How To Build A Powerful Ecommerce Tech Stack

The world of ecommerce has exploded in recent years, and with it, a plethora of solutions have become available to help brands run and grow their ecommerce businesses. With so many options available, building a technology stack to manage every aspect of ecommerce can be overwhelming. However, a well-designed tech stack streamlines operations and enhances the customer experience, leading to greater customer loyalty and increased revenue. That’s why online brands need to evaluate the solutions available and invest in those that best fit their business needs. To help you build a well-designed tech stack, we’ve outlined the essential solutions to consider.  

First, we’ll guide you through everything you need to know about building a tech stack. 

What is an Ecommerce Tech Stack?

An ecommerce tech stack is a collection of software platforms and services that work together to make it possible for brands to run online operations successfully.

An ecommerce operation involves a range of complex processes, such as listing management, inventory management, order processing, payment processing, customer service, marketing, and analytics. Managing these processes manually can be time-consuming, error-prone, and inefficient, resulting in lost sales and dissatisfied customers. 

An integrated tech stack allows you to automate and streamline these processes, saving time, reducing errors, and improving overall efficiency. With the right tech stack, you can increase revenue, grow your customer base, and ultimately succeed in the highly competitive ecommerce landscape. 

Factors to Consider When Building Your Ecommerce Tech Stack

When building a tech stack, brands typically look for a range of tools and platforms to support current processes or, in some cases, update their processes. However, with an abundance of available tools, it can be confusing and time-consuming to select the right ones. Here are the key factors to consider when building your ecommerce tech stack:

Compatibility

Think of building a tech stack as building an ecosystem. You want to choose solutions that can work together and seamlessly transfer data back and forth. For this reason, it’s essential to check for direct integrations or third-party connections to your preferred tools. 

It also doesn’t make sense to try and match solutions that view or deal with data differently. Compatibility is key.

Ease of Use

A tech stack should simplify your ecommerce operation, not complicate it. As with any new software, there’s a learning curve, but this can be minimized by selecting tools that are well-supported with documentation, a comprehensive knowledge base, and excellent customer support.

Cost

An ecommerce tech stack can have as few as 2-3 core tools or more than 20 depending on how the operation runs. Therefore, carefully consider the costs associated with each solution and the potential ROI to ensure you are investing in solutions that provide the most value for your budget. Understand that building the right tech stack is an investment that pays off over years, not months. Be aware of setup fees and investigate any hidden costs or potential overages before signing up.

Security and Compliance

It is critical to prioritize solutions that comply with relevant data privacy and security regulations such as GDPR, CDPA, CPRA, and CPPA.  Review terms and policies to ensure your tech stack is compliant, secure, and protected against cyber threats.

Customer Service

No matter how great a solution is, it’s inevitable that, at some point, you will require customer support. Waiting days for a response can be costly for your business. Look for solutions that offer excellent customer support, including responsive and knowledgeable technical support, to help you resolve issues quickly and efficiently.

References

Don’t be afraid to ask more than one existing client for references and dig deep to understand their experiences. Most solutions will have a track record, good or bad, that you can decipher via these conversations. 

Determining Your Ecommerce Tech Stack Tools

To determine what should be in an ecommerce tech stack and how it should all work together, you should first identify your business needs, goals, and pain points. This can help determine which tools and solutions are necessary to manage your ecommerce operation. Of course, every business is different; however, we’ve found the following categories to be the most commonly included:

The Ecommerce Storefront

Having a digital storefront is crucial for brands that sell products online. A store provides a dedicated online storefront where brands can showcase products, and control pricing, promotions, and shipping options. As a result, brands can create a personalized and consistent brand experience for customers while providing a level of control and ownership that’s not possible on third-party marketplaces. Moreover, a store provides valuable customer data that can be used to improve marketing strategies and customer service efforts. 

With your own store, you can also use search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to attract new customers and drive traffic. In short, a store is essential to establish an online presence, build your brand, and grow your business.

The Ecommerce Platform

An ecommerce platform is the foundation of any commerce operation, and choosing a platform to support your specific needs, whether scalability, customization, or integrations with other tools, is critical. An ecommerce platform helps you stay organized, save time by streamlining processes, and grow your business while providing a unified view of your entire operation. 

An ecommerce management platform provides a comprehensive suite of tools and features to manage and grow your business. It typically includes tools to manage multi-channel listings, product data, inventory, and order management. A good ecommerce platform will have analytics and reporting features to help brands track performance and make data-driven decisions. They may also include integrations with popular payment processors and shipping carriers and marketing tools such as email campaigns, social media integration, and feed optimization. 

Ecommerce Multi-Channel Listing Tool

A multi-channel listing tool is essential for ecommerce because it allows you to efficiently sell your products across multiple channels, such as marketplaces, social media, and your own store. In doing so, you can increase your reach and revenue and optimize your sales and marketing strategies. In addition, with a multichannel listing tool, you can easily create, list, and manage product listings across multiple channels from a single platform, saving time and reducing errors. 

A multi-channel listing tool also provides valuable insights and analytics on the performance of your listings across channels, helping optimize sales and marketing strategies for maximum profitability. By leveraging a multichannel listing tool, you can take advantage of the opportunities presented by various sales channels while minimizing the challenges and complexities of managing multiple sales channels. 

Ecommerce Product Information Management (PIM)

A good Product Information Management (PIM) solution is essential for ecommerce because it allows you to efficiently manage and distribute product information across multiple sales channels. With a PIM, you can centralize and enrich product data, including images, descriptions, and specifications, and quickly distribute that data to websites, marketplaces, and other sales channels. 

By ensuring that product information is accurate, consistent, and up-to-date, a PIM solution can help enhance the customer experience and drive sales. Moreover, a PIM can help ecommerce brands streamline operations and reduce errors by automating the process of updating product information across all sales channels. This will help save time and reduce the risk of lost sales due to inaccurate or incomplete product information. 

A PIM helps ecommerce brands and brands stay organized, save time, and improve the customer experience, leading to increased sales and customer loyalty.

Ecommerce Inventory Management

Inventory management is vital because it allows you to track and manage your product inventory efficiently. By keeping track of inventory levels, you will always have the right products in stock to meet customer demand. This can help prevent the risk of stockouts or overselling products, which can lead to lost sales and dissatisfied customers. 

Effective inventory management can also help brands optimize operations and reduce costs by minimizing the excess inventory needed to hold. In addition, by automating inventory tracking and forecasting, brands can make more informed decisions about purchasing, pricing, and promotions, which can help maximize profitability. 

Ultimately, inventory management is essential because it helps you stay organized, prevent stockouts, and reduce costs, improving customer satisfaction and increasing sales.

Ecommerce Order Management System (OMS)

An order management system (OMS) enables you to manage and process orders from multiple sales channels in one place. With an OMS, brands can centralize and streamline order processing, including order fulfillment, shipping, and tracking. This helps improve the customer experience by providing accurate and timely order information and enabling fast and reliable delivery. 

Additionally, an OMS will optimize your operations and reduce costs by automating order processing and fulfillment. By providing a single view of inventory and orders, an OMS prevents overselling, reduces the risk of stockouts, and optimizes inventory levels. 

Ecommerce Shopping Carts & Payment Processing

Reliable shopping cart and payment processing solutions are essential to optimize the checkout process, reduce cart abandonment, increase sales, and maintain the security and trust of customers. This includes options for accepting credit cards, debit cards, alternative payment methods, fraud prevention tools, and chargeback management.

Brands need a shopping cart and payment processing solution because it enables you to securely and efficiently process transactions on your store or sales channels. A shopping cart allows customers to add products to their cart and proceed to checkout. Meanwhile, a payment processing solution enables brands to collect customer payments for purchases securely. 

Robust shopping carts and payment processing solutions streamline checkout, reduce cart abandonment, and increase sales. Additionally, integrated shopping cart and payment processing solutions maintain the security and integrity of customer data and transactions, essential for building trust and retaining customer loyalty. 

Ecommerce Shipping and Logistics

Brands need to efficiently and cost-effectively manage shipping and logistics for orders. With the right shipping and logistics solution, you can streamline shipping processes, automate shipping labels and tracking, and manage the entire fulfillment process from a single platform. This can help brands reduce shipping costs, increase shipping speed, and improve the customer experience. 

A shipping and logistics solution helps manage complex shipping requirements, such as international or multi-carrier shipping, and track inventory levels in real-time to prevent stockouts. By automating shipping and logistics processes, you can save time and reduce errors while providing customers with a fast and reliable shipping experience.

Ecommerce Analytics and Reporting

Reporting and analytics tools enable you to track and analyze key performance metrics and make data-driven decisions for your business. With the right tools, you can gain insights into key metrics such as website traffic, conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, and revenue. This information can help brands identify areas for improvement and optimize sales and marketing strategies. 

Reporting and analytics tools also measure the effectiveness of advertising and promotional campaigns and track customer behavior and preferences over time. This can help personalize the customer experience and build customer loyalty. 

Ecommerce Repricer Tool

If you sell your products on popular marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart, you can benefit significantly from a repricer tool. A repricer tool automatically adjusts the prices of listed products based on various factors, including competitor prices, demand, and inventory levels. Using a repricer tool helps you optimize pricing strategies to keep your prices competitive, resulting in increased sales and higher profits while maintaining margin. 

Furthermore, the automation provided by repricer tools saves you time and resources, allowing you to focus on other areas of business without compromising sales.  

Ecommerce Marketing and Advertising

With the right marketing and advertising solutions, brands can create and execute targeted campaigns across various channels, such as email, social media, and search engines. When used correctly, they increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, and increase sales. 

Moreover, marketing and advertising solutions enable you to track and analyze campaigns’ effectiveness and adjust your strategies to optimize performance. This helps you target the right customers, with the right message, at the right time and drive long-term customer loyalty. 

Ecommerce Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

 A customer relationship management (CRM) system manages customer data and interactions, including tracking customer behavior and preferences, sending targeted marketing campaigns, and providing personalized customer service.

Ecommerce brands need a CRM to manage and analyze customer interactions and data across multiple channels. With a CRM, you can track customer behavior and preferences and store information such as purchase history and contact information, which helps personalize the customer experience. In addition, a CRM can help ecommerce brands track customer interactions and analyze data to gain insights into customer behavior, which can help inform marketing and sales strategies. 

A CRM will help improve customer experience, increase customer satisfaction, and drive sales by centralizing customer data and streamlining interactions.

Customer Service

A good customer service solution is critical to managing customer interactions and support inquiries. You can provide a seamless, personalized, responsive customer experience across multiple channels with the right software. Five-star support will build customer loyalty, increase customer satisfaction, and drive repeat business. 

Customer service solutions can automate and streamline support processes, reducing response times and minimizing errors. This can help resolve customer issues quickly and effectively, which is crucial in today’s fast-paced and competitive ecommerce landscape. 

Adding StoreAutomator to Your Ecommerce Tech Stack

Ultimately, your chosen tech stack will depend on your business needs and goals. Selecting the right tools and platforms for your ecommerce tech stack can streamline your operations, enhance customer experiences, and grow your business. 

At StoreAutomator’ we’re committed to helping our customers increase their sales and revenue while saving time and resources. Our flexible platform enables you to manage your listings, product data, inventory, pricing, and orders across multiple channels, all from one centralized dashboard.

With over 200 channels and integrations, you can grow sales across popular marketplaces and streamline your processes using your preferred enterprise tools. Adding StoreAutomator to your ecommerce tech stack can drastically reduce the number of solutions and tools needed to run your ecommerce operation, ultimately saving time and money. 


See how StoreAutomator can help you streamline and grow your ecommerce business today!

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