Benefits of Integrated E-Commerce Applications

Integrated e-commerce applications link your online store to your physical store, your customer database, your shipping software, and more. Just as system integration allows your business to operate more efficiently by improving access and control, an integrated e-commerce application helps you take control of your points of sale. Selling in one store and one online marketplace is difficult enough. As your business expands to multiple online points of sale and additional storefronts, you face further problems. It becomes all too easy to ship the same product twice, mislabel bookkeeping entries, and even lose orders through inefficient system management. A custom e-commerce application can solve all these woes and more.

Minimize App Juggling


Say you sell from three different points of sale. You have a small boutique storefront, a shopping cart function on your website, and a shop on Amazon’s marketplace. Without an integrated e-commerce application, you’re looking at three different points of sale that come with three different kinds of POS software. Amazon uses its own system, your pre-made shopping cart software uses a different system, and your physical point of sale may or may not communicate with either of them. Hopefully, none of them pull from the same inventory, though small businesses with handmade goods or unique pieces of art have no choice but to post the same item both online and in the shop.

Juggling so many different apps eats time. Since time is money, you are sacrificing revenue to app juggling. Rather than trying to watch three different apps and then trying to channel them into bookkeeping or shipping separately, you can tie them into a single bundle. With custom software development, you can take all of your points of sale and have each one send information to and receive orders from the same app.

Reduce Errors


The sad truth of app juggling is that sometimes you drop an order. It’s easy to confuse information from two different points of sale, especially if two different customers have the same name, a similar address, or simply purchased similar products. Pulling information from so many different sources isn’t just exhausting. It’s confusing. Imagine an app that automatically updates all points of sale when a customer buys an item. All inventories would automatically show the change in available items, and you need to never again, awkwardly explain to a customer that you are sold out, even though the website says you still have two items in stock. Integrated e-commerce applications can combine customer, product, and shipping information into one powerful system that not only provides rapid results, but also provides the right results.

Save POS Management Time


Until now, every business has had to upload every image, description, and price into every different point of sale manually. If you opened an Amazon marketplace account, you would need to add all information manually. If you launched your own website with a shopping cart, you would need to add information manually. Every new point of sale demanded the same meaningless legwork. An integrated e-commerce system does the legwork for you.

Reduce Overhead


If you don’t already run some form of integrated e-commerce application, you’re throwing away profit. An integrated app allows you to control every step of fulfillment, from the order to the moment the package arrives, within a single system. Jumping between apps allows product to fall through the gaps, information to become confused, and endless labor hours to slip away. E-commerce is so popular because it gives customers instant satisfaction, and sellers profit without overhead. By choosing custom software development to design an integrated e-commerce app, you trim the overhead even further back.

The Benefits of a Custom App


Your business is unlike any other, so no pre-made app can suit your exact needs. Many only work with specific e-commerce websites and software. By choosing a custom app, you ensure all points of sale can communicate, all systems are accepted, and the software has all the features you need. A shop selling any kind of food will need to integrate somewhat different systems than an antiques dealer. The only way to ensure all points of sale, customer registers, and shipping software work together is to build the system around them.

Many businesses only use a single physical storefront, but that doesn’t mean they only have one point of sale. E-commerce demands expediency, accuracy, and organization. Juggling apps or hoping that a pre-made app can support all of your different systems is an invitation for lost time, revenue, and even customer loyalty. Your customers should never have to wonder about how their orders are processed. Usually, they only ask questions when things go wrong. Integrated e-commerce apps connect the dots from order to delivery, allowing you to conduct a fluid transaction. E-commerce represents the future of shopping. Investing in an integrated e-commerce app allows you to keep pace with the new market.