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How to Sell on Bol.com marketplace

Bol.com

Are you trying to boost your sales? Have you heard about Bol.com? Bol.com is the leading webshop in the Netherlands for books, toys, electronics, and many other product categories. According to research published in 2015, it is the strongest retail brand with the highest expected growth in the Netherlands.

It started out as an online bookshop back in 1999 and it is currently the biggest marketplace for a wide range of products in the Netherlands and Belgium. It is fully integrated with Koongo and it’s an excellent selling channel for merchants targeting those markets. We’ll be explaining how to sell on Bol.com so that you can get any relevant information to start selling successfully on the leading Dutch marketplace online.

What is Bol.com? What is it for? It has been gradually growing during the last 20 years and it is currently the leading and biggest online marketplace in the Netherlands and Belgium selling more than Amazon in the Benelux countries. Its massive and premium catalog with +16 million products, excellent customer service provided and interesting special conditions such as Free and Fast delivery (next day) in most of their products (98% delivered On Time) have made Bol.com the best choice for many Dutch and Belgian customers.

Benefits of Selling on Bol.com Marketplace

The Bol.com interface and design are intuitive and clean offering a massive catalog (+16m) really appreciated by the Bol.com customers. Regarding sellers and merchants, Bol is offering interesting features to launch different marketing campaigns, the use of the Bol.com repricing engine, set up daily deals or special discounts easily. However, the main benefit of selling on Bol marketplace is a large number of trustful customers, around 15 million monthly, they have managed to keep during all these years in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. It’s important to note that:

  • Sellers pay as they sell with no flat fees involved: Sellers have free access to Bol marketplace and its resources. Sellers will be just charged a commission and a fixed amount when a product is sold; it’s simple, no payment is needed if no sales are coming in.
  • Sellers have access to a large number of faithful customers mainly located in the Netherlands and Belgium and it’s a fantastic way to expand your e-commerce business, especially on those markets.
  • Sellers will have access to the Bol product targeting, statistics and customer information to better identify potentialities, adjust the product pricing to gain competitiveness or increase sales using marketing campaigns, daily deals or special discounts.
  • Sellers can also use the Bol.com’s distribution network in the Netherlands to help with the fulfillment, storage and shipping options.

Things to consider if selling on Bol.com

In case you’d like to start selling on Bol.com, it’s important to have a look at their restrictions and requirements that should be met before creating a business account and being able to sell products via Bol.com. The most important requirement is that your company is registered in the Netherlands or Belgium and you possess a registration at the Chamber of Commerce. For instance, German, French, Spanish or Italian companies can’t sell products via Bol.com unless they’re registered in the Netherlands or Belgium. There are additional minor requirements such as the mandatory valid EAN codes, restricted product categories and shipping options available that should not be complicated to meet.

What can I sell on Bol.com marketplace?

In case you’re finally allowed to sell your products on Bol.com, you’ll be glad to know that Bol.com has more than 15 million active users seeking almost everything from electronic, mobile phones, tablets, laptops, speakers, books, toys, gaming, fashion, jewelry, clothing, baby accessories, health care products, bags, travel items, and a never-ending list…; it has great potential to make your store sales grow with barely any risk as Bol.com is not working with seller flat fees, you will just be charged a commission according to your product category (from 5% to 17%) once the product listed is sold all together with a small fixed amount (from 1€ to 3€) for the number of units/quantity sold.

There are some best practices to sell on Bol.com that will definitely increase your sales and expand your impression rates:

  • Try to offer affordable Fast and Free shipping options to your customers
  • Try to set the product prices as low as possible thanks to Bol.com repricing engine
  • Try to work extensively your promotions with quality images, selection of products, keywords, titles and accurate descriptions
  • Try to keep a fluid and resolutive attitude with your customers to provide straightforward solutions to possible issues as soon as possible

Why selling on Bol.com with Koongo is beneficial?

Koongo is fully integrated with Bol.com marketplace and it has recently implemented an API solution to integrate any store platform with Bol.com. From now on your product prices, stocks level and new products will be synchronized, in real time, by the means of API. It is possible to have all your orders replicated within your store and Koongo automatically as well, Koongo is now offering an Order Synchronization feature between Bol.com and Koongo for Shopify, Magento and CCV Shop platforms. You can fulfill all the orders from a single management point (shipment, tracking, returns, invoices) with no need to access Bol.com to handle any incoming order.

Koongo will keep your data always up to date with an unbeatable update frequency both for products and orders to automatically update any modification is made on your store. You’ll have the chance to adapt your offers, product and shipping prices before other merchants to offer always the best possible deal.

Additionally, selling on Bol.com with Koongo is offering many other advanced features such as:

  • Advanced filtering features: You can filter almost everything to export only what is needed. From product attributes to specific keywords. With Koongo, all your attribute data can be used with advanced filtering purposes
  • Category mapping features: You can map your existing categories with the ones provided by Bol.com marketplace
  • Transformation features: You will be able to edit and transform all your catalog attribute information and data thanks to Koongo in-built transformation tools; the currency conversion and exchange rate tool, the extended conditional tools, the advanced attribute edition and the use of regular expressions to perform a product price uplift or attribute edition automatically will definitely improve your data feed quality
  • The API connection will keep all your catalog information updated, product prices customized and manage orders automatically and effortlessly from your Store or Koongo platforms.

As you may know, Koongo is offering full support for more than +500 marketplaces and selling channels worldwide, including Bol.com. You won’t regret giving Koongo a chance. It fully supports any existing platform from Shopify, Magento, Prestashop, CCV Shop to any 3rd party Custom Platform. You just need to sign up to check how Koongo is capable to boost your sales. There’s no risk associated, 30 days Free Trial period is available.

For more details, you may check Bol integration manual or contact us at support@koongo.com. We’ll be happy to help you with the Bol.com integration.

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