As an online business owner, you are always looking for ways to improve your store’s efficiency. Integrating an eCommerce store with popular eCommerce integrations can automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks related to managing an online store.
When you start, you have to make many decisions. What are your needs? Which eCommerce Platform Should You Choose for business? You can expand the functionality of your online store with the help of eCommerce integrations. These integrations connect your online store with other applications and help you manage your inventory, sales, and customers with ease. We have listed you with the top 10 best eCommerce integrations for your online store:
1. Website Builder
Website building platforms are one of the most essential eCommerce integrations for your eCommerce website. The performance of a website depends mostly on the platform it is built on. Using a website builder, you can quickly create a professional and functional website without any programming or design experience.
Some of the popular website builders for eCommerce businesses include Shopify, BigCommerce, Volusion, etc. They offer all the necessary features required to launch and successfully manage an online store, including in-built shopping carts, payment processing, inventory management, shopping tools, etc. Build your online business using website builders and start selling your products online.
2. Shipping and Fulfillment Software
Once you start running a business, you have to fulfill customers’ orders and ship them to their respective destinations. Integrating Shipping and fulfillment software helps you automate the process of the fulfillment of orders and process thousands of orders at a single time.
There are several shipping and fulfillment software programs in the market and thus it is important to choose the right one for your business. You should look into features like scalability, user-friendliness, integration, customer support, and pricing. Also, make sure that the software is intuitive and easy to use right from the beginning.
3. Email Marketing Solution
Email marketing is one of the most popular marketing tools to generate leads and turn them into customers. Deploying email integrations to your online store can help you collect the email addresses of customers. Send them timely updates about the latest product releases, marketing trends, and other useful information.
By sending automated welcome emails, order confirmation, and tracking emails, the customer gets a better sight of their order status. Some of the popular email marketing programs include MailChimp, Klaviyo, Campaign Monitor, etc.
4. Payment Gateway
A web-based payment solution is the foundation for any online business. If you don’t provide multiple payment options for the shoppers, you cannot take your brand to a global audience. A payment gateway securely validates the credit card and banking information of your customer. You cannot expect customers to use the same currency and payment option as that yours. Thus you need a payment gateway integration.
Merchants too can get benefits with the payment gateway integration. There are two options to process payment options. You can either redirect the customer to the payment processor’s official website and then sent them back to your store after completion of the payment process. Or you can integrate eCommerce on-site payment gateway that allows customers to pay from your website. The latter method offers more control over the payment experience. But, it requires you to have your point-of-sale solution.
5. Social Media Management
There are 4.9 billion social media users in the world as of 2023 according to the reports. If you want to know where your customers are, then social media is the right place to go. As a business owner, you should be in a position to stay in touch with the customers, learn their interests and address their queries and complaints using social media.
When customers have negative experiences with your products/service, social media offers you an excellent opportunity to address the disappointed customers and avoid losing them. Integrating social media management software into your eCommerce website is the best way to automate summon replies, and communications, save time and ensure that you produce consistent brand messages across all channels.
6. Inventory Management
As your business grows, it gets hard to get an idea of the number of products available in the store. If you want to operate your business without any interruption, you will have to track orders and manage inventory to make sure that you have enough products in the store to fulfill the demands of the customers.
Effective inventory management provides you with real-time insight into what’s available in the stock and what needs to be refilled. Integrating inventory management into your store will offer real-time visibility into your products and synchronize data across multiple systems. You can track your items sold, know when stock needs replenishment and identify what products are popular, etc.
7. Accounting Solution
Accounting software is an essential integration solution that can simplify the bookkeeping process by automating repetitive tasks. When you are running a business, all your finances must be in order and up-to-date. As your business grows, you process thousands of transactions each day. Thus automating them can help you reduce the chances of human errors.
By integrating accounting software into your store, you get a dashboard that offers real-time visibility into your finances customized to your business needs. This is very beneficial for you especially when you want to merge online with brick-and-mortar finances, or across more than one online store.
8. Rating and Feedback Software
More than 80% of shoppers read reviews before buying a product online. Customers trust recommendations more than your brand’s marketing words. Reviews and user experiences from your past customers act as social proof for the shoppers. In the eCommerce context, as people cannot physically touch and feel the products, social proof can have greater influence over their buying decisions.
The ratings and feedback software can help you take advantage of user-generated content. By integrating this software, you allow users to rate and review products without having to reach out to them separately. Give your customers enough reasons to choose your product and this software collects product reviews from the customers. Once you get positive reviews, your website gets a higher rank on Google and your business begins to grow. The key features a good e-commerce rating software should include are managing reviews across multiple channels, filtering reviews by type, requesting user reviews through email, scheduling messages, etc. this eCommerce integration helps you skyrocket your brand recognition in the public.
9. CRM Management
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system helps you in understanding your shoppers based on their customer data. Through CRM, you can track your customer’s personal information and design a strategy for your target customers based on their past behaviors, and trends.
Integrate your CRM system with your marketing tools, ordering system, and analytical applications to get a wider picture of your customers’ demographics, shopping behaviors, and average order value (AOV). Understand your customers and deliver customized offers to drive sales and build better customer relations.
10. Customer Support Software
Happy customers are the ones that keep returning to your store and bring new customers along with them by spreading the word of mouth about your business. That’s why it is important to make sure that your customer’s expectations are exceeded, and their questions, concerns, and complaints are addressed quickly.
Related Article – 7 Customer Pain Points in eCommerce to Solve Now
The best possible way is to ensure innovative approaches to customer support-live chat, help desk, etc. Chatbots and live chats are the most affordable and quickest ways to improve your customer support. They let you automate commonly asked questions and responses and serve many customers in one go. Thus, most of the customer’s queries are resolved instantly and the rest of them can be solved by contacting you.
Wrapping Up!
When you want to run a successful business, you need to face tons of challenges each day. The good news is that eCommerce integrations can help you do more in less time. They help you streamline your workflows, automate tasks, and synchronize data to eliminate the risks of human error. Regardless of the eCommerce platform you are using, choosing the right integrations will help you create an unparalleled customer experience across all the touchpoints you have with your shoppers. Hope this article helped you in your journey. Thanks for reading!