Ecommerce
Table of Contents
Navigating the work of e-сommerce integrations can be a complex endeavor. Our guide will help you learn all the basics about e-commerce integrations and why they matter for online business.
E-commerce integrations are third-party software that adds the missing functionality to your store or extends the one you already have. Depending on their features and scope, they may be called plugins, add-ons, systems, or tools.
In 2022, 85% of online stores used social media integrations on their site, while only 39% of e-commerce sites installed user experience integrations (Statista reports). Enhancing your store experience with integrations can give you a competitive edge.
From a technical standpoint, an e-commerce integration is a piece of software that lets your store connect and exchange data with third-party systems. The data can be anything - from customer information, payment requests, to the number of interactions with your website.
Integrations make your life easier by connecting different parts of your online business. They help you save time, make use of new cool features missing in your default platform, serve your customers better, and grow your online presence. With e-commerce integrations, you can gain the following benefits:
By integrating marketing tools, you can reach your customers at every step of their journey, track their behavior and purchase preferences, and engage them through personalized campaigns. The process is fully automated, from customer segmentation to email follow-ups to personalized discount offers.
Ecommerce integrations can provide real-time visibility into stock levels, help you organize and process data. Such solutions also let you track their status, and fulfill them with zero effort, making sure every customer order is processed and shipped.
Helpdesk integrations let you manage customer inquiries and track issues. For SaaS companies, customers can create support tickets themselves, and you can manage them by priority, department, or product. Integration with live chat software lets you address any customer concerns or questions on the spot and convert them more efficiently.
Managing inventory across multiple sales channels often requires manual updates, e.g. in default Magento. However, PIM integrations leave most human browsing behind, providing real-time synchronization of stock levels, order processing, and tracking across all your sales channels.
The default product navigation and checkout options often don't meet the needs of a particular niche or business. With advanced product recommendation tools and CRMs, you can let your customers browse, filter, and search for products faster. The checkout, one of the most critical steps in online shopping, can be enhanced, too. From payment gateways and one-page checkouts to abandoned cart recoveries — e-commerce integrations can take your store navigation to a whole new level.
While numerous ready-made integrations are available, it's important to note that e-commerce integrations can be tailored to your specific business needs. You can always rely on a trusted e-commerce development company to create a custom integration that perfectly aligns with your business goals.
So, what are the different e-commerce integrations? You’ll be surprised to learn that there are dozens of them, all catering to specific departments and business needs. Marketing, sales, customer service, client engagement, product management — you name it. Here are the best e-commerce integrations to add value to any online store.
Payment gateway integrations enable e-commerce businesses to accept various forms of payment, including credit cards, debit cards, and digital wallets. Multiple payment methods are especially important for stores selling globally, as they provide a seamless checkout experience for all customers, no matter their location or bank.
While some e-commerce platforms, like Shopify or BigCommerce, come with built-in payment processing integrations, others, like Magento or Opencart, don’t. In such cases, you need to manually integrate a chosen payment gateway into your store by installing its plugin or extension. Sometimes, you may even need to create a custom payment solution if you have specific requirements for how the payments should function within your store.
Key Functionality:
Examples: PayPal, Stripe, Square, Authorize.Net, Amazon Pay.
Inventory management integrations provide e-commerce businesses with tools to track and manage their inventory levels. Instead of manually checking the stock replenishment, the process is fully automated, which prevents you from stockouts or overstocking. These integrations allow you to track inventory in real time, get low-stock alerts, and connect with suppliers for automated inventory refilling.
Key Functionality:
Examples: TradeGecko, Skubana, DEAR Inventory, Cin7, Brightpearl.
Ecommerce shipping integrations let you manage orders, calculate shipping costs, and generate shipping labels. These integrations are especially handy for stores selling globally. You can automate all your shipping tasks — logistics rate calculation, label printing, and tracking updates. With a reliable shipping integration, you and your clients may feel safe about successful order fulfillment and delivery.
Key Functionality:
Examples: ShipStation, Shippo, Easyship, ShipBob, Printful.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) integrations enable e-commerce businesses to manage customer interactions, track leads, and nurture customer relationships effectively. These integrations let you centralize and manage customer data — all orders, statuses, customer analytics, and more are stored in a unified database with easily viewed dashboards. As a result, you can understand customer behavior and extract patterns to drive sales and loyalty.
Key Functionality:
Examples: Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive, ActiveCampaign.
Marketing automation integrations empower e-commerce businesses to automate repetitive marketing tasks like email campaigns and social media posting, as well as lead nurturing to streamline marketing efforts and drive revenue growth. These integrations offer features like email automation, customer segmentation, and behavior-based triggers to deliver targeted and personalized marketing messages.
Key Functionality:
Marketing automation integrations: HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, Marketo
Analytics and reporting integrations provide e-commerce businesses with insights into website traffic, customer behavior, and sales performance. These integrations often come as part of a marketing suite, yet there are standalone ones, too, if you need just a quick glance at your analytics, not an all-around marketing power machine. These integrations offer customizable reports, dashboards, and data visualization tools.
Key Functionality:
Examples: Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Mixpanel, Piwik (Matomo), Kissmetrics.
Website builders and content management system (CMS) integrations power you with a bunch of useful tools letting you create and manage your online storefront. Beyond mere convenient content publishing they give you more freedom with design customization. These integrations offer features such as drag-and-drop website builders, customizable templates, and SEO tools for building and optimizing ecommerce websites for any niche and complexity.
Key Functionality:
Examples: WordPress (with WooCommerce), Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix, Magento (with Adobe Experience Manager).
Product reviews and rating integrations enable e-commerce businesses to collect and display customer feedback and ratings for their products. These integrations provide tools for customers to leave reviews, rate products, and share their experiences, helping build trust and credibility for the brand while assisting other shoppers in purchasing decisions.
Key Functionality:
Examples: Yotpo, Trustpilot, Bazaarvoice, PowerReviews, Judge.me.
Loyalty and referral program integrations are common practices for e-commerce businesses to foster a returning customer base. They let you reward customers for their repeat purchases and referrals, incentivizing word-of-mouth marketing. With these integrations, you can create and manage loyalty points, rewards, and referral incentives and track your customer engagement and retention.
Key Functionality:
Examples: Smile.io, LoyaltyLion, ReferralCandy, Annex Cloud, Yotpo Loyalty and Referrals.
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) integrations connect ecommerce platforms with ERP systems to synchronize business processes. EPR integrations are necessary for stores that handle large orders, manage complex inventory, or require streamlined back-office processes. ERP integration may be optional for small local stores as you don’t need to generate data across various departments. Generally, these integrations facilitate operations, improve visibility, and provide better decision-making for ecommerce businesses.
Key Functionality:
Examples: SAP Business One, Microsoft Dynamics 365, NetSuite, Oracle ERP Cloud, Epicor.
Accounting software integrations automate the process of syncing e-commerce sales data with accounting systems. They generate financial reports and reconciliation for your e-commerce business by extracting data automatically. These integrations typically sync sales transactions, expenses, and tax information between the e-commerce platform and accounting software.
Key Functionality:
Examples: QuickBooks Online, Xero, Sage Intacct, FreshBooks, Wave.
Product Information Management (PIM) integrations centralize product data and ensure consistency across multiple sales channels. Consider this integration if your store includes a large catalog and diverse offerings. With centralized product data management, you can improve product discoverability and set your sales process on track.
Key Functionality:
Examples: Akeneo, Pimcore, inRiver PIM, Salsify, Plytix.
Customer support, live chat, and helpdesk integrations enable e-commerce businesses to provide real-time assistance to customers and resolve queries promptly. As we know, in a highly competitive e-commerce market, timely communication is a key to a customer-centric experience. Depending on the nature of your business and domain, customer support integrations can offer features like live chat widgets, ticketing systems, and knowledge bases for efficient customer support management.
Key Functionality:
Examples: Zendesk, Freshdesk, LiveChat, Intercom, Help Scout.
POS ecommerce integrations enable businesses to synchronize their online and offline sales channels. These integrations connect ecommerce platforms with POS systems used in physical retail stores, allowing businesses to manage inventory, sales, and customer data across all channels.
Key Functionality:
Examples: Shopify POS, Square POS, Lightspeed Retail, Vend POS, WooCommerce POS by Square.
For small businesses lacking some functionality or looking to address a particular issue, task-specific integrations may be a way to go. Their benefits are generally lower prices than enterprise-level solutions and quick and easy management. Among such integration examples are:
The right e-commerce integration is crucial for the success of your online business. Making the wrong choice can cause troublesome migration in the future. Here are the considerations to make when choosing an e-commerce integration.
E-commerce integration is a matter of investment. Make sure to approach it wisely and start with setting up your business goals. Then, map how integration will help you achieve them. Choosing the right e-commerce integration is not only about enhancing your store performance or adding functionality but also laying the foundation for your business growth in the long term.
Most software integrations provide a demo, so you can get a sneak peek into their usability. Choose an integration that is easy to set up and configure. Consider the interface and if your team can easily manage and utilize it without extensive training or technical expertise.
Evaluate the customization options available with the integration to tailor it to your specific needs and workflows. Look for integrations that offer customization features, such as configurable settings, API access, and support for custom development.
Choose an integration from trusted providers with a track record of years in the market, positive reviews, and prompt customer support. Consider factors such as
E-commerce integration is a strategic decision. Make sure it can scale in terms of functionality or increased data volumes as your business expands. Otherwise, it may result in future inefficiency, additional costs, or lost sales opportunities.
Here's a step-by-step guide on successfully implementing an e-commerce integration in your store.
The e-commerce integration process should start with careful planning. The first step is to define how this integration aligns with our business strategy. Here are some questions to ask that will help you figure it out.
Once you know what you need and you've chosen after researching the solutions available, review the integration documentation carefully. At this step, you need to study the requirements of both your e-commerce platform and the integration to see if both match. Here is a quick checklist of things to pay special attention to:
If using APIs, you can access the APIs of the systems you are integrating. After reviewing the documentation, you will understand endpoints, authentication methods, request/response formats, and rate limits.
You choose an integration approach once you clearly understand your e-commerce integration needs and expectancies. Based on your technical and business requirements, it can be:
You probably already know if the chosen integration is compatible with your store from the documentation. However, you need to see if any specific configurations or versions are needed. At this step, you can test your integration in a development or staging environment. This way, you can detect any compatibility issues or critical errors without affecting your live eCommerce website.
Cleanse and organize data to ensure your systems are properly configured and updated for integration.
Configure the integration solution according to your business requirements. All reliable integrations come with detailed configuration guides, so follow the documentation to properly set up data mappings, workflows, and automation rules.
Once the test runs successfully, you can deploy the integration solution into your live production environment. When done, monitor performance and address any issues that may arise during deployment.
Then, perform testing to locate and fix any issues. You may run as many scenarios as needed, e.g., test transactions, add products to the cart, or complete orders to make sure all function as expected.
Provide training and support to users involved in managing the integration solution. And make sure to monitor its performance over the time checking data flows, system interactions, and optimizing it as needed.
NEKLO provides e-commerce integration services for a variety of platforms including Magento, Shopify and WooCommerce. We have experience working with a variety of enterprise software like SAP, and Odoo.
If you’ve just started to look for the right solution in the market, consider the following examples of the best e-commerce software integrations. They are favored for their reliability and powerful features by thousands of business owners, so there are good chances to nail down the one you need.
Stripe is a payment gateway known for its reliability, security, and developer-friendly APIs. Such e-commerce giants as Amazon, Google, and Lyft entrust it to process billions of dollars in payments annually. Stripe integration is among the most common service requests for businesses of all sizes. Founded in 2010, Stripe has quickly become one of the leading payment processors globally, with a presence in over 40 countries.
Pros:
Pricing: 2.9% + 30¢ per successful card charge.
TradeGecko offers comprehensive inventory management solutions tailored for e-commerce businesses. It provides real-time visibility into inventory levels and order fulfillment processes. Established in 2012, TradeGecko serves over 20,000 customers worldwide, including high-growth startups and established brands. It integrates seamlessly with leading e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento.
Pros:
Pricing: Plans starting at $39 per month.
ShipStation simplifies shipping and order fulfillment for e-commerce merchants, offering features such as batch processing, customizable shipping labels, and discounted shipping rates. Launched in 2011, ShipStation has processed over 500 million shipments to date and has a market share of over 50% in the US among top e-commerce merchants. It integrates with over 100 carriers and e-commerce platforms.
Pros:
Pricing: Plans start at $9 per month.
Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM platform trusted by businesses worldwide for managing customer relationships, sales pipelines, and marketing campaigns. Founded in 1999, Salesforce is the market leader in CRM software, with a market share of over 19%. It serves over 150,000 customers globally, including industry giants like Coca-Cola, Toyota, and T-Mobile.
Pros:
Pricing: Plans starting at $25 per user per month.
HubSpot is an inbound marketing and sales platform that stands out with its amazing personalization features, which let you segment and target your campaigns with precise accuracy. You can create automated email flows and even entire sales campaigns, setting your marketing activities on autopilot. Founded in 2006, HubSpot has over 113,000 customers in over 120 countries.
Pros:
Pricing: Plans starting at $45 per month.
Google Analytics is a web analytics tool that provides valuable insights into website traffic, user behavior, and conversion metrics, helping businesses optimize their online presence. Introduced in 2005, Google Analytics dominates the web analytics market, with over 84% market share. It is used by millions of websites worldwide, including Fortune 500 companies and small businesses alike.
Pros:
Pricing: Free to use.
Mailchimp is an all-in-one email marketing platform known for its user-friendly interface, customizable email templates, and advanced segmentation features. Founded in 2001, Mailchimp has over 16 million customers globally and sends over a billion emails daily. It has a market share of over 60% in the email marketing industry, catering to businesses of all sizes.
Pros:
Pricing: Plans starting at $9.99 per month.
WordPress with WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce platform globally, offering flexibility, scalability, and a vast ecosystem of plugins and themes. WordPress powers over 39% of all websites on the Internet, and WooCommerce powers over 28% of all online stores. Launched in 2011, WooCommerce has over 5 million active installations worldwide.
Pros:
Pricing: WordPress is free to use, while WooCommerce offers free and paid extensions with prices varying.
Refersion is a leading affiliate marketing platform that helps businesses track and manage their affiliate programs, driving sales through partnerships and influencer marketing. Founded in 2015, Refersion serves over 3,000 merchants globally and has facilitated over $10 billion in affiliate sales. It is trusted by brands such as Adidas, H&M, and Shopify.
Pros:
Pricing: Refersion offers plans starting at $89 per month.
Zendesk is a customer support and live chat platform that enables businesses to provide seamless support across multiple channels, including email, chat, social media, and phone. Founded in 2007, Zendesk serves over 200,000 customers in over 160 countries. It is known for its user-friendly interface, extensive integrations, and robust reporting capabilities, serving businesses of all sizes.
Pros:
Pricing: Zendesk offers plans starting at $19 per user per month.
E-commerce integrations differ in functionality, but their idea is similar - make your store more customer-friendly. The latest e-commerce stats prove their importance for efficient online business:
With e-commerce integrations, you can add more payment options to your store, allow for product customization, offer better checkout or live chat support. Integrations can also do lots of other cool things. They can help you keep track of your inventory, personalize emails to your customers, or even run ads on social media to promote your products.
Consider NEKLO as a trusted ecommerce integration service provider. Contact us to discuss your project or get consultation.
US-based and operating globally, NEKLO spearheads digital transformation initiatives for businesses worldwide. We deliver software solutions complying with your market and legislation.
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