Ecommerce Integrations: How Many Do You Actually Need?

Starting your journey as an online seller can be daunting.

Besides designing a beautiful website for your online store, you need to equip it with functionalities that allow you to sell your products and fulfil customer orders – without breaking the bank.

With a lot of online store builders, this is challenging.

While they have emporiums full of ecommerce integrations, the choice they provide can also be paralysing. This can result in you adding a range of functionalities that you don’t need, which (needlessly) skyrockets your online store costs.

Studio Store by Builder.ai is designed to make things simple for brick-and-mortar businesses hoping to grow their online presence and marketplace sellers looking to invest in digital real estate. With our ecommerce starter pack, you get access to all the integrations your online business actually needs.

In this blog, we’ll take you through everything you need to know about ecommerce integrations and how we can help.

Let’s get started 👇

What is ecommerce integration?

Ecommerce integration connects your online store with the software systems you need to take payments and fulfil orders while it also ensures that sales and customer data are accessible in one place. This is enabled by APIs, which connect different software applications and allow them to exchange information.

Why does your online store need ecommerce integration?

Ecommerce integration improves the efficiency and scalability of your online business by automating key business functions like payment processing and order shipping. This reduces human error, which, in turn, improves the customer experience, helping to foster loyalty and generate repeat business.

Let’s illustrate this with an example.

Say you manually take a payment for an in-demand pre-order but don’t make a note of it. Because of this, you fail to deliver the pre-ordered item to your customer when it comes into stock.

By the time you realise, you’ve shipped all your stock, meaning you have to provide a full refund and store credit to repair the relationship with your customer.

On the other hand, order fulfilment would’ve been automated with payment and shipping integrations, leaving the customer satisfied.

5 ecommerce integrations new online sellers need (plus examples)

As we briefly touched on in the intro, there are a wide range of ecommerce integrations available. The challenge is strategically allocating your budget to solutions that solve your most important business problems.

Below, we’ll cover the essential integrations you need when starting your store so you don’t overspend on technology now 👇

1 - Payment gateway

By 2026, Statista predicts that the most popular ecommerce payment methods will be digital wallets, credit cards and debit cards.

As an online store, being able to support all of these as soon as you launch your online store is crucial, which is where payment gateway integration comes in.

Fundamentally, payment gateways enable secure online payments between you and your customers, by sending their encrypted payment details to your bank, where the payment is processed.

Payment gateway integration in Studio Store

Studio Store dashboard screen for payment gateways integration

Payment integration is one of the main integrations available in Studio Store. When you use it as your online store builder, you can choose from a range of payment gateway providers depending on your location, including:

CCAvenue (discounted)
Razorpay
Stripe

Other payment gateway integration examples

PayPal
Square
Worldpay
Shopify payments
Verifone

2 - Shipping

Shipping integration is equally as important as payment gateway integration and you’ll need it as soon as you launch your online store. By automating the shipping and fulfilment process, shipping integration ensures that customers’ orders arrive at their chosen location once their payments are processed.

While you still have oversight of customers’ order status, your shipping partners serve as the main point of contact for customers once their order is out for delivery.

With shipping integration, you can manage orders, calculate shipping costs, generate shipping labels and track packages.

Shipping integration in Studio Store

Studio Store dashboard screen for shipping integration

Shipping integration is one of the main integrations available in Studio Store and you can choose from a range of providers depending on your location. These include Shiprocket (discounted) and Stuart Logistics. With either of these options, you can:

Choose whether to offer free shipping on all products or establish fixed charges based on order value
Define the regions your products will cover by specifying zip/post codes, customising shipping charges for each zone
Categorise your products based on dimensions

Other shipping integration examples

Shippo
ShipStation
ShipRush
ShipHero
ShipMonk

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3 - Email marketing

Email marketing integration allows you to segment your audiences and serve them with personalised email campaigns.

For existing customers who haven’t bought anything for a while, for example, you could target them with a re-engagement campaign. On the other hand, for repeat customers, you could offer exclusive discounts or loyalty programs.

Email marketing integration in Studio Store

Studio Store dashboard screen for email templates customisation

Within our ecommerce platform, we provide a range of email templates you can use to confirm orders, update order status, notify customers about product stock and more.

Within StorePlus, Studio Store’s expansion pack, you can also take advantage of cart abandonment campaigns, targeting users who’ve failed to complete orders after adding items to their basket.

Aside from this, you can also integrate with third-party providers.

Email marketing integration examples

Mailchimp
Klaviyo
Constant Contact
Omnisend
HubSpot

4 - SMS marketing

SMS marketing integration is similar to email marketing integration, except it boasts significantly higher open and conversion rates.

Beyond providing order updates and promotions, SMS marketing can also be used to gather feedback from your customer base and provide answers to queries.

SMS marketing integration in Studio Store

A mobile phone screen highlighting a message screent

Within Studio Store, you can quickly integrate with Kaleyra to take advantage of SMS marketing.

Other SMS marketing integration examples

Twilio
MessageBird
Nexmo
Plivo
Zapier

5 - Reporting and analytics

Understanding what customers buy is crucial to any online store.

This is because it allows you to focus on marketing your most popular products, make accurate inventory forecasts and develop similar products that customers may also want to buy.

But understanding how and why they buy is what separates successful business from the pack. This is where reporting and analytics integration comes in.

With this, you can track every customer touchpoint, including how customers land on your site (for example, through a social media ad or through Search Engine Optimization) and the journey they follow up until conversion.

As a result, you can refine the customer experience, improve your conversion rates and maximise your revenue.

Reporting and analytics integration in Studio Store

Reporting and analytics dashboard in Studio Store

Thanks to Studio Store’s Google Analytics integration, you can see how your users progress through your sales funnel. What’s more, with our Google Tag Manager integration, you can track the sources your customers come from and the activities they complete on your website.