Leveraging E-commerce Integration to Boost Your Business and Gain Happy Customers
The E-commerce marketplace has exceeded $7 billion in size. With the pace at which it’s growing, projections show that it’s likely to surpass the $24 billion mark by 2031.
However, other areas are growing significantly, like customer demand for better services, technicality in operating back-office logistics, complexities in E-commerce marketing, and more. Fortunately, there are solutions to take a massive chunk of this load off your shoulders—E-commerce integration being one of them.
In this article, we will dive deep and answer all your questions: What is e-commerce integration? What are the benefits of these integrations? And seven must-have Ecommerce integrations to boost your business and gain happy customers.
What is E-commerce Integration?
E-commerce integrations connect your e-commerce’s front-end component (like a website or application) and various systems and software that run the business behind the scenes. These back-end integrations can include:
- Accounting Software
- Customer relationship management tools
- Marketing automation tools
- Inventory management systems
- Shipping platforms
E-commerce integrations allow you to create a bidirectional data flow between two systems, thus increasing accuracy and efficiency. This flow usually requires an application programming interface (API) integration. To further enhance your understanding of digital commerce, it’s important to delve into both the critical challenges and emerging trends that shape this evolving landscape. Modern digital commerce involves managing customer expectations, technological advancements, and competitive market strategies efficiently in order to successfully thrive.
For example, say you’re using separate marketing automation to send a targeted email campaign. Previously, your marketing team had to manually transfer new subscribers’ data to the automation tool.
With the integration between the marketing tool and your E-commerce platform, this data will be automatically added to the tool–ensuring an up-to-date email list with no manual data entry.
That’s how a well-executed E-commerce integration adds value to your business.
Benefits of E-commerce Integration
E-commerce integration gives your business the edge it needs to stay competitive and relevant. The most pronounced benefits of leveraging it include:
Enhanced Customer Experience
E-commerce integration allows you to keep your business processes transparent. It helps you allocate all the necessary resources, which ultimately benefits the customers by giving them the most efficient service possible.
With the integrations, you are also better equipped to identify market changes and adjust your business model to stay ahead of the curve.
Optimized Time Spending
With ecommerce automation tools, you can better optimize your day-to-day processes by saving time on data exchange between related systems. This happens by automating sales, customer service, marketing, and more features, like sending customer emails or integrating product data.
Eliminates Manual and Replicated Data
By integrating Shopify, Amazon, Magento, and other E-commerce applications with your own ERP systems, you can store data in one centralized system.
This guarantees the most accurate customer and product data across platforms–without manual errors or replication–and better product data management.
Simplified Inventory Management
E-commerce integrations give customers the most accurate data on pricing and inventory availability.
Any transaction or updates entered by the staff in your stores will be synchronized with the online store. Thus, the staff will constantly be updated on what’s in stock and where.
Data-Driven Decision Making
By integrating ecommerce analytics tools into your systems, you can make informed, data-driven decisions.
The valuable insights gained from sales tracking, customer behavior, traffic analysis, and more will allow you to better optimize marketing strategies, fine-tune product offerings, stay on top of market trends–and ultimately position your business for sustained growth.
7 Must-Have E-commerce Integrations
ERP Integration
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is the system your business uses to manage daily activities such as project management, supply chain processes, accounting, etc.
ERP integration, therefore, helps you simplify complex processes. It allows you to integrate various features and software to run the business smoothly. Moreover, integrating an ERP system will drive a more efficient, responsive, and customer-focused product management process. This can be a key factor in the growth and success of your e-commerce business.
Some of the most common functions ERP integrations you can employ in your E-commerce include:
Customer updates: Customers want to know the state of their orders, from purchasing to receiving the order. An ERP integration can automatically send these updates without any delays.
Placing an order: ERP software can fast-track order placement by automating functions like adding up the total cost of the products, suggesting similar products, or offering applicable coupons, ensuring the least cart abandonment.
Reflecting pricing changes: By working closely with the inventory management system, ERP integration simplifies functions such as price changes. Considering procurement information, it can automatically adjust or propose changes to ensure you always maintain a profit margin.
Payment Integration
Every E-commerce site needs some sort of online payment for transactions. That’s where payment integrations come into play.
As the final purchase step, payment integrations allow you to have a safe, secure, and quick payment experience during checkout. The integration is critical today since customers want various payment options at your site, whether it’s Paypal and Wise or Visa and Mastercard.
You have the option to integrate a redirect payment processor. Here, customers are redirected to the merchant’s site to enter their card details. Once they’ve completed the payment, they are sent back to the store.
Another way is to integrate an on-site payment gateway. This gives you more control over the payment experience. However, you must have your point-of-sale system for this.
Along with your dear customers, your suppliers and other partners also need an excellent payment experience. This will ensure a better relationship with them, along with timely payments, which can often lead to better pricing and better deals – all to your advantage. Therefore, choosing an integration with accounts payable automation to enhance your overall payment processes looks like a very smart decision.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Integration
CRM integrations automate data flow between your customer record and eCommerce platform. The systems also offer timely customer support to all the problems or questions users might have as they shop from your site.
Employing the integration to your system can help you improve sales team performance by standardizing sales processes and workflow that prompts your sales rep on what actions should be taken at each step.
Pair it with customizable analytics dashboards that show only the most relevant metrics, file-sharing tools, and a real-time sales pipeline, and you are setting your sales team up for success.
Moreover, a CRM integration allows you to:
- Forecast and plan future demands
- Analyze and track customer journey
- Streamline team communication
- Improve sales pipeline
- Drive collaboration
Shipping Integrations
Today, 83% of customers want communication and support during their buying journey, so shipping plays a crucial role in deciding the success of your E-commerce business. For example, if you have to ship an order overseas, a poor shipping experience can turn customers away.
You must ensure that all your orders reach customers in a timely manner. E-commerce shipping integrations can help streamline and automate this entire process.
These integrations will help you manage everything from the moment your customer places the order to the time it reaches the buyer’s door. They allow you to:
- Manage orders and inventory
- Access current shipping rates information
- Coordinate with multiple warehouses
- Provision customers with multiple shipping options
- Provide customers with up-to-date information on order status and shipment tracking.
Marketing Integration
Marketing integrations help you replace manual, repetitive marketing tasks with automation that can both monitor and manage repetitive workflow. These workflows can span multiple channels—web, email, and mobile—and can include tasks like:
- Email nurturing
- Remarketing ads
- Personalizing content
- Lead management
- Retargeting messages
Put simply, by leveraging cost-effective marketing tools, you can put your marketing efforts on autopilot while you focus on other areas. Namely, marketing integrations can help you automate these vital but time-consuming tasks:
- Email marketing campaign (from automated welcome messages to follow-ups)
- Mobile marketing campaigns (personalized and product-specific automated messages via MMS, SMS, and push notification)
- On-site marketing (unique content to display to each customer, automated suggestions based on their previous purchases)
Through automated marketing integration, you can optimize the entire customer experience that seamlessly moves prospects and return customers along their purchase journey.
Analytics and Reporting Integration
By employing analytics and reporting integration, you can gain invaluable insight into your website traffic, customer behaviors, and sales performance.
A great analytics and reporting integration can offer customized reports, dashboards, and data visualization tools. Leveraging it, you can better:
- Track the performance of your ads on every channel
- Analyze website tracking–new prospects, repeat visitors, dwell times, and more
- Track conversions
While the integration can be part of a marketing integration suite, you can also opt for standalone ones for a microscopic view of your business. This is especially true if you want to view your analytics consistently without other marketing integrations.
Website Builder
Lastly, but perhaps the most important, is website platforms. While they can’t be categorized as eCommerce data integration, they are the foundation of any e-commerce business. Because the platform you run your business will form the pillar of all the integrations you add later.
Full-blown content management systems like WordPress and Wix offer various complementary tools and extensions for running a successful E-commerce store.
On the other hand, there are E-commerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce. These platforms come with built-in features like online payment systems, catalogs and product listings, easy product management, and more.
Luckily, all website builders offer integration with critical applications. Therefore, before choosing the integration, decide on the website builder. Opt for ones with a mobile-friendly user experience (UX). With the world shifting towards mobile browning, your eCommerce should be compatible with all mobile devices–for both the customers and your back-end team.
Ideally, choose builders that can easily sync with your other platforms and offer features like a members area, online databases, social media sharing, and websites that work well on all devices.
A Bonus One For You
In such a competitive market as the one we’re facing today, having a robust e-commerce setup is key for success. Integrating various systems can really help you increase the efficiency and functionality of your e-commerce platform. Therefore, choosing the right partner is crucial.
There are numerous agencies specializing in these services across the USA, offering expertise in everything from API integration to customized e-commerce solutions. For a comprehensive list of top agencies that can help elevate your e-commerce business, check out our e-commerce development and integration agencies. These agencies provide the technical know-how and strategic insights necessary to optimize your e-commerce operations and drive growth.
The Next Move is Yours
Running a successful E-commerce business is challenging. But with the integrations above, it gets easier.
From helping you streamline processing to syncing important sales data, these integrations can help you optimize workflow, improve efficiency, and provide the best customer experience possible. We’ve laid out all the cards; the next one is yours. Leverage the E-commerce integrations and see your business soar–today!
