More and more eCommerce businesses are migrating to Shopify in search of reliable store foundations. Shopify is a user-friendly eCommerce platform that helps businesses build an online store and sell through one streamlined dashboard. With the generous range of tools you can put together your ultimate Shopify tech stack.
Shopify is a truly strong platform for launching an e-commerce store. It offers fair pricing, a secure checkout, dozens of themes, and some built-in automation. However, because additional in-depth analytics tools, back-end tracking, and tools to enhance your marketing approach are required, you must take the time to locate the correct applications and extensions to construct the storefront that best suits your brand.
Fortunately, there is no shortage of excellent apps for expanding your Shopify store. The most difficult part of creating a Shopify tech stack for e-commerce is narrowing down your alternatives and deciding how to bring them all together. To succeed in today’s competitive marketplace, you will need to implement a tech stack. But how can you start building your Shopify tech stack from scratch? Here’s a small checklist to consider before getting started.
- Recognize your internet business’s current strengths.
- Determine what enhancements you’d like to make, such as making the shopping cart more user-friendly.
- Before going omnichannel, prioritize your alternatives, such as optimizing product pages.
- Choose the correct apps to meet your requirements while keeping client data protection in mind.
It’s simple to set up a Shopify store, but converting it into a profitable and scalable business is a completely different matter. Here’s everything you need to know to build an e-commerce Shopify tech stack.
Firstly, what is a tech stack?
A “tech stack” is a collection of software programs, tools, and services used to create a certain product (such as a website or mobile app). The Shopify eCommerce tech stack, on the other hand, refers to not just the Shopify software but also the supporting apps and technologies that you employ to develop your e-commerce website.
The Shopify platform is, of course, the most important component of the Shopify eCommerce software stack. Customers can also choose from thousands of third-party applications in the Shopify App Store. These eCommerce plugins and software provide a wide range of capabilities, including store design, marketing, order fulfillment, shipping and delivery, and customer care.
Any tool or program that helps you run your online business can be added to your Shopify eCommerce tech stack. Automation software, databases, business intelligence tools for measuring metrics and KPIs, and other technologies are included. In the following part, we’ll look at some of the most valuable components that you would want to add to your Shopify e-commerce tech stack.
How to Build a Shopify eCommerce Tech Stack
Your Shopify tech stack could comprise a variety of apps and services to assist you in building your brand, driving more traffic, better serving your customers, and following up with shoppers after they make a purchase. It all comes down to recognizing gaps and filling them with strong new technologies. Then you’ll need to locate a platform you can rely on to bring everything together. So, how do you build a Shopify eCommerce tech stack?
1. Determine Your Requirements
Many Shopify store owners prioritize two areas: product sourcing and buyer acquisition. These are two essential and undeniably important aspects of establishing an eCommerce business. However, if you focus too much on these obvious problems, you’ll lose out on other important pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, such as product listing optimization, abandoned cart recovery, and long-term consumer loyalty.
To cover the numerous areas that need to be addressed, you should first consider the knowledge and tools you already have, and then attempt to fill in the gaps with additional tools and talent. To build a Shopify tech stack for e-commerce, you must consider the following elements:
Marketing tools assist you in identifying new customers, segmenting them into groups for more effective marketing, and targeting specific groups with sales and promotions. This enables customisation and increases overall customer experience (CX) while increasing sales.
Customer Service: For many e-commerce businesses today, simply following up via email isn’t enough. With branding and customer experience (CX) being important differentiators in today’s competitive market, the finest customer support systems will allow for live chat, email, or text conversations, and they will be able to shape the experience with features such as branded order tracking.
Shipment Solutions: Because most customers today anticipate rapid shipping with no delays, you should invest in tools that will help you streamline inventory management, order fulfillment, and logistics. These tools can help you ensure that your best-selling items are always in stock and can help you reorder inventory when it runs short.
Sales Channels: Depending on the products you feature, you may want to explore adding extra sales channels while developing a Shopify tech stack for e-commerce. This includes “purchase now, pay later,” product subscriptions, and the ability to pay using a mobile wallet, such as Apple Pay.
Loyalty and Engagement: Encourage your client base to develop a vibrant, loyal community around your business by providing exceptional service and fantastic rewards to those who recommend friends, make repeat purchases, and consistently support your store.
Marketing Attribution: The majority of e-commerce enterprises use a range of marketing initiatives, but do you know which ones produce the best results? Marketing attribution tools will assist you in tracking metrics and determining the outcomes of various tactics, allowing you to stretch your marketing budget even further.
Consider which boxes you can already check as you go through this list. Many new stores may not yet have any of these features in place, which is okay. Once you’ve determined what you require, you can decide what should come first. The next stage in building a Shopify tech stack for e-commerce is determining where you’ll get these utilities.
2. Invest in the Right Service Providers
Even if you use a reputable provider such as Shopify, your online store is only as good as the features you add to it. Shopify’s platform was never designed to be an all-in-one solution, which is why they offer hundreds of applications that you can quickly add to extend your business with new capabilities. You may begin exploring the correct tools after you have a better notion of what you want those features to be.
Based on the criteria outlined above, here are some of the top tools in each of those areas to consider when developing a Shopify tech stack for e-commerce capable of growing your brand:
- Improve your customer communications by employing solutions like Klaviyo, which enables quick email personalisation.
- Help your customers by using tools like Gorgias, which consolidates all of your buyer communications across social media, email, chat, SMS, and more into a single dashboard.
- Try using a solution like Nosto on-site to create dynamic offers and personalized recommendations that improve the user experience and conversion rates.
- Using an app like Skubana, you can manage inventory and orders across channels by providing a real-time view of your stock across your order system, sales channels, and warehouses. Sendcloud, on the other hand, can assist with order fulfilment for expedited processing.
- Tapcart can help you create a branded mobile app for your Shopify store. ReCharge can help you expand your payment gateways if you wish to include subscription payment choices. You can also find programs that extend the capabilities of numerous payment networks, such as Stripe and PayPal.
- Reward your loyal customers with a program like Yotpo, which provides points, incentives, and tiers to help purchasers become brand advocates.
- Rockerbox, Enquire Labs, and Elevar can help you maintain track of your marketing mix, survey customers about your campaigns, and assess which approaches are worth investing in further.
- To build a Shopify tech stack for e-commerce, you must first investigate the various apps and services that are accessible. Once you’ve chosen them, there’s only one more step to take: gluing everything together.
Now that you understand what is required of you in your tech stack, let’s have a look at other options you can consider in your tech stack.
Gateways for payments
Payment gateways enable e-commerce enterprises to accept a variety of payment methods, such as debit cards, credit cards, PayPal, money orders, and cryptocurrency. Different payment gateways include services like refunds and purchases in multiple currencies, so look around to discover the solution that works best for your company.
Marketing tools
You’ll probably want to employ various marketing tools in your Shopify eCommerce software stack to spread the news about your online store, including
- SEO (search engine optimisation) marketing methods for increasing search engine visibility on Google and other search engines.
- Social media tools for increasing website traffic and monitoring user activity on your social media accounts.
Warehousing of Data
Each component of your Shopify eCommerce tech stack creates enormous volumes of data. Transferring all of this data to a centralized data warehouse makes it much easier to mine for insights using business intelligence and analytics tools. To reap the benefits of data warehousing, you’ll need the assistance of a dedicated data integration solution that can automatically harvest information at regular intervals from various sources.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
CRM software assists eCommerce enterprises in keeping track of their customer and future customer relationships. You may more readily categorize your audience into crucial categories, such as major spenders or consumers who haven’t purchased in a while, by recording each interaction across a wide variety of channels (e.g., emails, phone calls, social media follows, refunds, etc.). You can then devise segment-specific tactics to increase profitability and boost customer happiness.
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)
ERP systems aid in the automation, automation, and centralization of a wide range of company processes, including finance, human resources, accounting, logistics, and project management. Shopify eCommerce tech stacks that contain ERP software are typically used by larger eCommerce businesses that require assistance in managing the complexity of their workflows.
It’s no wonder that more than 1 million eCommerce enterprises use Shopify across over 1.5 million websites, thanks to its easy learning curve, extensive feature set, customization choices, and security and reliability. Do you want to learn more?
At Under Reality, we assist brands in navigating the eCommerce world, allowing them to gain a competitive advantage by embracing new technology. We put a premium on achieving results and making a difference. Would you like to learn more about how we can help to grow your eCommerce store? Please contact us by phone, email, or in person. We have excellent coffee.
