Success in today’s highly competitive marketplace can depend on how a business can efficiently leverage software integration. The same goes for eCommerce, where integrated software solutions can help businesses save time and money and increase efficiency—all of which are important factors in growing a business.
For many eCommerce businesses today, the challenge lies in finding the right software integrations to take their businesses to another level. So, what should you look for when choosing eCommerce software integrations?
Marketing integration
Integrating your eCommerce platform with marketing automation platforms can help you boost brand awareness, increase sales, and improve customer experience. This integration is especially important for businesses selling B2B and B2C products.
Marketing automation software is a great example of an eCommerce integration that will help you automate many tedious tasks associated with online marketing campaigns—from creating email sequences to segmenting your audience based on their behaviors.
Integrated software solutions can help businesses save time and money and increase efficiency—all of which are important factors in growing a business. Examples of marketing apps that support efficient eCommerce software integration include Salesforce, Eloqua, and Act-On.
These are all popular marketing automation tools that help businesses create email sequences, segment their audiences based on behaviors and interests, run A/B tests to improve conversion rates and ROI—and much more.
Payment processing integration
A payment processor is an eCommerce software integration that allows businesses to process credit card payments. Any eCommerce store needs to accept online payments because it’s one of the most common ways people make purchases online.
Suppose you have an online startup store. You get clients through your website, and they need to purchase your products or services. You will have to accept credit card payments. The most common way to accept credit card payments is through a payment gateway.
An eMarketer report estimates $1.152 trillion will be transacted via mobile digital payments in 2023. This is why your eCommerce software should also integrate with mobile payment apps to ensure your customers’ payment preferences are covered.
The most popular payment processors include Stripe and PayPal, which offer simple integration with many different eCommerce platforms, including Shopify and BigCommerce.
Order Fulfillment integration
If you sell products online, you need to have an order fulfillment system. You can’t just send your customers an invoice and wait until they pay it before shipping their products or providing services.
Without a proper order fulfillment integration, you will have to manually handle each order as it comes in. This is time-consuming, inefficient, and not scalable at all.
If you’re dealing with a large volume of orders, it’s important to have a good order fulfillment system in place. You don’t want to be stuck with boxes and packing materials piling up in your office or warehouse. An integrated eCommerce-order fulfillment system can help you manage the entire process from start to finish.
Shipping and logistics integration
Shipping and logistics integration is a must-have feature for any eCommerce store. Since most online items require shipping, shoppers will want to easily track their orders and know how much is the cost.
Integration with an efficient logistics platform is the best way to ensure that your customers can track their orders and get the information they need. Most eCommerce platforms offer shipping and logistics integration, but choosing one that works with your store’s needs is critical.
Your eCommerce platform should have built-in integrations with the most popular shipping carriers such as UPS, FedEx, USPS, and others.
Email marketing integration
With over 4 billion people who use their emails daily, email marketing remains one of the most effective ways to grow your eCommerce store. Your platform should have built-in integrations with popular email marketing providers such as Mailchimp, ConvertKit, and Drip. This will allow you to easily create emails and campaigns for your customers in just a few clicks.
Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools for driving sales and conversions. But it can be difficult to manually set up and manage an email list, especially if you have multiple products or brands.
An eCommerce platform with built-in email marketing features will allow you to seamlessly integrate your store’s customer data into an email marketing service like MailChimp or Campaign Monitor.
CRM integration
A customer relationship management (CRM) system is a database of your customers’ information that allows you to track and manage the interactions between you and your customers.
There are several functionalities that a CRM and an eCommerce platform share. These include storing customer data, managing contact lists and emails, and tracking sales. You can also use a CRM to create automated emails or drip campaigns that are sent after a long time has passed since the customer last visited your website.
The best eCommerce platforms in 2022 typically have built-in CRM features that will allow you to seamlessly integrate your store’s customer data into one or more CRMs, such as Salesforce, Highrise, and SugarCRM.
Accounting software integration
An eCommerce platform with built-in accounting software integration can help you save time and money. It allows you to automate your accounting tasks by syncing your store’s sales data with QuickBooks or Xero.
In addition, you can use a third-party app such as Sellbrite or Vend alternatives when selling physical products in your store. In this way, all the information from both sides will be stored in one place and updated automatically.
An eCommerce platform with built-in social media integration allows you to post and share content on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram from the same place you manage your store’s products and orders. This integration can save time when updating your social media accounts.
This integration also enables you to connect your social media account to your eCommerce platform and use it to manage your store’s social media profiles. In this way, any changes made on one side will be reflected automatically on the other.
Web analytics integration
Integrating your eCommerce platform with your web analytics tool will allow you to better understand how customers engage with your store. This integration will help you identify areas for improvement, such as product listing optimization or the effectiveness of promotional campaigns.
If a customer has visited multiple times but has never purchased anything, this integration can show you what they did on each page so that you can determine why they didn’t buy anything.
ERP integration
Integrating your eCommerce platform with your ERP system will allow you to streamline processes and eliminate manual tasks. This integration can be especially helpful when receiving orders from customers, processing payments, shipping products, and providing customer service.
Integrating your eCommerce platform with your ERP system can help you automate many of the tasks involved in running a business. For example, you can use it to connect orders to inventory and automatically generate purchase orders based on customer purchases or sales data.
Takeaway: Boost your eCommerce sales with these software integrations
This article helped you see how crucial eCommerce software integrations are for businesses of every size. The last thing you want is to feel locked into a certain eCommerce platform or shopping cart. By ensuring that your business has access to the most popular shopping cart software today, you’ll never have to worry about integration again.
Keep in mind that there is some overlap between these integrations. For example, many apps have built-in SEO features to help boost your rankings on search engines and improve the user experience of your website. These integrations are great because they save you time and money in the long run by doing the work for you. Integrating these nine applications into your eCommerce setup can save you valuable daily hours and tons of hard-won cash.
