to create the product on Amazon. Shopify doesn't allow you to recover data. When you delete an item from your store, it’s gone. And on Etsy, you can download only limited data: listing title, description, price, currency code, quantity, tags, materials, and image URLs. But what about weight and dimension?
• You can make a backup of all your multichannel product in one place, Nembol.

How to make a backup of all your omnichannel products in one place?

Nembol is a multichannel syncing software with which you can:

• Connect your stores and import your products from them
• List to other 14 channels
• Sync stock omnichannel
• Manage your multichannel stores from one place

How to create your omnichannel backup in a few clicks:

1. Create your Nembol account
2. Connect your Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Shopify, and WooCommerce stores
3. Import products
4. Done. Now you have a backup. Contact the support to activate a plan for it.

With $9.99 per month, all your product data will be safely stored and paused.

For a double-double check, you can also export all of those as a CSV and keep them on your hard drive. Or a couple of different hard drives. Doesn't hurt, right? :)

Now you can sleep safely, don’t worry each time Amazon or eBay announces the API change, and never mind your cat messing around your working table.

Easy :)