Categories: E-Commerce Website Development.15.1 min read.

eCommerce integration: Top 5 must have integration to drive holiday sales 2021 in Hong Kong

ECommerce integration will be the solution to rocket your online sales in this upcoming holiday with its exceptional benefits from automating the processes, improving productivity to saving operation costs.

About the Author: Celine Nguyen

A Marketing content writer with expertise in technology, innovation, and creativity — Passionate in technology solutions that transform lives and works.

By Celine Nguyen

ECommerce integration will be the solution to rocket your online sales in this upcoming holiday. Operating an eCommerce business is complicated, including tracking orders, managing shipments, inventory, etc. Running the process seamlessly is usually frustrating to many store owners in daily life, even on normal days.

And, in holiday seasons, the surging number of orders and the huge amount of waiting support messages can put more pressure on the process and cause breakdowns.

ECommerce integration is favorable for many online merchants to prevent this situation and achieve a profitable shopping season.

So, what is eCommerce integration?

ECommerce integration definition

ECommerce integration connects an eCommerce website and its back-end systems, such as an ERP or CRM system.

For example, by connecting an eCommerce application to an ERP, distributors, manufacturers, and retailers can create bidirectional information flows between the two systems, requiring them to only insert data once.

Moreover, the ERP integration can sync the sales with the inventory data. When an item is sold on the website, the product number on the inventory management system is also adjusted to maintain accurate stock availability.

Businesses can use eCommerce integration to automate the order management, shipment, and customer database.

Five benefits of eCommerce integration for your business

The requirement for eCommerce integration has soared along with the enormous increasing demand for online shopping, especially in the holiday season. Below are five benefits of eCommerce integration on boosting online sales:

  1. Streamline and automate the operation
  2. Eliminate data duplicates and errors
  3. Reduce management cost
  4. Improve customer experience
  5. Better business control

Arestós eCommerce Integration services

Streamline and automate the operation

One of the key advantages of adopting eCommerce integration is streamlining and automate the operations.

For example, eCommerce integration offers seamless connectivity between payment gateways, shipping, inventory system, and omnichannel sales feeds. Thus, shoppers can see the accurate product stock, experience a fast payment process, and track their shipment. On the other side, once an order is recorded, the data is updated automatically to notify your shipping vendor, accountants, and inventory staff to take their action without manually cross-checking.

Internal productivity will typically increase significantly as each process is optimized and the need for high human engagement is reduced.

Eliminate data duplicates and errors

Integration eliminates the need to enter the same data into numerous systems manually. eCommerce integration helps gather data and information into a single location. All the data is synced across systems.

This significantly minimizes the amount of time humans are involved in the input process, decreasing human error and redundant data. That means you won’t have to worry about inconsistencies or difficulties arising from even the tiniest loss in concentration.

Reduce management cost

Cutting costs is also the key to increase revenue. Your online sales and orders (along with many other back-office activities) become automated with integration.

Customers can also take care of their demands in various ways, such as tracking order statuses, viewing available product stock, tracking delivery, and so on. As a result, the requirement for human intervention is reduced, resulting in a significant reduction in administrative burden. Thus, the long-term labor and operational cost will decrease accordingly.

Improve customer satisfaction

An integrated eCommerce system provides you with a wide range of tools and possibilities, allowing you to provide better service to your shoppers right away.

In addition to the benefits of the after-sales service outlined above, integration allows you to offer incentivized loyalty programs that are easy to maintain and access, provide consumers with instant access to their order history and other services, and much more.

You can also provide a personalized experience to your customers with integrated eCommerce, especially if you employ an AI personalization platform. It would enable you to offer real-time suggestions and recommendations to your customers throughout their whole buying process. Whether it’s suggested accessories or complementary products depending on the product, they’re currently looking for, their order or viewing history, or even their location and customer profile saved on your integrated system.

Learn more: How AI Chatbot becomes your sales’ saver amid COVID-19

Better business control

Everything is in one place at your fingertips with integrated eCommerce. That means you’ll have a lot more control over every area of your company.

Integration also generates accurate and real-time report availability for your decision-making.

As the eCommerce integration gathers data in one place, you can access accurate and real-time reports easily for data-driven decision-making and planning.

Top 5 must-have eCommerce integration to drive sales this holiday season 2021 in Hong Kong

1. On-site payment gateways

Most businesses choose on-site payments that are processed entirely on their systems. Customers can enter credit card information directly on the website in this method.

People from different countries will have different favorites of online payment gateways. Make sure your eCommerce website allows Hong Kong buyers to pay via their favored methods such as Alipay or Wechat Pay.

This payment gateway streamlines the checkout process and makes it more convenient. Businesses have complete control over the checkout process, including offering offers and add-ons before final checkout to increase sales. On-site payment gateways offer a highly customized payment page that helps businesses provide a consistent experience to their customers.

2. eCommerce shipping software

Integrating shipping software can benefit both you and your customers.

First of all, it can streamline the process from taking orders, picking, and packing to shipping the product. It ensures that the process will run accurately and transparently without any delays.

Moreover, with this integration, you can show the minimum order value to benefit from shipping fee discounts or even free shipping. This little tactic is proved to boost online sales tremendously.

According to a Hong Kong online shopper, free delivery is one of the key factors attracting him to convert.

On the other side, your customers can have a variety of shipping options. They also can follow and monitor the shipment themselves without asking for support from you. This feature can help to reduce labor and cost while increasing your customer satisfaction.

3. eCommerce inventory management system

It is vital to keep on track about what products are available to sell. eCommerce inventory management allows businesses to quickly identify which commodities are in stock, understocked, overstocked, or totally out of stock.

Moreover, an eCommerce inventory management system can offer real-time counts to prevent product loss, improve your stocking process. You also can opt to receive alerts when the popular product is nearly running out of stock for prompt action.

4. CRM eCommerce

CRM eCommerce integration helps you to gather all customer data in one place. You will know precisely who customer shops what product, their product view history, and so on.

These valuable data enable you to widens the scope of holiday marketing activities and approach your customers with better-personalized campaigns.

Moreover, CRM integration also directly affects sales. Once your sales planner can access this information, they can create a better upsell strategy.

With the data from this integration, you also can achieve more efficient inventory management. You can promptly identify the most popular product, which product should be removed from the stocking plan.

5. Accounting management system

You’ll need an accounting solution to keep track of payroll, budgeting, cash flow statements, purchase-and-sales charts, profit-and-loss charts, and so on, regardless of the size of your firm. In the early days of a business, handling daily accounting responsibilities with a simple spreadsheet file may be sufficient.

However, this method may not function well when you want to expand your business or operate smoothly through the shopping seasons. It can result in errors, resulting in a fragmented data system. As a result, owners of companies are unable to make significant judgments. That is why you need to integrate an eCommerce accounting software.

Thus, you will need a helpful accounting management system that can automatically generate customized invoices and statements in multiple currencies and clicks. It also allows you to input data by scanning rather than manual typing.

Moreover, the accounting integration can automate the process of sales tax and deliver detailed reports just by clicks.

6. Live chat & Help desk

Modern buyers want immediate attention and assistance. As a result, you should always let them know you’re there for them and ready to answer any questions they may have. This is where the combination of live chat and support desk comes in.

A decent live chat integration allows users to communicate directly with your support team without having to leave your site to call or send an email. Breaking consumers’ journeys is extremely negative in experience-driven e-commerce since it increases the likelihood that they will not return to your store once they leave.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, e-commerce integration has a significant impact on everyday operations and e-commerce performance. The rewards from boosting sales and increasing productivity are worth your investment.

Arestós is a full-cycle e-Commerce website development company.

We have a wealth of experience in helping clients across industries build eCommerce websites that convert.

We provide a wide range of eCommerce development services, from building a brand-new WooCommerce store to eCommerce integration development.

Contact us now to find the best solution for your eCommerce business.

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