Impactful 3rd-party integrations to build an efficient ecommerce environment

Why ecommerce integrations are must-have

Better customer journey

Imagine payment options that are not convenient for most of the shoppers, or shipment service that simply don't meet basic customer expectations. Maybe both, and badly assembled? Naturally, this would ruin any online trade.

Payment and shipment options are the nodal points along the customer journey – and everything should go without a hitch. Customers are really scared of errors, delays, or unfamiliar services that give the impression that security of their personal information might be at risk.

By providing integrations with popular 3rd-party services, not only online merchants simplify customers’ routine but also significantly increase their revenue. According to Gartner, by 2025, there will be a minimum 20% increase in overall revenue for businesses that provide a unified commerce experience by seamlessly leading clients across their purchasing journey. 

Time-tested solutions

Instead of reinventing the wheel and making something idly ambitious from scratch, or perhaps sliding into heavier customization, digital enterprises may use time-tested reliable solutions with the impact they can quantify beforehand. 

The most 3rd-party solutions on the market have previously been evaluated and reviewed by the community. Integrating your web store with 3rd-party ecommerce software will allow your company to reuse existing expertise and avoid taking risks that aren't essential.

Cost-effective

The importance of integrations has also a bearing on the budget: yes, integrations may turn costly, but avoiding them or neglecting to use them is even more expensive. 

Integrations reduce the expenses of development, which frees up resources that can be used toward the creation of your one-of-a-kind functionality or invested in order to fulfill other needs of your company. 

Hiring a resourceful ecommerce agency in order to establish flawless integration processes will help you save money and focus on what really matters. It works well when you have precise requirements or expectations and when you can’t find a good fit in the market.

Eliminate Data Silos 

Managing the same data in each app separately may be daunting. Having control over the data, having it in one place, keeping it in sync – will make your job a lot easier.

Data must work. Multiple ecommerce integrations for website can provide the synchronization of data across all channels. A 360 panoramic vision of your business will help you make better decisions.

Better Management

Integrations with proven 3rd-party services allow you to manage processes more efficiently.

Remove unnecessary overload of personnel, avoiding staff burnout.

By integrating into your ecommerce ecosystem your preferred CRM, or Accounting services, you can significantly boost your managing capabilities.

How do integrations work

Ecommerce integration setup is not very different from standard practice in other tech.

In order to tie up several services without any hiccups, it is necessary to have a number of different types of connectors. These "adapters" might be either an application programming interface (API) or supplemental modules (extensions).

Extensions

Ecommerce extensions, apps, add-ons are created by platform communities, or independent vendors. Each ecommerce platform has its own community. Sometimes they are quite extensive, as in the case of Magento, which is an open source platform.

API integration

For greater control over the integration process, API technology is used. It also gives you more options for customization.

Headless and Composable commerce API

The API also enabled a new path in the domain of digital commerce, known as headless. When employing the headless architecture, the backend and frontend components of an online store may be decoupled. As a result, you may create solutions that are more customizable and significantly simplify life for merchants as well as their customers. 

The concept of composable commerce API goes one step further. With Grinteq Partner - Commerce Layer - you can build an API layer that allows ecommerce businesses to easily integrate a range of microservices, allowing for even more flexibility. 

Ecommerce 3rd-party integrations samples

Product Management integration

Warehouse management (WMS) integration

Your company sells a wide variety of items, and its warehouses can have a complex structure that makes manual inventory management difficult.

In this case, automation is crucial. There are many ready-made solutions that will take your warehouse control to a new level.

A warehouse management system (WMS) is a software that helps businesses visualize their inventory and manage their fulfillment processes from the warehouse to the retail shelf.

Implementing WMS helps businesses to computerize their logistical processes, eradicate inefficiencies, and coordinate all activities, both within and outside of their warehouses. 

• Infoplus
• Fishbowl Inventory
• Logiwa
• 3PL Central
• Shipedge
• Snapfulfil
• SphereWMS
• Sortly
• Netsuite

Inventory management integration

Without the proper toolset, inventory management (including accounting, registers, invoicing, and so on) may become a nightmare.

Integrations with third party inventory management systems improve supply chain visibility, enable more precise financial reporting, optimize stock levels, and streamline data management and forecasting.

• Agiliron
• Katana
• Lightspeed Retail
• Orderhive
• Ordoro
• Zoho Inventory

Marketplaces

The presence of a business and its products or services on as many online marketplaces as possible is essential for any retailer. But what a living hell it is to transfer the data manually by checking the admin panels of each of the marketplaces!

To address the situation, there are various options available for seamless integration.

They will be useful for your ecommerce project – especially if you have aspirations of having a global presence. 

• Amazon
• eBay
• Etsy
• Jet
• Newegg
• Rakuten
• Walmart

Marketing integrations

Marketing Analytics

Surely you've encountered the weirdos who can't help but get sarcastic whenever the word "marketing" is mentioned. Seriously, what’s wrong with them? 

If you want to learn more about your customers, their wants, their needs, and ultimately, who they are as users, then you need marketing analytics on your site. 

Your ecommerce business may benefit from integrating data analytics in a number of ways, including enhancing decision-making, increasing omnichannel traction, and influencing holistic marketing programs. Measuring the performance of a marketing campaign is only one of these ways. 

• Clicky
• Crazy Egg
• Google Analytics
• Hotjar
• Kissmetrics
• Open Web Analytics
• Optimizely
• SEMrush

Marketing Automation

Maybe you've got a thriving business and a crack team of marketers working for you. Have you considered lending a hand with some of their routine chores? So, you shouldn't feel bad about adding marketing automation tools to your online store.

• ActiveCampaign 
• GetResponse
• HubSpot 
• Klaviyo
• Marketo
• Salesforce Account Engagent (ex-Pardot)
• Sendinblue

Sales integrations

Email marketing 

Customers all over the world despise email marketing with a passion that is hard to fathom.

Curious, why is it that people don't enjoy getting email notifications more, ha?

Nevertheless, this channel continues to be very important, and in many cases, it is simply irreplaceable.

Email marketing allows you to engage with your subscribers immediately , collect data about your audience, and tailor your messages to each individual. By integrating email marketing services, you are able to bring the attention of customers back to products in which they have expressed interest. 

• AWeber
• Constant Contact
• Hubspot
• Keap
• Klaviyo
• MailChimp

Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) integration

The acronym CPQ refers to the Configure, Price, Quote software used in businesses to help sales teams accurately quote pricing and choices for their products.

Integrating Salesforce's CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) in your ecommerce enterprise allows you to provide precise quotes for every imaginable product configuration.

• Apparound
• HubSpot Sales Hub
• PandaDoc
• Paperless Parts
• Proposify
• Salesforce Revenue Cloud
• Zoho
• Docusign

Reviews

What would happen to ecommerce if there were no reviews?

In digital commerce –  in a circumstance in which you are unable to physically touch a product or take a bite – reviews are essential.

The reliability of a resource can be significantly increased by having real reviews. If consumers are given the opportunity to read and contribute reviews, it significantly increases the likelihood that they will make a purchase. 

By integrating reviews services into your ecommerce environment, not only do you give your company access to an additional effective feedback tool, but you also open up an additional marketing and sales avenue. All of this pays off in the form of increased user activity, as well as increased customer confidence in your business and willingness to make purchases. 

• Feefo
• Kiyoh
• Reevo
• Trustpilot
• Yelp
• Yotpo

Customer Service integrations

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRM software, such as Salesforce, has evolved to the point where it is now an essential component of operating an online company; in fact, many business owners find it difficult to conceptualize how they would perform their daily tasks in the absence of such a device.

With CRM, digital entrepreneurs can track the development of the lead generation process and keep a complete list of active contacts close at hand. 

Customer relationship management (CRM) software is crucial for managing customer, order, marketing, and support information.

As a result, you'll have a more complete picture of your company's overall health. 

• Apptivo 
• Close 
• NetHunt 
• Nimble 
• Nutshell 
• Ontraport
• Pipedrive
• Salesforce

Support / Live chats & Helpdesk

Live chat support enables consumers to conduct two-way interactions with service representatives in real time.

Integrating 3rd-party live chats or helpdesk services into an ecommerce website, you provide your customers with the possibility of asking inquiries and get answers in real time.

• Drift
• Freshdesk
• LiveChat
• LivePerson
• Tidio
• Zendesk Chat
• Zoho SalesIQ

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

ERP manages connections to the most important data types, including shipping/tracking, orders, customers, products, and inventories. 

By integrating your ERP to the ecommerce environment, you can boost your company's efficiency and effectiveness. Moreover, manually re-entering and duplicating data is avoided.

This, in turn, helps cut down on duplicate data, human intervention, and mistakes. 

• Aptean
• Blue Link ERP
• Brightpearl
• DDI System
• Epicor
• Intact
• NetSuite

Order processing integrations

Shipment management system

For buyers especially, the timely arrival of their purchases is of the highest importance. However, this is also a headache for merchants.

The order must be prepared for shipment by processing, packing, and shipping. It takes a lot of time and money for the business owner to accomplish this by hand.

Enterprises improve efficiency, give clients more choices, and keep them satisfied by integrating third party shipping services. When merchants link with a shipping provider, they may more quickly receive orders from various sales channels and fulfill them. 

If you are unable to construct a faultless delivery system and your clients have problems, your business will face heavy losses.

• AfterShip
• ShipBob
• ShipperHQ
• ShipStation
• ShippingEasy
• Shippit

Order Management System (OMS)

An order management system (OMS) is used to ensure that the appropriate items are delivered to the right consumers in a fast and effective way. Online retailers use OMS to automate their way of handling orders, inventory, and fulfillment.

Integrating an OMS in your ecommerce ecosystem will allow orders from several sales channels to be compiled in a single location. As a result, your digital enterprise can monitor, manage, and fill orders, for instance, from a Magento website, Amazon, eBay, any brick-and-mortar shop, all from a single point of access. 

• Adobe Commerce (Magento)
• Brightpearl
• LinnWorks
• Orderhive
• QuickBooks Commerce
• Salesorder
• Veeqo

Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA)

Shoppers are capricious nowadays – other times, they may experience severe guilt for their impulsive or compulsive purchases, which leads them to return the things to the merchant. 

Whenever a customer wants to send goods back, a Return Merchandise Authorization(RMA) is required. After filling out the form, the customer mails it off to the retailer, who will either reject the return or issue a return merchandise authorization (RMA) number if the return is acceptable. 

By integrating 3rd-party RMA services, you can easily automate this guilty-pleasure-shame conveyor system to save your nerves.

• ClickPost
• Happy Returns
• Loop Returns
• Optoro
• Return Logic
• Returnly
• UniCommerce

Payment integrations

Pre-built online payment integration to power the client's business for growth at speed and scale.
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Tax management

A tax calculating integration is a useful addition to any ecommerce business due to the fact that tax laws significantly vary from country to country. 

Since the admin of the shop must ensure that all the tax information for the stores is current, any adjustments to the tax laws will need a full recalculation manually. The integration of external tax systems allows for automated calculation of sales tax in online stores. 

Thus, this eases the burden on shop management. 

• Avalara
• Canopy
• LOVAT
• Taxify
• TaxJar
• Vertex
• Webgility

Payment Gateways

The exchange of money and goods online is what ecommerce is all about.

Establishing payment systems that allow your customers to pay you in a way that is as simple as possible, as secure as possible, as fast as possible, and most importantly, in a way that is tailored to their preferences is clearly the most important thing you can do to ensure the profitability of your business.

Given the variety of options available, it might take more than a day to determine which payment method is ideal for your needs.

Three factors stand out as particularly significant here: your current platform, your physical location, and the size of commissions.

If you want to learn more about this topic, check out the topics in our Payment Guide blog.

• 2Checkout
• Adyen
• Authorize.net
• Braintree
• Paypal
• Stripe
• Square

Point-of-Sale (POS)

In traditional brick-and-mortar businesses, point-of-sale (POS) systems are physical devices that enable customers to conduct transactions using either contact or contactless methods.

POS systems include a variety of components, including cash registers, terminals, specialized displays, and tablets.

You will be able to better synchronize data, better capture invoices, and more efficiently manage your accounting if you integrate third-party POS providers into your digital commerce environment. 

• Helcim 
• Lightspeed
• PayCafe
• Revel
• Square
• TouchBistro

Bottom line

Remember the fable of the ugly duckling? The poor creature was unable to integrate into any of the groups or assemblies. It was devastated and downhearted.

In the realm of contemporary tech, integrations are everything: there is no way you can encapsulate and isolate your enterprise, and reap the fruits of success. 

It will take some time and effort to find the optimal assembly, a perfect blend for your ecommerce environment. Also, some time behind the scenes to get this build to function properly, but the thing is 100% worth the effort.

Eventually, you will become a part of the flock of beautiful swans (or maybe unicorns? 🦄). While also assimilating into the universe of next-gen ecommerce enterprises.