After 4 years of having a BrickLink site, we have finally moved into another selling platform. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not sure why there was such a delay. The fear of new? The belief that it wasn’t worth it? Having to learn a whole new world? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s an interestingly different world. After all these years on BrickLink, the interface and flow of BrickOwl is oddly foreign. Things are not in the same place, the color reference seems to be inline with official Lego, part numbers don’t match BrickLink’s system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that all makes sense, right? It’s a completely different platform. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Create account. Full in some basic info. Upload the inventory. Do the pic with your ID and inventory. Open up the site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now the wait…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then it happens. An order! No wait, it’s actually 2 orders! Well… Same buyer, but they put in 2 orders and wants to combine them. BrickOwl has a whole system to make that work. Neat!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Looking at the raw data that BrickOwl provides via their API includes all sorts of interesting info. Paypal fees, BrickOwl fees, how the user landed on your page (google search? Really? Cool!) and then a field that shows which orders are combined. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The seller side is curious. If a seller really cares (which we all should) to track Paypal & platform fees, shipping costs, packing supplies, etc. Having a source to quickly provide that is amazing. The Paypal reports don’t always match up easily. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Couple more orders and now the BrickOwl seller page becomes more interesting. There is a dashboard. With charts of sales data and inventory levels. Plain text showing totals of not only sales money, shipping charged, average order details and also lots and items. That’s neat too!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It also shows active carts… Like people came to the store, added stuff to their carts and just haven’t checked out. Bricklink doesn’t tell you that info. Not sure if it is good or bad. Are those going to convert to orders? Or just continue to grow? Looking at my own carts on BrickLink, I’ve got 10 carts. Some because I want to remember the store. Some because they had a nice price on X and I wanted to see what else they have before I made the order. Some… are just… there? I can’t explain why I have a cart with that store. It made sense at the moment. It’s been 2 years now and I have no clue, but don’t want to delete it. So, yeah… not sure if this active carts info is good or bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n