A delivery on the shelves, but not on the website
A lovely new range arrived on Tuesday. By Wednesday it was on the shelves and selling. On the website, it still is not there three weeks later, because listing it means photographing each piece, writing a description, setting the price and categories, and copying in sizes and materials from the supplier's sheet.
Customers who saw it on your Instagram try to find it online and cannot. By the time it is listed, the best pieces have sold in the shop.
Listing is a separate job, done from scratch
Getting new stock onto a website is a long, repetitive job, and in a small shop it competes with everything else. It is also usually done by retyping information that already exists somewhere.
- Product details are on the supplier's invoice, price list or product sheet.
- The till already has the product name, price and barcode.
- Photos need taking, editing and uploading.
- Descriptions are written from scratch.
- Categories, tags and variants such as colour are set by hand.
What the listing backlog costs
The website sells only what is listed. New stock is what regular online customers want to see, and a website that lags weeks behind the shop looks stale. Stock that sells out in the shop before being listed never has a chance online.
The job often falls to the owner in the evening, and it is the kind of job that is always half done.
How we build a listing flow from delivery data
- When a delivery is booked into the till, the new products are picked up automatically, with name, price, barcode and supplier.
- Supplier product sheets or price lists are read for details such as dimensions, materials and care instructions.
- A draft listing is created for each product in your online shop, unpublished, with a suggested description written in your shop's style, which you edit.
- Categories and tags are suggested from the supplier's categories and your own history.
- A simple phone screen lets you photograph products one after another, with each photo attached to the right draft.
- You review and publish in batches, and stock levels are kept in step with the till.
| Field | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Name, price, barcode | Your till |
| Dimensions, materials, care | Supplier product sheet |
| Description | Suggested draft, edited by you |
| Categories and tags | Suggested from supplier and history |
| Photos | Taken on your phone, attached to the draft |
Descriptions drafted with an AI model are a starting point only, and nothing is published without your review. Facts such as materials and sizes come from the supplier's data, not from the model.
New stock with the flow
A delivery arrives, is booked in, and the drafts are waiting. You spend a focused session photographing the new pieces and checking the drafts, then publish. The website shows new stock within days rather than weeks, while it is still new.
You can post the range on Instagram with a link that actually works. When a range sells out in the shop, the listing comes down with it, because the stock is shared with the till, so the website never shows something you cannot send.
Over time the drafts improve, because the categories and tags suggested for new products learn from the ones you corrected before. The job that used to wait for a free evening becomes a short, regular session after each delivery.
The website finally reflects the shop. Customers who browse online before visiting see what is actually on the shelves, which makes the website a reason to come in rather than a sign that it has been forgotten.
Signs your website is lagging the shop
- New stock takes weeks to appear online.
- Product details are retyped from supplier sheets.
- Listing happens in the evening, when you get to it.
- Customers cannot find online what they saw on social media.
- Some stock sells out in the shop before it is ever listed.