Building your branded Business website is a necessity in today’s digital world. If you are not present on the web, you don’t exist for the customers – it is as basic as that. When you build a website, you have to focus on both front-end and back-end of the store. The front-end is what customers see, but it is the back-end that makes your website efficient to serve them. This efficiency can be brought by Ecommerce integration.

What is eCommerce Integration?

An eCommerce website performs several back-end functions such as uploading content, transaction processing, managing inventory, shipping the goods, accounting and customer query handling, among a few others. All these processes require coordination to streamline the buying process for customers and selling process for your business.

eCommerce integration is bringing all data systems together for two-way flow of information and operational efficiency. It saves your time in duplication of efforts in entering, managing or finding the data. It establishes a seamless workflow between all functions and process of e-store management.

Let’s take a look at essential eCommerce software for integration that every VAR business must have.

1. Payment Gateway

Every eCommerce website has payment options for customers. They can pay through credit cards or any other mode of payment as an offer on your website. But, how do you capture the payment and ensure that you get it into your bank account? Well, the payment gateway does the job for you. It is an eCommerce application that authorizes digital payments. It encrypts sensitive information such as credit card details so that the payment transaction can happen securely. PayPal, Authorize.Net and First Data Corporation are among a few popular payment gateways.

2. Shipping Services

When customers buy the product, they also want to know the details of shipping company and shipping cost involved. Shipping eCommerce software allows integrating multiple shipping carriers (FedEx, UPS, USPS or any other) with the storefront and gives real-time shipping information to customers.

3. Distributor Product Catalog

It is manually a herculean task to upload each and every product across every category and distributor on the website. And, we have not even taken into account the hassle of real-time uploads! Distributor product catalog integration makes it a breeze to upload up-to-date and detailed product information in a structured way on a day-to-day basis. All it takes is just a few clicks!

4. Rich Content Providers

Did you know that rich content could enhance the chances of conversion between 12-36%? The entire website information – whether it is the product description, company description, texts, videos, images, infographics, marketing collaterals or any other content improve the customer experience of your brand. Rich content is the king of your website. So, integration with rich content providers is necessary to boost customer engagement.

5. Tax Calculation

Tax rates differ from one state to another and across countries. Tax calculations can be tedious, but this should not interrupt customer’s buying and checkout process. eCommerce software for tax calculation makes the number crunching faster and accurate – twin benefits for both customers and transaction team.

6. Accounting

The accounting team works in a maze of transactions – invoices, purchase orders, sales orders, tax computation and so on. They have to extract several files and reports and scratch their heads to keep the books updated.  Accounting integrations not only automated accounting systems but also optimize business processes and drives sales effectively. Two examples of popular eCommerce accounting software are Quickbooks and Xero.

7. Enterprise Resource Planning(ERP)

If you are using both ERP and eCommerce as standalone software, it could result in a costly mistake for your business. Whereas ERP integration with eCommerce can yield numerous benefits such as a reduction in human errors and duplication of data, real-time updates on inventory, orders, shipment status and delivery, and increase in operational productivity and customer satisfaction.

8. Customer Relationship Management(CRM)

Given the fact that customer relationships are crucial to the revenue generation, the adoption of CRM has grown over the years. It helps to manage end-to-end customer touchpoints in an organized and seamless manner. When you integrate CRM with eCommerce, it gives you round-the-clock front-end and back-end information about customers and sales at the tip of your fingers. With the help of eCommerce CRM, you can send highly targeted email campaigns to customers to increase the conversion rate. As your business grows, the volume of transactions and customer queries increases too. CRM can efficiently automate and manage customer service.

9. Point of Sale

If both brick & mortar and e-store are your point of sale, your work doubles up. Right from maintaining data to transaction processing, everything has to be done individually. Then, in order to fetch the cumulative costs, inventory, orders, revenues and profits, you do all computations all over again. There is a high probability of human errors, which can lead to poor service quality and customer dissatisfaction. However, if both points of sale are integrated, manual efforts, slip-ups and communication loopholes will reduce significantly. You can get automated updated and accurate information on all functions of the business.

10. Marketing Automation

How do you think the eCommerce giants such as Amazon, eBay, Alibaba and Walmart manage to market their products to customers across the world, generate an enormous number of leads and process huge volumes of transactions with ease? Their secret lies in eCommerce integration with marketing automation. Marketing automation enables e-retailers to capture customer behavior, target customized campaigns and send personalized ads by tracing their web activities on their websites.

11. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has been a buzzword in the eCommerce world for quite a while. Affiliate marketing came into the spotlight after Amazon launched Associates Program in 1996. Today, it is one of the most successful affiliate marketing programs with more than 9 lakh members. Statistics say that currently, affiliate marketing fetches 16% of eCommerce sales! Integrating this channel into your eCommerce can generate qualified leads and also lead to a higher conversion rate since the products are endorsed by expert bloggers/media personalities who have a large social media following.

12. Customer Support Platform

As similar as they may sound, the customer support platform is quite different and purpose from CRM. While CRM has a broader scope and encompasses management of customer lifecycle and sales cycle, customer support platform is dedicated software to offer specific customer services such as live chats, query resolution, self-service content such as FAQs, how-to pages, etc. If the customer information would be used only be the customer service department, then customer support platform integration makes more sense. However, if your business operates in multiple departments and sales channels, then CRM integration is a good choice.

The above integrations are recommended to keep your eCommerce business profitable and sustainable.

The post Top 12 Essential eCommerce Integrations for the VAR Business appeared first on VAR Sales Management Blog: News, Tips & Many More By VARStreet.