Merchants who aren’t utilizing a third party marketplace as a sales channel may want to incorporate eBay into their omnichannel strategy because sales are flourishing on the eBay platform. eBay recently released its fourth quarter results, and the online auction site saw a 13 percent increase in sales during this time frame.

Mobile commerce was credited as being a major factor in the growth. Overall, mobile sales were up 88 percent compared to the same time in 2012, reaching $22 billion in total.

Mobile exceeded the expectations of even eBay, which should further illustrate the fact that many consumers are increasingly buying goods and conducting other retail-related activities on their phones and tablets.

“We feel good about our performance and strong finish in the fourth quarter, with the holiday shopping season clearly showing how online, mobile and other omnichannel commerce capabilities are changing how consumers shop and pay,” said eBay Inc. CEO and President John Donahoe.

“And mobile added more than 14 million customers,” Donahoe added.

Amazon also saw a sharp uptick in merchant sales, with sellers on the website offloading billions of units worldwide. Amazon credits the Fulfillment by Amazon service as a big contributor to the growth of merchant sales.

Utilizing eCommerce Software to manage third party marketplaces

Online marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon are typically additional sales channels that drive significant revenue growth for many merchants. These websites are visited by upward of 100 million consumers every month, according to data from comScore.

If retailers want to leverage multiple sales channels, they need eCommerce software that can simplify multichannel management. With eCommerce software, merchants can pull product data from an existing product catalog and sell on eBay to expand their reach. Once products are selling, merchants can use eCommerce software to keep orders, customers, and inventory data from a third party marketplace, up to date and synchronized with data from a retailer’s main store. This helps the retailer streamline order fulfillment and synchronize inventory levels across multiple online marketplaces and a merchant’s own store.

The value of eCommerce software is really appreciated when merchants are able to make decisions in real-time by integrating all data into one to provide analytics from shifts in inventory to pricing from one channel to another. Using third party marketplaces can help retailers win new customers, but they need the right solution to help them simplify and streamline multichannel management.