Hello everyone and welcome to the combined September & October edition of the ChannelGrabber Newsletter  :)

There is an absolute multitude of new projects in our development schedule at the moment, so read on to find out more about what we're working on to make life easier for you...

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Find out about the improvements and brand new features we have been working on for you, and about our future plans for development.

As we wrote about in the previous edition of our newsletter, we've been waiting for a long time to be given the go ahead for an integration with Royal Mail OBA (Online Business Account).  We're just as excited about this as our customers are, and are now so pleased to announce that work is complete!  With the kind help of a few special customers, we have been testing this new feature and it has all gone very smoothly, so you can now connect your ChannelGrabber account direct to your Royal Mail Online Business Account (OBA) to create and print Royal Mail labels, complete with 2D barcodes (to provide delivery confirmation for your packages), without ever leaving ChannelGrabber!  Wahoooo!  :D

Check out the guide if you want to start benefiting from this new feature yourself:

In addition to Royal Mail, and according to customer demand, we have also expanded our arsenal of courier integrations by building connections with UPS and FedEx, so you can now ship via ChannelGrabber using these popular couriers too!  

If you're interested in being one of the first ChannelGrabber customers to try out these brand new courier integrations, then let us know via live chat, email (help@channelgrabber.com) or telephone (0161 711 0248) and we'll enable this on your account and help you to get started.
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To try and help further with transparency, in addition to our regular newsletters, we also now have a publicly available online roadmap, so that you can check out what's currently being worked on, what's next in the queue, and what the medium and long term development plans are.

ChannelGrabber is always evolving so we invite you to follow our development journey and be a part of it here:  

 
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We are currently working to add another update to the listings tool in ChannelGrabber to support eBay's new "Product Based Shopping Experience".

In a nutshell, this is eBay moving away from each seller having individual listings, towards a more unified approach where there is one product catalogue entry for an item and then all sellers are listed against it (very much like Amazon's ASIN structure), the idea being to make it simpler for the end customer to find the product they want and receive the best price/choose which seller they want to purchase from.
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Our plans are to offer a quick and easy way to create new listings in ChannelGrabber and then associate them with the eBay product catalogue where appropriate.

It's worth mentioning that eBay are only rolling this out on a small number of products to start with, to test the waters, then they plan to add more as time goes on, so we want to get in from the start and make it easier to list this way from ChannelGrabber.  Find out more about eBay's plans for this option in their Spring 2018 Release:  Shop By Product - A New Experience
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We are going to be introducing more customisation options in many parts of the system, and one of them is the ability in ChannelGrabber to add/edit the subject lines for the invoice emails that we send on your behalf (see our guide on how to Send Invoices to Your Customers Automatically if you want to know more about the current feature).

So for example, for emails that we send to Amazon customers on your behalf, you could add "[Important]" to the subject line in CG, and that should then push the emails through to the buyer even if they have the "opt-out" setting enabled on Amazon, ensuring that they will definitely receive your email and their invoice for their order with you, and reducing any need for further admin/follow-up from your side.
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Based on feedback from our customers and our staff, we are in the middle of re-vamping our main Products page to make it better organised and more concise, but with more product data and functionality than ever before!  It will look much prettier and have more customisation options too.  This should be ready to be rolled out quite soon, so watch this space...!  ;)
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Our first stage of development for our Etsy integration covered order management, as you, our lovely customers, told us that was the most important aspect for you.  We have experienced an excellent up-take of this first phase of our Etsy integration, so the demand for stock management for Etsy products has steadily grown too.  Once this next phase of development is complete, then ChannelGrabber will be able to push stock updates out to your Etsy products (as long as the Etsy SKUs match your other channels of course) whenever you receive a new order from any channel, or make a manual stock change in CG yourself.  Etsy product imports and possibly even Etsy message management will come at a later stage.
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Due to a steadily increasing demand for support for UK Mail in ChannelGrabber, we are now working to provide a new connection with the courier UK Mail, to allow you to create and print labels for your orders that are being shipped by UK Mail, from within ChannelGrabber.  No more third party plugins required!  Yay!  :)
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ChannelGrabber has historically supported mainly UK-based companies, although we have always had a healthy collection of European and American users as well.  We are now very excitedly expanding our software and support to better suit US-based companies too, and a big part of these efforts includes building support for USPS (United States Postal Service), meaning users who ship within the USA will soon to able to create and print USPS courier labels within ChannelGrabber.
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If you have an idea for an improvement or new feature you would like to see us add to the system in the future, please do let us know, by emailing featurerequests@channelgrabber.com
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If you're asking for something that has already been requested, we will add your vote to the feature to give it higher priority, or if your idea is totally fresh, we will add a new request to our developers' board for votes and future consideration.

We almost always prioritise feature requests based on demand, so the more users that vote for a feature, the higher up the "to-do" list it will move  ;)

Can't wait to hear your thoughts!
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Here, we'll pass on any newsworthy events or changes that we've learned about the e-commerce industry that may affect our system or you, our customers.  
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The well-known e-commerce research tool, Terapeak, was acquired by eBay back in December '17, after which Terapeak ended all support for Amazon accounts and removed Amazon data.

Starting from the 12th of November, some of Terapeak's features will be migrated to the eBay Seller Hub and as a result, Terapeak will enable easier access to eBay sellers with linked seller accounts, and will eliminate feature redundancies between the two applications.

In early 2019, Terapeak and eBay will unify their billing through eBay’s payment processing platform. In order to ensure uninterrupted service, you will need to have successfully linked an eBay account to your Terapeak account, and have up to date billing information on eBay.

 
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Groan all you want!  Yes it's only October, and for some of you, Christmas may be considered a curse word, but it is only around the corner and for the vast majority of online sellers, we have already entered the busiest time of year!  Its worth planning ahead as much as you can to accommodate for your couriers' latest posting dates, and once you've got all your last minute orders out of the door, you can finally breathe a big sigh of relief and grab yourself a festive beverage and some well-deserved downtime.  Below are the cut off dates for delivery by Monday 24th December for the most popular couriers with ChannelGrabber customers, to help you plan ahead:
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Yet to be published...  
At the time of writing, DPD have only published their opening and closing dates online.

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We hope you have enjoyed the September/October edition of our newsletter and found some useful information to help you with your online business.  

Why not also check out the blog page on our website, to keep up to date with news from us as well as even more industry insights and input from guest authors too?

As always, if you would like to discuss anything relating to your ChannelGrabber account, please feel free to contact our team using the Intercom chat system (the chat icon can be found on the lower right corner of any ChannelGrabber page) or by emailing help@channelgrabber.com
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