What is Channel

In Plytix, a channel is the connection between your PIM and any place or platform where you sell your products. That could be your website, a marketplace like Amazon, or a retail partner who distributes your products. The channel acts as a bridge: it lets you format your product information to meet sales channels’ requirements, and then share it with them directly.

Examples

Example Description
Meta Commerce Channel Plytix comes with ready-made channel templates for channels like Meta Commerce. Just create a Meta Commerce channel, select your products, and paste the generated feed URL into Meta.
XML Feed Send product information in XML format to a marketplace or ecommerce platform.
CSV/XLSX Export Export product lists as spreadsheets for use in partner systems or offline processing.
NDJSON Feed Deliver product information in NDJSON format for modern API-driven platforms or data lakes.
Custom API Integration Connect your product information to a custom system using Plytix channels and API tools.

A brief history

Brands traditionally managed product information by hand in tools like spreadsheets, and then pasted it directly into every channel they sold on individually. To speed things up, some larger companies built custom integrations using middleware or ERP connectors. These automated parts of the process, but were complicated and expensive.

As ecommerce grew, so did the number of sales channels businesses were selling on. Businesses that were managing their channels by hand were struggling to keep up. That’s when feed management tools came along; they let companies create and format product feeds to send their product information to multiple channels.

Eventually, it made sense to bring everything together. With product information already centralized in PIMs, adding tools to share product information straight to sales channels directly into the PIM became the obvious next step. Now, most PIMs will offer some channel connections, though you might still want a specific feed management tool if you’re selling on a lot of channels.

Good to know

When you set up a channel in Plytix, you have full control over how your product information is structured, formatted, and sent to your sales channel. Whether it’s tweaking names, adjusting currencies, resizing images, or changing date formats, your product data will match exactly what each channel expects.

Your channel output can be a live feed or a downloadable file. For live feeds, you can schedule how often they update, so whenever you make changes in Plytix, your channels stay up to date automatically.

Know more

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a separate channel for each place I sell?
Yes, each channel in Plytix is tied to one specific destination, so if you sell on Amazon, Walmart, and Shopify, you’ll create three channels, one for each. In fact, some of our clients have more than one channel for each place they sell. For example, they might choose to set up a separate channel for their different product categories or languages (but this is something you can discuss with our team).
Can I format my product information differently for each channel?
Absolutely. You can customize everything from naming conventions to currencies and image sizes, so your product information fits each platform’s exact requirements.
What happens when I update my product info in Plytix?
If your channel is set up as a live feed, you can schedule updates so your channels will automatically reflect those updates. If you’re exporting CSVs and importing them manually to your sales channels, you’ll need to do this for the changes to be reflected in the sales channel.
What formats can I export my product data in?
You can export in XML, CSV, XLSX, or NDJSON. Channels can be live URLs or downloadable files; whatever suits your workflow.