5 Integrated eCommerce Solutions You Can Leverage for Better Efficiency

One key reason behind inefficiencies within eCommerce businesses is administrative tasks that are important but time-consuming and error-prone.

Whether it is checking inventory levels to validate a refund request from a dissatisfied customer, these tasks make it challenging for eCommerce teams to focus on running the business.

Adopting specialized software solutions that can automate such tasks with minimal human intervention is a quick and easy way to deal with them. However, that can present roadblocks, such as resistance to change and the steep learning curve of the tools themselves.

Fortunately, teams can mitigate that by choosing solutions that integrate well into their existing tech stack. This keeps the workflow as is while speeding up action items within it.

But which integrated software solutions should you start with for maximum impact?

In this article, let’s look at five kinds of specialized software solutions that can be integrated quickly within existing eCommerce ecosystems to increase efficiency.

5 Integrated eCommerce Solutions for Efficiency

The five categories of solutions are based on the aspect of an eCommerce business with areas of improvement. We briefly talked about the challenge that you might face while managing or running that aspect of your eCommerce store and suggested a solution that can take care of it quickly.

1. Order and Experience Personalization

The configurability of the products in your eCommerce catalog and the shopping experience should be tailored to the needs and preferences of the visitor. This makes it easier for them to find what they are looking for while making the whole process memorable.

Customization of products, especially for enterprise buyers, is often done manually by eCommerce sales teams, costing valuable time and human resources. Configure, price, and quote (CPQ) solutions automate this process to generate tailored deals within minutes.

Using a CPQ tool makes it easier for eCommerce businesses to convert larger clients efficiently by bringing personalization to every aspect of the buyer’s journey.

DealHub, Salesforce, and HubSpot are popular options for the CPQ needs of most eCommerce businesses. These tools can be easily integrated into eCommerce hosting platforms like WordPress and Shopify, simplifying their adoption and usage.

Another way you can personalize the experience further is by offering multiple shipping options to the buyers. Check if your current shipping partner offers multiple tiers of shipping such as regular and express.

The best part is you won’t have to adopt a new tool, just offer an option to choose the shipping method before checkout.

A best practice as you incorporate the above solutions into your eCommerce tech stack is to collect the preferences of your buyer and auto-fill the details when they shop next to streamline their experience further. Of course, ask for permission before collecting data.

2. Chargeback Handling

Chargebacks are an inevitable part of an eCommerce business. Various reasons like fraud, customer dissatisfaction, damaged product, or failure in fulfillment can require you to send the money back to the customers.

An essential component of handling chargebacks is to verify the details to ensure appropriate approval of refunds. Additionally, eCommerce teams should tag and compile the relevant data to isolate the underlying causes for minimizing chargeback requests in the future.

Manually handling the relevant tasks, whether it is ensuring the validity of the issue that caused the chargeback request to sending the amount back to the customer can be tedious. Moreover, since these action items require keen attention to detail, human errors can get costly.

Chargeflow offers an end-to-end, fully automated chargeback handling solution that can easily integrate with your eCommerce platform. You can also connect it to your payment processor as well, depending on which option keeps your workflow streamlined.

The platform requires zero intervention after it has been set up and can easily tackle your growing needs. Chargeflow also provides you with in-depth analytics allowing you to dive deeper into the refund requests to find areas of improvement.

3. Inventory Tracking and Reordering

Healthy inventory levels are essential to consistently meet customer demands and avoid overstock situations. This enables you to establish yourself as a reliable online store with affordable prices (partially due to lower overhead costs associated with storage).

However, manually keeping track of inventory, making sales predictions, and sending orders for the next shipment can be time-consuming. An automated inventory and reordering system can do it for you, allowing you to focus on improving your business.

Popular tools like TradeGecko (now QuickBooks Commerce), Stitch Labs, and Zoho Inventory are great options for this. They monitor the stock-keeping units (SKUs) in real-time and craft purchase orders to streamline the whole process.

These solutions will quickly send you notifications when inventory in hand falls below a certain threshold. Consequently, you can always meet customer expectations even during peak sales seasons.

4. Marketing Automation Software

eCommerce marketing is as diverse and personalized as it can get. Online businesses have a presence on multiple platforms where different kinds of content are shared to promote various products within their catalog.

This necessitates a structured promotional approach, where everything from content creation to publication has to be measured. It is crucial to iteratively evolve the marketing efforts over time for better results.

As you can imagine, there are plenty of administrative tasks that slow the associated action items. Handling social media content scheduling, maintaining relationships with influencers, setting email drip campaigns, measuring campaign performance across platforms, and coordinating promotional efforts to name a few.

Using tools that help automate the above tasks can significantly clear up the daily to-do lists of eCommerce marketing teams. Online store owners can just focus on creating useful content and enhancing their marketing strategy based on performance data.

Hootsuite, Klaviyo, and Mailchimp are a few of the many established solutions that can help in automating the above manual action items. eCommerce marketers can get insights at a glance through the built-in dashboards of these tools and continually improve their approach.

5. Unified Analytics Platform

eCommerce teams juggle between multiple dashboards throughout their days to get complete visibility over the operations and business performance. In the previous section alone, we mentioned multiple tools for streamlining marketing efforts that have their dashboards!

Cycling through multiple tools makes it difficult for eCommerce decision-makers to gain insights quickly. This delays action which can lead to missed opportunities, whether in delighting customers or improving vendor relationships.

A unified analytics platform can solve this challenge by bringing data from multiple tools to one place, serving as the single source of truth for the business. This not only speeds up the decision-making process but also decreases biases and enhances collaboration among team members.

Popular solutions that you can consider include Google Analytics 360, Adobe Analytics, and Looker which integrate easily into existing eCommerce tech stacks to unlock comprehensive reporting for teams.

How to Choose the right integrated eCommerce Solution

For each of the categories of integrated eCommerce solutions, we suggested a few popular software options. A quick Google search will tell you that there are tens of great options for each of them if not more.

Selecting the right options becomes crucial to ensure a higher ROI. Here are a few factors you must consider while investing in integrated eCommerce solutions:

1. Ease of adoption: The new eCommerce software in your tech stack should come with a gentle learning curve. This minimizes the operational disruptions and brings the benefits of these solutions to your workflows faster.
2. Tangible reasons: You should adopt a tool because it will help you become more productive and efficient. Define that goal in terms of performance or revenue metrics so its impact can be monitored easily.
3. Grows with you: Moving from one tool to another because the current one isn’t enough is a pain. Thoroughly test the tool before investing in it and implementing it within your workflow.

eCommerce Integration Trends and Future Forecasts

The landscape of eCommerce is evolving rapidly, driven by technological advancements and shifting consumer behaviors. Here are the key trends and future forecasts for eCommerce integration:

1. AI and Machine Learning: The use of AI and machine learning is growing significantly, allowing eCommerce businesses to personalize shopping experiences and enhance customer service. These technologies help automate processes like product recommendations, chatbots, and predictive analytics.
2. Social Commerce: As social media and eCommerce merge, platforms like Instagram and Facebook are increasingly becoming shopping hubs. Businesses can now sell directly on social platforms, which is reshaping customer engagement and sales strategies.
3. Mobile Shopping: With the rise of mobile commerce, particularly driven by 5G, shopping on smartphones and tablets is becoming faster and more convenient. Mobile shopping is set to dominate eCommerce sales as consumers prefer browsing and purchasing on the go.
4. Sustainability: More consumers are expecting brands to adopt sustainable practices, including eco-friendly packaging and ethical sourcing. This trend pushes eCommerce businesses to integrate sustainable solutions throughout their operations.
5. Omni-Channel Integration: A seamless shopping experience across multiple channels—websites, mobile apps, and physical stores—is increasingly crucial. Brands are focusing on consistent messaging and integrated customer journeys to meet this demand.

How Integrated eCommerce Solutions Helps Elevate B2B Engagements: Closing Thoughts

eCommerce businesses need to enhance their operations across the board to stay competitive and meet customer expectations. An effective way to do this is by adopting software that automates tedious and error-prone action items while integrating well into the current tech stack.

Integrated eCommerce solutions allow team members to focus on essential tasks like enhancing the shopping experience for visitors, resolving their queries, and expanding the business by taking over administrative tasks.

Additionally, adopting these tools is quite easy as it doesn’t require teams to migrate to a different tool or even modify their existing workflow.

Five broad categories of software solutions can be leveraged to put complex and repetitive tasks into autopilot:

1. Order and experienced personalization tools allow buyers to configure products as per their needs and determine the fulfillment method. Popular options include Salesforce, DealHub, and HubSpot.
2. Chargeback handling software manages the refunds by verifying the issue, initiating the transaction, and keeping records. Chargeflow automates the entire workflow completely, allowing eCommerce teams to focus on growing their business.
3. Inventory tracking and reordering tools keep an eye on the stock levels and create purchase orders when they hit a certain threshold. Quickbooks Commerce, Stitch Labs, and Zoho Inventory are quite reliable for this.
4. Marketing automation software takes care of manual and administrative tasks like scheduling posts and sending email follow-ups. Common options include Hootsuite, Klaviyo, and Mailchimp.
5. Unified analytics platforms bring data from various tools and build a single source of truth for faster and more accurate decision-making. Popular options include Google Analytics 360, Adobe Analytics, and Looker.

It’s better to conduct an in-depth testing of these tools in staging environments before adopting them. A few things to keep in mind include ease of use, scalability, affordability, and safety.

Moreover, eCommerce professionals should keep an eye on the market trends and latest technological innovations to ensure they retain their edge over time.

After adopting the above solutions, eCommerce teams should train their employees adequately and continually iterate the relevant processes to maintain their efficacy.