Guide to ecommerce integration and why it’s important

When setting up your first online store, you’re likely to run across the term “ecommerce integration.” So, what is ecommerce integration exactly and why is this so important for online businesses? We’ll cover the basics of integrations in this guide and give a few examples of how they’re used.

What is ecommerce integration?

From marketing to subscription management, there are hundreds of ecommerce apps out there. Ecommerce business owners can pick and choose the apps that best suit their online stores, improving the customer experience with greater efficiency. However, not all of these apps are designed to work together – which is where ecommerce integration comes into play.

An ecommerce integration describes the connection needed to sync data between two different apps. For example, imagine that you’re using Salesforce for customer relationship management (CRM), and Shopify as an ecommerce platform. You need an integration to sync both systems and their respective data.

There are three main types of ecommerce integrations:

1. Custom integrations: These include custom-made APIs designed to connect your main system with a third-party service.

2. Middleware integrations: These use premade connections to link different endpoint systems through a central hub.

3. Add-on integrations: These include out-of-the-box SaaS solutions already designed to integrate easily with other systems.

Why is ecommerce integration so important to a business? Through integration, you can bring all your custom apps and SaaS tools together under one platform. You need the right integration to sync these services together for a fully operational system.

What does ecommerce integration software do?

When software designers work on a new product, they don’t always consider the infrastructure of other systems. A cloud accounting service might use a completely different type of structure to an inventory management system and ecommerce payment system. This means that when an ecommerce business wants to use multiple tools, it needs a platform to unite and link these different structures. In the past, this meant building expensive custom integrations for each connection.

With ecommerce integration software, businesses access a single platform that can handle multiple integrations and applications. Through this central dashboard, you’ll be able to sync information seamlessly across multiple applications, automating your workflow.

The benefits of ecommerce integration

Here are a just a few of the primary benefits of using ecommerce integration services:

• You can eliminate manual processes in favor of time-saving automation.

• You can update your products and prices in real-time using a single platform.

• You’ll ensure that inventory levels are kept consistent across multiple channels.

• Customers receive a better experience across each touchpoint due to better consistency.

• It’s easier to scale your business through joining new third-party marketplaces and multiple channels.

• By automating tedious manual processes, businesses can increase employee productivity and engagement.

How to integrate ecommerce into your website

Creating a unique integration for each tool can be complicated. However, using an ecommerce integration platform takes the guesswork out of this process, making it suitable for smaller businesses or those who want to get up and running quickly. Here’s how to integrate ecommerce into your website with that in mind.

1. Choose an ecommerce platform that supports your integrations of choice.

2. Outline the processes you’re performing manually and find tools to automate these in the future.

3. Look at ways you can streamline your checkout process and improve the customer experience.

4. Make a list of the systems that need to be integrated. For most ecommerce businesses, this will include inventory, pricing, customer data, shipping, and logistics.

5. Implement the ecommerce integration using your platform of choice. Many of today’s ecommerce solutions support hundreds of apps, making it easy to sync your data.

It’s also important to integrate your checkout page and payments process. GoCardless works with over 300 partners for a seamless experience across multiple platforms. We enable user-friendly payment processing using a combination of direct debit and open banking solutions. Collect one-off or recurring payments directly from customer bank accounts to retain full control over timings and amounts. We also provide high converting payment pages to improve the checkout experience, increasing conversions as a result.

We can help

GoCardless is a global payments solution that helps you automate payment collection, cutting down on the amount of financial admin your team needs to deal with. Find out how GoCardless can help you with one-off or recurring payments.