by Tom Shackleton
Shopify’s app based ecosystem makes it an incredibly flexible and adaptable platform. Shopify is able to integrate with a huge number of other systems and tools that can enhance your store’s experience and streamline your business processes. With plenty of apps available, Shopify is able to support and integrate with everything - from your accounting software to your email platform.
When starting a new store, or transitioning from another platform, you want to be sure that you can continue to use the services you know and love. Thankfully, Shopify can link seamlessly with a number of different systems to keep your business running smoothly. Here’s how:
Marketing Tools
If you’ve built up a great collection of customer data and insights, the last thing you want is to have to start again when building a new store. Thankfully, Shopify integrates fantastically with many different marketing tools, from Hubspot to Mailchimp.
Marketing tools like Hubspot allow you to personalise and automate much of your marketing activity. Integrating these with Shopify will let you send personal abandoned cart emails to customers, build profiles and encourage repeat custom.
Shopify also integrates effectively with email marketing platforms like Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor, offering you the option to easily build your email lists. You can include signup forms on your site, give offers to new signups and contact customers at every stage of the buying process.
CRMs
Keeping track of all of your customer interactions is essential for any eCommerce business. That’s why Shopify offers integrations with many top CRM systems. Many of these integrations are also customisable, giving you access to the exact data you need, whenever you need it.
Salesforce is probably the biggest CRM around and it integrates with Shopify without a problem. There are various different ways of integrating Shopify with Salesforce, but perhaps the simplest is through a service called Zapier. Zapier automations will transfer data collected in Shopify, such as sales and communications, into Salesforce.
Perhaps even simpler, is Shopify’s integration with Zendesk. The customer relationship service has its own Shopify app that makes the integration incredibly quick and simple. Once linked, you can provide customers with an enhanced store experience, offering visitors chat options as well as the usual CRM features.
Online Marketplaces
Many new eCommerce businesses have come from selling on marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay, so Shopify makes it very easy to migrate a product catalogue into your new store. There are simple methods for transferring products from Amazon, eBay and other marketplaces like Etsy.
Shopify offers easy migration from Amazon, with support for Amazon Payments and services also accessible. Shopify merchants can even use Amazon’s fulfilment services for their stores and will soon be able to sell directly on Amazon from their Shopify listings.
Migrating your store from eBay to Shopify also couldn’t be simpler. Shopify have developed their own eBay Importer app to do the heavy lifting for you and transfer your eBay catalogue into your brand new eCommerce store. The app will even import all of your images, variants and categories, so there’s no fiddling around cleaning up your store afterwards.
Finally, there are Shopify apps available for importing from a large selection of other platforms and marketplaces, with everything from Magento to Etsy covered.
Accounting Software
Having your online store integrated with your accounting software can be a big time saver, especially for new businesses who need to focus on driving sales and becoming profitable. Shopify offers simple integrations with many popular accounting platforms such as Xero and QuickBooks.
Orders can be automatically imported into your accounting platform, saving you plenty of the time consuming and tedious data entry that so many small business owners hate. There are also 3rd-party apps available for other accounting platforms such as Sage, meaning you’re likely to find a solution, no matter the platform you’re using.
Inventory Management Systems
If you supply your online orders through a drop-shipping service, or need to manage inventory across multiple channels, Shopify offers a good range of options for integrating here too. You can integrate your store with Trade Gecko, providing a full inventory management solution.
Trade Gecko allows you to manage both B2C and B2B sales and sync with your drop-shipping service, whilst managing sales, warehouses, currencies and taxes. Co-ordinating with your inventory management and drop-shipping services allows your Shopify store to link with other sales channels without a problem.
If Trade Gecko isn’t your platform of choice, Shopify also has apps for other services such as Order Hive and Stitch Labs that will get your orders synced and stored all in one place.
In Summary…
Shopify’s app-based ecosystem allows it to provide simple, easy and effective integrations with a huge number of other services and tools. If you’re looking to continue using existing systems when you move to Shopify, there’s probably an app that has you covered. Many leading services have recognised the importance of integrating with Shopify to improve the experience of their customers, and the number is only likely to grow.
Are you thinking about migrating to Shopify but not sure if you can continue using your existing systems? Get in touch with us and we’d be happy to help.
