Integrations Rule the Roost: Integrations are pivotal in optimizing ecommerce operations, from streamlining processes to enhancing customer experiences.
Ecommerce Just Got Smarter: Advanced integration tools facilitate better data management, making smarter business decisions possible.
Smooth Sailing for Shoppers: User-friendly integrations lead to a seamless shopping experience, reducing cart abandonment and improving satisfaction.
Sales on the Rise: Effective integrations can boost sales by providing personalized shopping experiences and efficient transaction processes.
Future-Proof Your Business: Investing in the right integrations today can pave the way for sustainable growth and adaptability in the evolving ecommerce landscape.
A saying goes: Integrations make the ecommerce world go round.
You probably haven’t heard it because I just made it up.
But in my defense, it’s true—integrations are the backbone of the ecommerce ecosystem.
Without them, how would critical systems like discount management, shipping management, and inventory tracking communicate with each other to process orders, update product information, and fulfill customer requests?
Businesses would be forced to manually update each system, which is time-consuming and costly.
However, when applications are properly integrated:
- Data sharing becomes seamless
- Ecommerce processes are streamlined
- Data-driven decisions are more accurate
- Redundant data entry is automated
Take GANT as an example. By building API integrations to share data across their systems, they could launch products three times faster and 33% cheaper in new markets.
The caveat is that ecommerce integrations are far from glamorous.
That’s why this guide covers the benefits, common challenges, and effective strategies for successfully implementing ecommerce integrations.
What Is An Ecommerce Integration?
Ecommerce integration means connecting and enabling communication between the different applications in your ecommerce business’s tech stack.
The goal is to enable seamless communication and data exchange between different systems your business relies on. That includes your:
- Inventory management system
- Shopping cart
- Ecommerce platform
- Accounting software
- ERP
- CRMs
- Payment platforms
- and many more
These systems often have different data formats, dependencies, security requirements, and communication protocols, so integration is necessary to ensure effective cooperation.
This is typically done using APIs, plugins, and apps. Nonetheless, communication isn’t the only reason you need ecommerce integrations.
Why do you need ecommerce integrations for your store?
In addition to system communication and data exchange, you need ecommerce integrations for the following reasons.
To synchronize data
Without integrations, you’d have to rely on manual data entry across your tech stack. This can lead to manual data errors, inconsistencies, and poor customer experience.
Nobody wants all that.
For instance, a customer could be charged a different price during a sale if the discount isn’t applied properly on your site. Or, stock availability might be different from the displayed products.
Confirming and sending payments would also be a hassle.
You need integrations to help you synchronize your data and ensure data consistency across your tech stack.
To transform data
Synchronization cannot happen smoothly without data mapping and transformation.
Across different systems, the price could be stored differently, like cost with an integer data format; in another, it could be price with a decimal data type.
Transformation is needed to ensure the accuracy of data and analytics.
During a data transformation process, you can get data from different sources and normalize their formats into a united form for better analysis.
To automate processes
Integrations help you automate ecommerce processes.
You can automatically update stock availability, pricing during sales and for discounts, email marketing and updates, logistics handling, payment processing and confirmation, dynamic ads and content targeting, and more.
To perform business operations
Every tool in your ecommerce tech stack needs to communicate with each other to enable basic ecommerce operations and business processes.
For instance, your ecommerce platform, shipping software, and payment gateways depend on your order and inventory levels for real-time product details and availability.
Your marketing automation software needs data from your CRM, your CRM needs data from your ecommerce platform, and your analytics needs data from almost all systems.
It’s like a vicious circle where every tool relies on one another.
Note💡: Integration is compulsory for operational excellence in ecommerce, so companies opt for integrated ecommerce platforms to reduce the burden and cost of integration.
What is an integrated ecommerce platform?
An integrated ecommerce platform is in an all-in-one solution that connects and synchronizes multiple systems needed to run an online store.
By coupling multiple systems into one solution, these platforms aim to reduce integration stress.
This increases time to market, lowers cost and integration time, and reduces the number of systems needed to run your ecommerce solution.
Depending on your chosen platform, the integration platform may include a built-in order and inventory management system, marketing tools, CRM, social selling, and more.
Some examples include Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento Commerce (now Adobe Commerce), and SAP Commerce Cloud.
On the other side of the spectrum is composable commerce, where the burden of integration is left to the ecommerce company. Each solution has its trade-offs based on the customer's needs.
It may seem that integrated commerce platforms are cheaper.
Still, in the long run, costs can add up for additional apps and plugins to get the desired functionality you require, and customization is steep.
Further reading: To get all the details on various types of ecommerce solutions, dig into our guide on how to choose the best ecommerce platform.
Another popular term you may have heard of is headless commerce.
This is separation of your ecommerce front end systems from your backend.
Unlike integrated ecommerce, where the frontend is integrated together with the backend, in headless architecture, the backend and frontend are joined together using APIs.
Although headless commerce is a lot like composable commerce, the main difference is that in composable commerce, every part is separated using APIs (payment systems, inventory, shipping, etc.).
A composable commerce solution can include a headless CMS or inventory backend that is separate from the front, but still connected to other systems.
To get a sense of how these different platforms compare, take a look at this handy comparison table:
Feature | Integrated Ecommerce Platform | Composable Ecommerce Platform | Headless Ecommerce Platform |
Flexibility | Offers a pre-defined set of features and integrations, which may limit customization options | Provides greater flexibility to choose and combine different services, allowing for more customization | Flexible frontend options, with backend and frontend separated, allowing high customization |
Scalability | Limitations in scaling individual components independently | Allows for easier scaling of individual components as needed | Highly scalable, as backend and frontend can be scaled separately |
Cost | The entire system has a fixed price, but pricing could increase based on additional plugins and apps. Some features may go unused because it is an all-in-one solution | You pay for only the systems you need. However, the price can accumulate for self-integration and payment for multiple systems | Similar to composable, costs can add up for integrating multiple services but can be more cost-effective long-term |
Vendor Lock-in | Switching platforms may be harder because most of your data is in one system | Freedom to switch from one platform to another without disrupting the entire ecosystem | Multiple vendors possible, reducing vendor lock-in and increasing flexibility |
Time-to-Market | Faster to deploy initially due to pre-built integrations and less complexity to start | Takes longer to set up initially but offers faster adaptation to new market trends or business needs. More technical expertise is needed | Can be longer initially due to custom development but offers fast adaptation to new trends with flexible frontend options |
Maintenance | Easier to maintain and manage a single system from one vendor | More effort is required to manage multiple components from different vendors | Can be complex to maintain due to the separation of backend and frontend |
Customization | Limited to what is provided by the vendor | Highly customizable, allowing businesses to select best-of-breed solutions for each component | High degree of customization with custom frontend development |
Technical Expertise | Generally requires less technical expertise to manage and maintain | Requires more technical expertise to integrate and manage various components | Requires significant technical expertise for custom frontend development and backend integration |
5 Top Benefits Of Ecommerce Integration
We’ve seen why you need ecommerce integration, but what are the benefits once you’ve done the integrating?
You break down information silos
With integrations, you can ingest data from multiple sources and have a unified and holistic view of the data and information across departments.
Integrations also promote cross-functional collaborations because, with integrated systems and processes, handoffs between departments are smoother and can be automated, leading to faster information sharing and collaboration.
Integrations also allow ecommerce leaders to understand how different departments and operations impact each other.
You can make better, data-driven decisions
Keeping with the previous point, breaking down silos allows ecommerce managers to make better decisions because they get a holistic view of all customer data, and data synchronization helps to ensure that data-driven decisions are accurate.
You can make better choices regarding market trends and sales and marketing decisions because data tells you what has happened and what’s happening.
You can also export and connect this data to a business intelligence system to visualize data and further analyze it for future predictions.
Visualization is also a tool to convene and show stakeholders results.
You enhance your team’s productivity
In conjunction with making better data-driven decisions, integrations automate data transfers, reducing the time spent entering data and the risk of human errors.
Ecommerce professionals spend more time optimizing workflows and increasing sales and customer experience.
Automations also improves staff efficiency because they spend less time manually handing off data and process updates and can focus on improving business success.
You can scale faster
I’d say it’s impossible to scale past a certain point if your business relies on manual data entry and process updates.
When you are stuck in the weeds, you can’t see the full picture. Thus, you can’t execute effectively on it.
It’d be harder to handle multiple customer requests and scale accurately without losing their trust in you.
This leads us to the next point: improved customer support.
You improve the customer experience
Integration helps improve the speed and reliability of the customer’s shopping experience, which leads to happier customers.
You’re less likely to disappoint them with poor stock updates or process delays. It provides a seamless shopping experience and allows your staff to support users better.
They don’t need to wait for another department to resolve complaints with the data integrated into a centralized system.
Although integration has these benefits, there are, unfortunately, also challenges.
Common Challenges of Ecommerce Integrations
Nothing in life is without its challenges. We expect it and deal with it, knowing that the gains may be worth it.
Here are some common challenges of ecommerce integrations:
Potentially high costs
The cost of integrations ramps up fast. You have to cover the licensing cost of each tool for every user.
That’s what we call a multiplier.
You might want to buy custom templates and additional plugins and hire a solid integration specialist/agency or an engineer to help you.
You may also need to hire different specialists because different engineers work with different tools.
Objectedge, a technology consulting firm, shares some numbers:
- Full user experience design and study: Anywhere from $25k all the way up to $500k to $1 million.
- Integration cost: $50k to $300k and way more for large-scale ecommerce businesses.
- Payment gateway: To process an order, they charge anywhere from 2% to 4% or maybe 2.5% to 4%.
So you’re looking at $25,000 up to millions on integrations. Read more on integration costs for ecommerce businesses.
Compatibility
Sometimes, connecting two systems is almost impossible because they store data in extremely different ways and use incompatible data models and schemas, making it challenging to map the data between them.
Another issue is that older and legacy systems that use outdated or specialized technology make integrating with modern cloud-based applications difficult.
Further, some systems have a closed architecture, so there is no entry point for third-party integration.
So, these incompatibility issues can make integration a real nightmare.
Complexity
In addition to compatibility issues, which add to the complexity of integration. Integration, data mapping, and building pipelines are complex.
For instance, Jive provides a simple overview of the many components needed when integrating Mirakl with Shopify using Jive as a middleware integration (Zoom to see well):
Now, imagine integrating multiple tools. It’d be complex and require a highly skilled developer to map the data correctly and successfully.
Limited documentation
If you’re looking at integrating your stack using APIs, many APIs have limited documentation.
This can increase time to market because there’s no proper manual to direct the developers on how to use the software and integrate it with other systems.
Some documentation is old and outdated, which can also cause delays.
Security risks
If not done well, integrations can put your software at risk and potentially harm your company and customers' tasks.
They can also expose you to security threats like hacking, data corruption, and legal fines that cost an arm and maybe two legs.
Also, if one system in your stack is compromised, it may affect the rest, depending on how it was integrated.
Ecommerce Integration Methods
These four methods of ecommerce integration all enable data exchange and communication between two or more systems in your tech stack.
However, they take different approaches to enabling data exchange.
API integration
API integration is connecting two or more applications using their API.
An API is a set of standard protocols that tell engineers and developers how to get data from a particular software application and call it in another application.
APIs can also be used within the same software.
For instance, Shopify has different APIs for transaction management, payment processing, discount handling, etc.
So, if you want to use the default Shopify discount handling, you can use their API to add that functionality to your shopping cart.
Another example is if you want to use a tool like Circle to process payment, there’s an API developers can use to integrate its functionalities into your app.
Plugins and apps
Plugins and apps are other integration methods provided by integrated ecommerce platforms like Bigcommerce, Wix, Shopify, and many more.
For instance, Bigcommerce has over 200+ apps and plugins you can add to your store.
You can choose from many order management systems, inventory management software, marketing tools, and email apps to enhance and boost their functionality.
The benefit of most plugins and apps offered by companies is that there’s already an integrated foundational layer for you, and all you have to do is install it.
However, you can also customize some of these plugins.
Middleware integration
Middleware integration is a method where a platform acts as a bridge between different ecommerce systems.
In the backend, the platform provider handles the integration work.
Then, ecommerce businesses use these platforms to facilitate data connection and sharing without the hard work of custom integrations.
Back to the Jive example:
They offer a middleware integration for integrating Mirakl with your Shopify platform. If you use their integration, you don’t need to handle the integration work yourself because they’ve already done it.
They also offer integration services, where they do integrations for ecommerce brands.
Custom integration
Custom integrations mean hard-coding integrations to fit your system and business's needs.
This is usually the best option for companies that require engineers and value security. Custom integration allows you to tailor the platform to your business needs and reduces exposure to external data risks.
Typically, the developers build ETL pipelines to clean, extract, and transform data from one system to the other.
Note: ETL means extracting, transforming, and loading. ETL pipelines are processes used to ingest and move data from multiple sources into a database or data store. Once it’s loaded, the pipeline transforms the data to match the systems it’s going into, then loads the data in your desired system(s).
9 Common Ecommerce Integrations
Here are nine common systems your ecommerce brand needs to integrate within its tech stack:
Ecommerce platform
The foundational layer into which all other systems should integrate. This is where the bulk of the user’s shopping experience happens.
Here, there’s a product catalog where users can add to the cart, pay for their items, and process their orders from the frontend.
Some ecommerce platforms also include marketing automation, where you can dynamically change marketing messages to different audiences and change products available based on location.
Examples include WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, Shopify, etc.
We reviewed the top 20 ecommerce platforms to make your search faster. You can take a peek at the top ten right now:
Inventory management systems
Inventory management systems track stock from your warehouse(s) and update available inventory on all marketing and sales channels.
They also update stock reordering and provide inventory analytics.
Inventory management platforms can be standalone systems for complex inventory or integrated into an ecommerce platform or warehouse management system.
You can find our top 30 inventory management systems, complete with reviews for each. Check out our top ten from that roundup:
Order management systems
Many ecommerce platforms have order management built in, but for advanced needs, there are external solutions.
Some order management systems are also integrated into robust inventory management systems.
Depending on the platform you choose, these systems handle the lifecycle of orders, fulfillment management, and processing returns.
You might be sensing a pattern here, but yes, we reviewed the top order management software and even have a nice little shortlist for your consideration:
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems
Most ecommerce platforms should have serviceable CRMs, but a dedicated CRM is necessary for better customer management.
It manages customer relationships and contact information, sales processes, marketing campaigns, and automations.
To help streamline your search, we’ve reviewed 20 solid ecommerce CRMs for you to choose from, and here are the top ten:
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems
ERP systems are business-intelligent systems that ingest data from multiple systems, from finance to HR to supply chain, to help provide a holistic view of the company and its customers for better analytics and decision-making.
Discover the top 20 ERP Software for 2024 or just take in our top picks here:
Payment gateways
You can use payment gateways to securely process online payments through debit card payments, transfers, cash on delivery, cryptocurrency, and BNPL.
Some examples are Circle, Square, PayPal, Apple Pay, etc.
Check out our favorite payment gateway providers and peep our top ten:
Shipping and fulfillment solutions
Shipping and fulfillment solutions handle all the logistics of product delivery.
This third-party service calculates shipping rates based on the customer’s location, tracks shipments, and sometimes prints labels.
We, of course, have thoughts about this. Check out some of our favorite ecommerce shipping tools here:
Marketing apps & integrations
You can’t get people to your store without marketing tools.
Marketing apps are tools needed to market your business, like email marketing platforms, content management systems, SEO tools, social media management, and marketing analytics.
Marketplaces & other sales channels
Marketplaces and additional sales channels are places outside your website where you post product catalogs and products for sale.
For instance, Fenty sells on Essenze, Sephora, and many other marketplaces directly from its site.
Businesses can also utilize social media and online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay to increase visibility and reach.
How to Implement Ecommerce Integration
After understanding the benefits and limitations of ecommerce integrations, here’s how to implement them in your business:
1. Assess your business needs
Every big decision like this has to start with a look inward. Get ready to write some things down to use in later steps.
To assess your business needs:
- Evaluate your current systems and processes: Take note of what’s in your existing tech stack. Do you already have an ecommerce platform? Is it connected to some payment platforms? Are you thinking of changing, and why? Also, identify the manual processes you can automate, like sending emails and confirmations or updating social media.
- Analyze your order volume and product catalog: If your items get out of stock quickly, picking a system that updates information quickly would be nice. If you also sell across multiple channels, the order availability should be updated properly. This can also help you decide what kind of platform to invest in based on the size of your business currently.
- Consider your data needs: does your store require real-time data synchronization for accurate inventory pricing and orders? Do you need a centralized hub for analytics and decision-making?
- Examine your resources and technical expertise: what’s your budget based on the market survey, and what can you afford? Do you have the capacity in-house to implement and maintain this integration, or would a middleware or integration specialist be a better fit? Maybe you should consider an ecommerce platform with the out-of-the-box solutions you need.
Got all your needs written down? Good, let’s get to the big rocks.
2. Start from the right ecommerce platform
When selecting an ecommerce platform for your business, you must consider various key factors.
First, evaluate the different platform types, such as:
- SaaS (Software as a Service) platforms that are cloud-based and easy to set up,
- Self-hosted (or open source) options offer more control but require technical know-how,
- Enterprise platforms are available for larger and more complex businesses, and
- Specialized platforms for specific needs like B2B ecommerce or subscription-based models.
Next, consider features such as a user-friendly interface, mobile responsiveness, SEO capabilities, security, payment gateways, inventory management, order processing, and CRM tools.
Analyze the platform's integration capabilities, customization options, scalability, performance and speed, analytics and reporting tools, customer support, and pricing structure.
Finally, test the platform through free trials or demos before committing to it to ensure it meets your unique business requirements and goals.
3. Choose the best integrations and apps
Remember the needs you assessed in the first step? Use them as a guide to prioritize the essential functionality your business needs now.
Ensure the integrations you're considering are compatible with your ecommerce platform and can scale as your business grows.
Some of the most significant integrations ecommerce brands need include:
- Inventory management system
- Order management system
- Customer relationship management systems
- Enterprise resource planning
- Payments gateways
- Shipping fulfillment
- Marketplaces and other sales channels
- Marketing apps & integrations
It’s essential to read reviews and ratings and assess the integration capabilities, costs, and potential return on investment.
Also, test these integrations during demos to evaluate if they match your needs. You should check for security, compliance, customer support, analytics, and other relevant features for your business needs.
By carefully considering these factors, you can select integrations and apps that will enhance your ecommerce operations, improve customer experience, and support your business growth.
4. Plan your integration strategy (where needed)
After choosing the right integrations and apps, you need to create an integration map to visualize the flow of information between systems and determine the specific data needed to be shared.
You also need to evaluate the integration capabilities of your existing systems, look for customization options, and decide on the integration methods, whether apps or plugins, middleware, or custom API programming.
Then, evaluate the cost and potential return on investment.
5. Test and validate API and custom integrations
How would you know your integration works as expected if you don’t test them? Grab your notepad again and start creating your test plan:
- Create an outline stating the scope, objectives, resources, schedule, and deliverables, and define detailed test cases to cover all possible scenarios.
- Set up the testing environment by mimicking the production environment and using realistic test data.
- Perform unit testing on individual components, automating where possible. Then, integration testing will be conducted to validate the data flow and API endpoints and test error handling.
- Conduct functional testing, including end-to-end scenarios and user acceptance testing, followed by performance testing to assess the system's ability to handle load and stress.
- Validate security and compliance by performing security testing and ensuring adherence to relevant regulations and industry standards.
- Monitor and analyze the test results, log and track issues, and implement continuous integration to automate testing and regularly update the test cases and strategy.
If this goes well, you are nearly finished.
6. Go live and monitor performance
Continuous monitoring is essential after testing the integrations.
Create a detailed launch plan that includes a timeline, roles and responsibilities, and a communication strategy, and schedule the go-live during a low-traffic period to minimize potential disruptions.
Also, prepare a comprehensive backup and rollback plan to restore your system to its previous state in case of critical issues during the launch.
Post-launch, set up monitoring tools to continuously track the performance and health of your integrations, review performance data to identify trends and areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments to optimize the integrations.
You should also establish a support process to handle the integration-related issues promptly.
Integrate Your Systems, Simplify Your Life
Integrations give ecommerce businesses the power to meet customer dynamic needs on a large scale.
They take over redundant and repetitive tasks and allow ecommerce managers and leadership to use the data from these systems to make better business decisions and achieve the company's bottom line.
Without them, ecommerce managers would be overwhelmed with data integration, cleaning, and management to focus on the company’s growth.
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