From Excel price list to online shop: a guide for dental suppliers
Many dental suppliers put off selling online for one specific reason: they imagine weeks of work uploading the catalogue, product by product. On a dental marketplace designed for sellers, that is not how it works.
It is worth describing the real steps one by one, because the actual work is less than people fear and comes down to a few precise points.
The first is registering as a vendor: company details, VAT number and the address of the warehouse the goods will ship from. The warehouse is needed because that is where the courier will collect the parcels.
The second is the catalogue, and this is where you save the most time. You do not need to enter products one at a time: you download the Excel template, fill it in from your own price list and upload it. The system creates all the products at once.
The required columns are few: name, description, category, price, available quantity and weight. Brand, product code and other details are optional but useful, because dentists often search by brand or code.
Prices are entered excluding VAT: the tax is calculated at checkout according to the customer's country. For implants and prostheses, the system fills in the VAT questions from the name and category, and all you have to do is check and confirm.
The third step is photos, which you upload from each product's page. This is where it pays to spend a little time: a product page with clear photos sells much better than one without.
The fourth is connecting the account where you will receive payments, through Stripe: you need an ID document, your company details and your IBAN. Meanwhile you can already publish and sell, because the amounts are held and never lost.
Then your products go online in eight languages, and orders arrive in the dashboard and by email. For each order you prepare the parcel, the dashboard generates the courier label, and the customer sees the tracking straight away.
If you want extra help, the dashboard's Academy contains practical guides on every section, from the catalogue to discounts, in the platform's eight languages.
The most useful advice is also the simplest: do not upload your whole catalogue on day one. Start with the products dentists search for most, polish those pages and add the rest gradually.
If you want to see every step before you start, you can explore the vendor dashboard in a demo store, without signing up.
In short: you open the shop with your company details and warehouse address, the catalogue is uploaded from your Excel price list in one go, prices are entered excluding VAT, photos are added product by product, the payout account is connected through Stripe, and it pays to start with the most searched products.