Product Listing on Snapdeal – Painless or Painful?
“I just want to share the kind of problems sellers facing while uploading products on Snapdeal. It seems likes Snapdeal’s technology backbone is so weak…. It looks like Snapdeal doesn’t want sellers to upload new products. Instead of making it easy for sellers, there technology is faltering all the time,” wrote Sikander Singh in his email to Indian Online Seller.
The above highlighted line caught our attention. An online marketplace thrives on millions of products listed on its site, isn’t it? Then why would a seller imply that Snapdeal doesn’t want them to register new products.
The Step 1 of an online vendor’s selling journey starts with uploading products. And ease of doing that is what every seller seeks. But people looking to create their listings on Snapdeal are facing issues.
Before we get to the problem, let’s understand how the listing process on Snapdeal works.
“Like in all other marketplaces, we have to upload the product listing file in bulk and have to provide images link from any image host like Google drive or drop box. But on Snapdeal, we have to assign images names against sku’s manually in the bulk sheet provided by them. That’s very huge task if we are uploading hundreds of products in once. And also we have to send those images zip file on seller panel. Most painful task is their image mapping tool in upload sheet,” explained Jitendra Rawal, founder of DragonDeals.in.
Another seller, Mayank Goyal shared with IOS the there three ways to list products on Snapdeal. He elucidates:
Delay in simply getting their online store live is discouraging sellers from selling on Snapdeal. Some of the common issues that came up during our research are delayed approvals, cumbersome image uploading process, image mapping, rejecting images for small reasons, making wrong listing live and inability of seller support team to help.
“When we uploaded products on listings panel, it’s showing in draft since last 20 days. The guy from sellers’ support first asked us to wait 48 hours that it will be done, but itis now 20 days and nothing is done. Even seller support guys don’t know what to say and most of the time there comments are contradicting to each other. I have dropped mail to account manager and still no resolution,” says Singh.
The process is hard especially for first time sellers.
Snapdeal is on an ‘on-boarding’ spree and have reached out to many small merchants sitting in the nooks and corners of India. But little assistance is offered while listing products.
“There is no team in Snapdeal who can assist new seller in listing process. They will just provide you the videos when seller registers on the portal and he has to learn from that only or have to take help from fellow sellers. A new seller can get frustrated when the content sheet is rejected repeatedly and he does not know the reason for it,” states Goyal.
Merchants feel that not only Snapdeal’s technology is weak but they also operate at a snail’s pace, compared to Flipkart, eBay and Amazon.
“We have 70 SKU – all are live on amazon, paytm, ebay but only 30 in Snapdeal. We are taking a decision to discontinue with Snapdeal,” commented an online seller Prashant.
Some also allege that the marketplace has listed products, which the vendor doesn’t even sell. Is it a one off technical glitch? According to Goyal, it may not be the case. He says. “It might be a technical glitch on their side or it may be done intentionally. Because as we know they (Snapdeal) have cash crunch and they need money badly and therefore they are trying to take penalties from sellers.” Interesting.
All said and done, it seems that the New Delhi-based marketplace is listening to sellers’ woes. Not all but at least few like the listing one.
Early this year, they automated their process just like Flipkart and Amazon by introducing ‘One listing, one seller’ program. It has also helped the marketplace to remove fake sellers/listings, which in turn is benefiting authorized & genuine sellers.
“One listing one seller is good for whole listing process. And the sellers are who are authorized by respective brands are allowed to do multi mapping (more than one seller) in products after showing brand authorization letter from brand owner. It will clean the fake sellers doing malpractice,” shares Rawal.
Rawal further adds, “Private label brands are already getting affected on Amazon, so it’s a good step by Snapdeal.”
This helped Snapdeal to go from:
To Here
Although, the ‘One listing, one seller’ simplified the process, there were still few issues.
“The automated process is easy if you are uploading few products only. Bulk upload file is to be filled and uploaded manually. Images folder zip has to be uploaded manually,” declares Rawal.
But Snapdeal corrected this issue few days back, on 31st May 2016 to be precise. Yes, they did. Quite impressive!
In the last few months, the Indian etailer has taken various steps to benefit sellers such as cutting back commissions, limiting discounts, and removing controversial clause from seller contract. We only hope that Snapdeal also pays attention to other pressing issues like incorrect shipping charges.
Those with years of online selling experience may not find the listing step complicated. But a newbie can get intimidated by a crowded excel sheet, if no one teaches him/her how it works. Therefore, don’t hesitate to ask for help. Reach out to ecommerce experts and seasoned sellers through knowledge sharing sites & seller forums. And experienced sellers, please help out the new entrants.
After all, your listing reflects the authenticity of your business. A buyer is most likely to skip a product with incorrect/incomplete information. So dear online sellers, please take help of colleagues and professionals while listing your products on marketplaces.
Editor team is specialized in introducing the marketplace content targeting the Indian online sellers. They plan and coordinate to bring the appealing content for the small businesses on how to partner with the e-commerce sites like Amazon and Flipkart and strategies for improving their online business.
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