Close integrations between eCommerce platforms and essential business solutions can help online store owners and marketers increase their success. Today, there are several extremely good eCommerce platforms with an almost complete set of capabilities, but as eCommerce businesses grow, the built-in features will often prove to be too basic and it makes sense for business owners to seek out better, more task-specific solutions to integrate into their website.
Marketplace Selling
Task-specific integrations can often be useful for helping eCommerce businesses integrate with various online marketplaces. For example, ChannelAdvisor is a popular choice for connecting to and selling products on various online marketplaces such as eBay, Amazon, and more. The service offers a range of features to help businesses reach a wider audience and sell more, and it has existing integrations with a wide range of popular eCommerce platforms such as Shopify.
Marketing
Another eCommerce integration that businesses will often seek out elsewhere is marketing. Many eCommerce platforms offer email marketing and other marketing integrations and tools that may work well for your business at the start. There are various tools available to help with marketing and marketing analytics that work with a variety of popular eCommerce platforms and content management systems including WordPress, BigCommerce and Shopify to name just a few.
Order Management
One of the most necessary eCommerce integration solutions available today is an order management system. An OMS allows your business to easily and efficiently track customer orders from start to finish, allowing for better inventory management, better customer satisfaction and more.
SEO
Integrative tools to track and improve your SEO can considerably improve your eCommerce website and its success. Many SEO tools are associated with platforms such as WordPress, but there is an increasing number of integrations now available for use with several other website and eCommerce platforms to help you understand what could be improved when it comes to optimizing your site and content for search.
Point of Sale
A point of sale or POS system allows you to track your sale and is especially useful for eCommerce businesses that also run a physical store. Integrating a POS system with both your eCommerce website and your physical shop allows you to easily track sales making it simpler to manage inventory, stock ordering and more. It can also help you collect more data on which products tend to sell best online and which do better in store.
Customer Relationship Management
Finally, integrating a customer relationship management (CRM) system with your eCommerce store can have several benefits. A CRM allows you to track customers through their journey from ordering to receiving their product or service, making it easier for you to track what works and what doesn’t.
Many businesses also find that a CRM helps significantly with customer service by providing all employees with a central system that they can use to find out more information about a specific customer rather than asking time-consuming questions on each call or email.
While today’s great eCommerce platforms often come with a wide range of integrations built-in (such as pricing software), some company owners may need to look for different options to continue supporting their business as it grows.
