eCommerce integrations are what link the behind-the-scenes inventory and accounting systems (ERP) of a business with their front-line client interaction platforms (CRM). eCommerce integrations are essential for the modern business in the following ways:
eCommerce Integrations Importance
- It saves you from countless hours of tracking and updating the inventory, stock prices, sales and delivery and managing returns
- After an item is sold, the entire inventory across all channels will be updated
- In the event that you have stores across different locations and geographical circles, it gets easier to send commands to the store nearest from the place to which the delivery is to be made; this also reduces logistics and transportation costs
- Keep track of the market so that you are selling the right product, at the right time and generating maximum revenue
- Sales automatically increase profit because of the reduction in optimized inventory, reduced manpower, and enhanced customer convenience
- The monotonous and mundane tasks done over different platforms can be replaced with time spent on growing the business and reaching out to maximum clients, consequentially enhancing the generated revenue as well
- Manual processes come with many errors like the placement of wrong shipping addresses, incorrect inventory entry leading to overselling, incomplete or incorrect product information –all of which can be avoided by integrating automatic services into your e-commerce site
With E-commerce being increasingly used as a profit generator, the technologies associated to tit are also involving by the day; it becomes highly important to stay up-to-date. Here is a list of must-have eCommerce integrations for your business.
1. Content Management System
This is also known as Customer Experience Management (CXM/CEM), Web Experience Management (WEM), Web Content Management System (WCMS), Web Customer Experience Management (WCXM) –all of these are basically the same thing and relate to the customer side of the business.
This involves using SEO-based URLs, multilingual website interface integration, user-friendly installation procedures and online communication boards, minimal requirements and incorporated file managers and audit logs. All of this is collectively used to manage images, videos, and texts across multiple channels.
It becomes clear that manually integrating the aforementioned things would get very disastrous, mundane and may result in major losses due to the high likeliness of human errors.
2. Enterprise Management Systems
These systems are the flip side of the CMS-coin, managing the company’s side of the business. They include Enterprise Resource Planning, Point of Sale Software (POS) and Warehouse Management System (WMS).
Collectively they organize inventory items, manage storage and delivery, receipting and dispatching of supplied goods, act as virtual cash drawers and receipt printers, processing payments and consequentially help in labor utilization.
When integrated into your e-commerce site, they will offer flexibility, reduce manual data entry, offer chronological product tracking, automated customer notifications, improved contact and labor management and handle increased online order demand.
3. Multiple Payment Gateways
Payment gateways form a bridge between the client and the website’s payment accounts in a secure manner via the acceptance of credit cards. Some of the examples are PayPal, JCC, Six etc.
The main advantage of incorporating multiple payment gateways into your e-commerce website is the expansion of business that ensues after the globalization that they offer. This is because multiple payment gateways allow for client convenience during payment in any non-domestic currency. Plus it is instant and backs up all the online transactions when your primary gateway is underperforming.
4. Analytics
Integrating analytics and optimization platforms facilitates the marketing process by giving the company a birds-eye detailed view of the average purchase activity on their e-commerce website. This includes reports of the average order value, per session value, information regarding the product and transactions, their quantity and average quantity, notifications of unique purchases, e-commerce conversion rates, transactions and transaction IDs, generated revenue, and the most appropriate time of purchase and therefore marketability.
All of this consequentially leads to the formation of better familiarization of the consumers and their spending habits and eventually results in the formation of more efficient marketing strategies.
5. Social Media Integration
Owing to the fact that social media is an inescapable part of people’s lives, and also a platform for reviewing the products and goods that are consumed, it becomes extremely crucial for companies to integrate them into their website in order to drive interaction and subsequent transactions.
Integrating social media onto your E-commerce site can mean adding a Facebook like-button, a Pin-It button, automatic posting on tweets and Facebook pages or “syncing” of social media accounts of the company to each other, easy sharing via “Share” button. This not only allows the company to build their own community, stay in touch with their consumers and get constant, unbiased feedback –all of which eventually contributes towards their growth.
