You want to keep new and existing customers happy, and you want your business to run smoothly. This can sometimes feel like a constant battle for a wide variety of reasons, but one of the main reasons that either of these can feel difficult to achieve is not having the right tools in your arsenal to keep everything running efficiently and effectively. Third-party tools and integrations can give you a powerful set of capabilities that enable you to streamline operations and business processes, whilst maximising the positive elements of your customer journey.
Why having the right tools on hand matters
You want your business to be able to provide an efficient, streamlined, and memorable experience for your customers. Equally, you also want to ensure that you can perform business processes that benefit the way your business operates with the same level of efficiency and power. This is where having an effective selection of third-party tools comes in – you can utilise the features and functionality of different tools as an integrated part of your business system, giving you access to a wealth of opportunities in a user-friendly format that would otherwise be more complex and costly to implement.
The benefits of integrating third-party tools
Adapting your business to modern demands can feel like a mammoth task at times. Third-party tools help to ease some of the strain of building an efficient and effective platform to sell your products and inform your business strategies.
Generally, third-party tools can be quicker to implement due to their pre-built nature. You essentially avoid the need to develop an entire system from the ground up, which can be a very lengthy process.
They also often provide a more financially efficient option, partly due to the reduced development time, which can allow for your budget to be spent on development and features in other areas to provide a stronger platform for your business at a lower cost. This makes them an excellent foundation for planning and growing your business effectively.
Third-party tools and integrations essentially give you a way to ease business processes whilst providing outstanding features for both your business and your customers. They make your systems easier to manage whilst saving time and human input, whilst allowing you to synchronise data from various other systems and applications for seamless connectivity.
Getting the right tools and integrations for your business
When it comes to getting your business setup with the things you need for both your customers and your operations, it can sometimes feel a little overwhelming. There’s the element of “what if” that could lead to you pursuing tools and features that may not be necessary, or there may be areas that you simply don’t consider but could actually be incredibly useful and completely transform the performance of your business.
Search tools
One of the most effective third-party integrations that your business can utilise is an effective search system. From the perspective of your customers, it provides significant streamlining of their shopping experience by enhancing their ability to find the best products for their needs. It also aids operations and processes from the side of the business too – search tools are able to index your product data as well as other important information which provides a more efficient and effective way to manage inventory lists whilst simultaneously simplifying things for your customers.
The features from some third-party search tools can sometimes overlap with other tool types too, such as providing a certain degree of intelligent personalisation that can improve AOV (average order value) and upselling capabilities. They also feed a lot of data to your business for analytical purposes, giving you deeper insights that can inform your marketing and sales teams for ongoing and future efforts.
Overall, search tools are loaded with a vast array of features that can have a dramatic impact on the way your business works, giving you proven methods for increasing the revenue of your business as well as the other benefits that a positive customer experience provides.
Merchandising
Effective merchandising can be the secret to supercharging your sales and conversions. But it’s not easy to properly merchandise your products without the right tools and information. Digital merchandising works slightly different to how it works in a brick-and-mortar sales environment, but it’s a similar concept in that you’re looking to achieve the correct placement with the perfect complementary content and assets in order to drive more sales and increase relevance in the customer journey.
Third-party merchandising tools give you a distinctive array of features that make e-merchandising a more streamlined and efficient process. They allow you to strategically show your stock across your business’ website in a way that provides effective promotion to potential buyers in an engaging and relevant manner. When merchandising is done correctly, your business benefits from improvements in customer engagement in both the short and long-term, as well as the enhancement in sales and the overall customer experience. Merchandising dramatically improves relevancy and works in tandem with other tools and features to ensure a truly tailored shopping experience for your customers.
Data analysis
The key to succeeding long-term is knowing how your business is performing. When you know what’s happening, be the results good or less-than-ideal, you have more of an idea on how to proceed. Whether that means continuing and enhancing already successful features and campaigns, or figuring out that something simply isn’t working or is entirely detrimental. This is where in-depth analytics tools come into play.
Analysing the data and performance of your digital business is essential for identifying problems and opportunities. Third-party analysis tools provide a high-performance standalone solution when it comes to giving you vital insights into the deeper aspects of your operations and processes. They help you to identify key focal areas, as well as monitoring the behaviour of your customers and highlighting potential issues. Analytics are a powerful tool for improving sales, presence, and the overall customer experience (amongst many other areas of your business). They also enable you to generate relevant reports that enable you to keep both internal and external business interests informed of what’s happening on a regular basis.
Business intelligence
Business intelligence tools are incredibly useful for any organisation. They provide a powerful and efficient way to collect and process huge quantities of data from both internal and external systems. These systems essentially cover all of the key aspects and data sources that hold information. The BI tools give you access to your data and allow you to carry out in-depth preparation for further analysis and visualisations. Much like analytics tools, BI tools help your business by informing key decision making processes and increase the efficiency of your operations. These tools cover a vast array of possibilities, giving you a huge arsenal of features to help with your business efforts.
These are just a small selection of third-party tools that can benefit you…
Here at PureNet, we pride ourselves on the fact that we can determine the most effective way to improve the performance of your business with the right systems for your needs. We work closely with our clients to create fully integrated solutions that are built around their specific goals and requirements. We’ve only given you a brief run-down of a handful of some highly-effective tools that can benefit you, but if the idea of a more tailored consultative approach is what you’re looking for, get in touch with us today to find out more.
