According to Inc.com, inefficiency costs businesses around 20 to 30 percent of their revenue every year.
According to recent statistics, 72% of successful e-commerce businesses use marketing automation in workflows.
In particular, less than 30% of successful companies haven't automated their marketing.
Yet, the majority of unsuccessful companies, 82% of them, don’t adopt automation at all.
In particular, AI can help your business succeed and reduce costs.
Research made by Oracle found that:
- 86% of companies that use AI create better customer experiences (CX)
- 64% improved productivity and efficiency
- 70% reduced costs
- 84% discovered that AI helped them improve their ability to deliver real-time, personalized experiences to customers
In the ever-evolving world of e-commerce, establishing a robust tech stack is the key to unlocking the full potential of your Shopify store.
From customer support to email marketing automation, the right set of tools can help your online business grow to new heights.
An efficient tech-stack to emerges as an imperative component of a winning e-commerce strategy.
E-commerce Tech Stack: A Strategic Foundation for Success
First of all, you should understand what an e-commerce tech stack is and why it has a crucial role in your online store's success.
An e-commerce tech stack is essentially a suite of integrated software and tools strategically selected to enhance the functionality and efficiency of an online store.
E-commerce tech stacks are usually made up of platforms, frameworks, tools, applications, and programming languages.
In particular, your enterprise e-commerce tech stack will have two aspects:
- the front-end (client-facing)
- the back-end (server-facing)
The front-end stack refers to the applications and languages that are used to develop and design your website or online storefront.
Whereas your back-end stack will be the server, application, and database that work “behind the scenes” to deliver information to the customer.
Here's a closer look at why this strategic foundation is indispensable.
Streamlining Operations.
First of all, having software doing “the work” for you and streamlining operations is a primary benefit.
Every aspect of your Shopify store, from inventory management to order fulfillment, can be strategically automated, liberating you and your team from boring and repetitive tasks.
This operational efficiency not only saves time and resources, but also allows businesses to direct their focus toward strategic elements that foster growth, innovation, and customer engagement.
Enhancing Customer Experience.
A well-constructed tech stack isn't just about backend operations; it's a gateway to enhancing the overall customer experience.
Integrated technologies enable personalized interactions, smooth transactions, and efficient customer support, fostering loyalty and satisfaction.
This foundation serves as a bridge for personalized and efficient interactions beyond the online store.
Integrated customer support platforms, smoothly integrated into the technology, enable merchants to offer instant help, personalized communication, and quick issue resolution.
This creates more than just a transaction, it builds a satisfying and loyal customer experience.
If you would like to automate your customer service, you should try TextYess.
Wouldn’t you like to have a customizable AI assistant for your Shopify store?
Strategic value
The e-commerce tech stack is more than an assemblage of tools; it's a dynamic ecosystem that enhances the growth of an online business.
Its strategic importance lies not just in all of its functionalities but in its transformative ability to redefine how businesses operate and how customers experience online shopping.
In essence, it becomes the “invisible hand” that guides operations and weaves together the various touchpoints of the customer journey, ultimately “laying the foundations” for sustained success in the highly competitive e-commerce landscape.
Therefore, online stores aspiring to not merely survive but thrive should focus on continually optimizing their e-commerce tech stack.
In an era where customer expectations are in constant flux, the adaptability of an e-commerce tech stack becomes fundamental.
As the online landscape shifts, tools that optimize marketing, analytics, payment processing, and more, must seamlessly integrate and adapt to ensure the store's agility in meeting evolving market demands
Scalability & cost reduction:
Scalability is not just a consideration you should make looking at the present, but a crucial element that determines the sustainability of your e-commerce.
Remember to choose tools that can seamlessly grow with your business.
This involves forecasting your business's trajectory and selecting technologies that can adapt to increased transaction volumes, expanded product lines, and a growing customer base.
Scalability isn't just about handling growth; it's about doing so efficiently.
So you should really focus on creating an efficient integration of tools that can accommodate increased demands without compromising performance or requiring frequent overhauls.
To reduce costs and “headaches”, always consider the compatibility of potential tools with your existing infrastructure and your future growth.
Selecting tools that integrate seamlessly with Shopify ensures a smooth flow of data and processes, preventing silos, reducing costs and enhancing overall efficiency.
As your business evolves, having an integrated ecosystem allows for easier adoption of new tools, without disrupting established workflows.
5 crucial elements of the perfect Shopify tech stack
As we mentioned, is crucial to seamlessly implement tools that align with your business goals and objectives.
This integration ensures a unified system where data & e-commerce operations flow effortlessly, reducing manual efforts and enhancing overall efficiency.
But what tools do you need?
What are your business needs that can be solved through software and automation?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
First of all, a CRM tool is foundational.
It helps us understand how customers behave, what products they tend to buy frequently, and, in general, what their preferences are.
Of course, all of these insights become invaluable for tailoring personalized experiences and driving customer loyalty.
These tools ensure that you are managing your all-important customer relationships in a way that is well-organized and largely automated, freeing you up to focus on other important tasks.
Marketing Automation Platforms
According to Hubspot, integrating marketing automation is a game-changer.
As a matter of fact, 76% of companies use marketing automation
It streamlines workflows, allowing businesses to automate repetitive tasks, segment their audience, and execute targeted marketing campaigns.
This not only saves time but also ensures a more personalized and effective approach to customer engagement.
Live Chat for Real-Time Conversations
Live chat, as an integral part of the customer journey, is not just for customer support.
Live chat tools facilitate real-time conversations, automate responses, and provide insights for better conversion strategies.
In fact, according to recent statistics, customers who use live chat spend 60% more per purchase and 52% of consumers are likelier to remain loyal to a company that offers live chat support.
To improve live chat further, you can use AI chatbots. In fact, on average, the satisfaction rate for chatbots is around 90%.
Implementing a live chat solution lets customers connect with a live support agent via a chat widget on your website.
Chatbots, meanwhile, are AI-powered chat tools that auto-reply to common customer questions and issues, according to rules you create and macros and resources you build ahead of time.
As we all know most customer service agents follow office working hours, with chatbots you don’t have to deal with this problem.
AI chatbots like TextYess are available 24/7, 365 days a year and don’t need to follow standard office working hours.
And, by the way, it only takes you 5 minutes to implement in your Shopify Tech Stack!
Analytics and Reporting Software
Another crucial aspect to consider is data analysis: this activity will help you improve your conversions and your Shopify store’s growth.
There are a lot of analytics platforms that provide valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and interactions with your content or products.
Thanks to these tools, merchants can make data-driven decisions that enhance conversions and improve marketing strategies and performance.
Payment Gateways
Finally, selecting a reliable payment gateway is paramount.
A secure and efficient payment gateway fosters trust among customers and ensures a smooth and secure checkout process, minimizing cart abandonment.
There are a lot of payment processing solutions that make it easy for you to provide your customers with multiple payment processing options.
Of course, in this case, you should follow the motto “the more, the better”.
Remember that payments are a serious thing, especially when it comes to small brands.
You should offer a lot of options to your customers and show reliability badges and certifications.
Building Your Shopify Ecommerce Tech Stack:
Crafting a robust e-commerce tech stack for your Shopify store is a multifaceted journey, and so you should identify a process to implement all the tools.
So after you’ve identified your business needs, considered scalability and prioritized seemingly integration, it’s time to build your tech stack.
Of course, implementing all the tools and making it smooth, it’s no joke.
In particular, this phase requires strategic decision-making that aligns with your business needs and the dynamic nature of the e-commerce industry.
So we wanted to help you select the best tools, by making a list of the best of them.
CRM tools
Different types of CRM systems serve different—sometimes specific—business objectives. Before choosing a software provider, create a wish list of CRM functionalities.
Here are 2 CRM tools that can help you boost your sales.
- Pipedrive is a sales and pipeline management small business CRM.
Pipedrive offers comprehensive sales management tools including sales analytics, sales forecasting, and a visual sales pipeline.
But Pipedrive is not primarily a customer service CRM or a marketing CRM. Its email marketing functions also don’t include a native emailing platform, so integration with a third-party system such as Mailchimp is necessary.
- Monday.com’s sales CRM platform helps teams track customer data and manage the entire sales cycle with easy-to-build custom automations to eliminate repetitive and manual tasks. work.
Marketing Automation Platforms:
Marketing automation can be used for a wide variety of marketing tactics, including lead generation, customer segmentation, customer lifecycle management, and much more.
Automating time-consuming tasks such as managing email marketing campaigns or building new features into your website can free you and your team up to focus on other responsibilities.
In the following list, you can discover the 3 best Shopify Marketing automation tools.
- Klayivo is a one-stop shop for marketers and business owners who need a single tool for automating their email and SMS campaigns.
It’s also a customer data platform that helps you deliver highly personalized experiences at scale. It includes email marketing and SMS, features pre-built workflows and forms and lets you build different types of cart abandonment flows. - Omnisend is a tool that allows e-commerce store owners to create automated SMS and email marketing campaigns.
Omnisdend offers targeting and list segmentation tools, customizable triggers for launching automated campaigns, templates and in-depth reporting on the results that your SMS and email campaigns generate.
- GetResponse is mostly known as an email marketing platform, but higher-tier customers also get access to its SMS marketing and advanced automation features. Great automation for the entire conversion funnel, including ads, SMS, abandoned carts, and transactional emails.
Live Chat for Real-Time Conversations
As we said earlier, offering real-time, live chat conversation is a game-changer.
It ensures that customer needs are addressed promptly, regardless of time zones, contributing to increased customer satisfaction.
This is a key benefit.
In fact, 64% of consumers claim that the best feature of chatbots is their availability 24/7 and 80% of customers who have used chatbots report the experience as positive.
The best AI-powered chatbot tools are really useful for reducing costs, increasing customer satisfaction and boosting efficiency (as they are always available), especially for customer support activities.
In fact, according to Salesforce, 64% of customer service agents who utilize AI chatbots are able to spend most of their time solving difficult cases.
Moreover, recent data shows that about 90% of customer queries are resolved in 10 messages or fewer.
Wouldn’t you love to automate customer support with an AI chatbot?
Wouldn’t you love this AI chatbot to have an easy integration with WhatsApp and Shopify?
Wouldn’t you love this AI chatbot to increase your sales and ROAS?
Well, if so, TextYess is the perfect solution for your Shopify store.
Analytics and Reporting Software
For your Shopify business to grow, you must keep track of different metrics and understand how customers interact with your business. But to optimize your store, you need an analytics app.
And the big question is: which is the best app for your Shopify store?
The best analytics app for Shopify is Google Analytics if you want a free and easy-to-use option.
With Google Analytics, you can see where your traffic is coming from, the pages that they visit, how much time they spend on each page, the detailed demographics of your website visitors, and beyond.
Google Analytics can also connect with any e-commerce platform and offers an incredibly wide range of other integrations as well.
Payment Gateways
Payment gateways and payment processors do more than just process transactions. They let you embed a payment form or button on your website, securely take in credit card details, and trigger all the necessary notifications to help you deliver your products or services on time.
And then, every few days, the platform will pay out everything you've received.
Here are the 2 best best payment gateway services.
- Shopify’s Payments is Shopify’s in-built payment gateway which eliminates the need and hassle for merchants to set up any third-party payment provider.
An added benefit of using Shopify payments is that it is automatically set up to accept some of the major payment providers.
Since Shopify payments are natively integrated within the Shopify platform, transactional data such as orders, payments and payouts can be viewed and managed within the Shopify admin panel.
- PayPal is perhaps the most popular Shopify third-party payment gateway and is one of Shopify’s default payment gateways.
One of the main advantages of using PayPal as a payment gateway for Shopify is the support system that comes with it if customers or merchants come across any problems with transactions made through the platform.
Other advantages include the fact it accepts international payments, is mobile optimized and allows merchants to be paid directly through their PayPal account.
Conclusion
In conclusion, assembling the ultimate tech stack for your Shopify store is a strategic imperative in the dynamic realm of e-commerce.
This comprehensive approach, integrating tools seamlessly into the Shopify ecosystem, has the power to transform your online store into a hub of efficiency, customer satisfaction, and sustained growth.
As the e-commerce landscape continues to evolve, the adaptability of a strategically crafted tech stack becomes critical, ensuring that marketing, analytics, and payment processing tools seamlessly integrate and evolve to meet shifting market demands. Scalability and cost reduction further underscore the importance of a well-integrated tech stack, ensuring efficiency without compromising performance as businesses grow.
Elevate your Shopify journey with a tech stack that mirrors the dynamism of your e-commerce ambitions and propels your business toward continued innovation and customer-centric excellence.