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Five ways to improve your Shopify tech stack:

  1. Understand the current strengths of your online business. 
  2. Identify improvements you'd like to make, like making the shopping cart more user-friendly. 
  3. Prioritize your options, such as optimizing product pages before going omnichannel. 
  4. Choose the right apps to fulfill your needs while considering customer data security. 
  5. Use a powerful integration platform like Integrate.io to bring it all together.

It's easy to create a store on Shopify, but turning it into a profitable and scalable business is a whole other story. Here's what you need to know to create a Shopify tech stack for e-commerce.

What Is a Shopify Tech Stack? 

We've covered the basics of setting up an e-commerce store using Shopify before, but the ability to scale your business really comes down to how you build your Shopify tech stack. While it's not always easy to build a profitable and scalable e-commerce business on Shopify, there is a way to do it.

To put it simply, the "tech stack" of your Shopify store consists of any apps or services you use to support your e-commerce website. Some of these may include customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, logistics services, or an email marketing tool. In other words, the tools you need probably exceed what's provided out-of-the-box with Shopify Plus. 

With over 4,000 apps at their disposal, many e-commerce site owners are considering turning to Integrate.io to help them connect all of their tools together, creating better visibility into their Shopify tech stack. So, to follow is a look at what apps you should include in the tech stack for a successful Shopify business. 

How To Create a Shopify Tech Stack for E-Commerce

Your Shopify tech stack could include any number of apps and services to help you build your brand, drive more traffic, better serve your customers, and follow up with shoppers after their purchases. So, how do you create a Shopify tech stack for e-commerce? 

It's all about identifying the gaps and filling them in with powerful new tools. From there, you need to find a platform you can count on to tie it all together. Integrate.io is a new ETL platform with reverse ETL capabilities and a lightning-fast CDN to power your e-commerce business. Here's how you can use it. 

1. Identify What You Need

Many Shopify store owners focus on two areas: sourcing products and finding buyers. These are two fundamental and obviously crucial parts of running an e-commerce business. However, the fact is this: If you focus too much on these obvious concerns, you'll end up missing other big pieces of the puzzle, like product listing optimization, abandoned cart recovery, and long-term customer loyalty.

In order to cover the many areas you need to address, you should sit down and think about the knowledge and tools you already have and then look to fill in the gaps with new tools and talent. To create a Shopify tech stack for e-commerce, you need to consider all of these elements:

  • Marketing: Marketing tools help you identify potential customers, segment them into groups for better marketing, and target specific groups with sales and promotions. This allows for personalization and improves the overall customer experience (CX) while driving more sales. 

  • Customer Support: Simply following up via email isn't enough for a lot of e-commerce brands today. With branding and CX being major differentiators in today's competitive market, the best customer support tools will allow for live chat, email, or text communications, and they can shape the experience with features like branded order tracking. 

  • Shipping Tools: Most shoppers today expect fast shipping without delays, and that means you need to invest in tools that help you streamline inventory management, order fulfillment, and logistics. These tools can help make sure your best-selling items are always in stock and assist you with re-ordering inventory when it gets low. 

  • Sales Channels: Depending on the products you feature, when you create a Shopify tech stack for e-commerce, you may want to consider adding additional sales channels. This would include "buy now, pay later," product subscriptions, or the option to pay using a mobile wallet, like Apple Pay. 

  • Loyalty and Engagement: Encourage your customer base to form a lively, loyal community around your brand by offering astounding service and great rewards for those who refer friends, make repeat purchases, and continuously support your shop.

  • Marketing Attribution: Most e-commerce businesses use a variety of marketing campaigns, but do you know which ones are driving the best results? Marketing attribution tools will help you track metrics and determine the results of specific techniques so you can stretch your budget further. 

  • Giving Back: Many successful brands today have gained a loyal following thanks to their strong values and willingness to support good causes. As you create a Shopify tech stack for e-commerce, think not only about the critical tools but about the features you'd like to add. For instance, some Shopify apps allow you or your buyers to donate a portion of every purchase to a charity.

As you go through this list, think about which boxes you can already check. For many new stores, you may not yet have any of these functionalities in place, and that's okay. Once you know what you need, you can prioritize what will come first. Then, the next step to create a Shopify tech stack for e-commerce is to figure out where you're going to source these utilities.  

Already have tools in mind? Integrate.io can help you bring your new and existing tools together to create better visibility for your ecosystem. 

2. Invest in the Right Providers

Even with a solid provider like Shopify, your online store is only as good as the features you add to it. Shopify never intended for its platform to be an all-inclusive solution—that's why they have thousands of apps that you can easily add in order to extend your store with new features. Once you have a better idea of what you want those features to be, you can start looking for the right tools.

Based on the priorities identified above, here's a look at some of the best tools in each of those categories, which you should consider to create a Shopify tech stack for e-commerce that's capable of growing your brand: 

  • Improve communications with your customers using tools like Klaviyo, which allows for easy email personalization, and Omnisend, which helps you reach customers via email, text, and push notification.

  • Support your customers with the help of apps like Gorgias, which centralizes all communications with your buyers across social media, email, chat, text, and more into one dashboard. 

  • To strengthen your brand, look to services like Malomo, which integrate with Shopify to allow you to offer branded email communications. On-site, try a tool like Rebuy to make dynamic offers and personalized recommendations that improve the user experience and conversion rates.

  • Manage inventory and orders across channels with an app like Skubana, which provides a real-time view of your stock across your order system, sales channels, and warehouses. At the other end, Shipbob can help with order fulfillment for speedy processing.

  • To create a branded mobile app for your Shopify store, try Tapcart. If you want to add subscription payment options, use ReCharge to expand your payment gateways. You can also find tools that expand upon various payment networks, like Stripe and PayPal. 

  • Reward your loyal customers with a service such as LoyaltyLion, which offers points, rewards, and tiers to turn buyers into brand evangelists. 

  • Use Rockerbox, Enquire Labs, and Elevar to keep track of your marketing mix, survey customers about your campaigns, and determine which techniques are worth continued investment. 

To create a Shopify tech stack for e-commerce, you have to spend a good deal of time looking at the various apps and services that are available. Once you have them picked out, there's one more important step: Gluing it all together. 

3. Integrate Everything 

The thing about your Shopify tech stack is that it will likely include a mix of utilities from various third-party providers, so one of the key aspects of bringing it all together is finding the right "glue." If you fail to complete this third and crucial step, you'll likely find that your data is all over the place, and it's hard to get "big picture" look at what's happening with your store.

To help you bring together all of your Shopify apps, services, and data, Integrate.io offers powerful integration tools with deep e-commerce capabilities. Integrate is incredibly easy to set up and the low-code interface means that you can get started easily, even if you don't have a technical background.

Interested in learning more about how Integrate can help you create a Shopify tech stack for e-commerce? Contact us for a 7-day demo by emailing hello@integrate.io.

Boost Your Shopify Sales with Integrate.io

Shopify provides a truly powerful foundation for setting up your e-commerce store. With fair pricing, a secure checkout, lots of templates, and some built-in automation, it's a powerful e-commerce platform that has helped countless startups get going with their online store. However, with the need for more in-depth analytics tools, backend tracking, and tools to empower your marketing strategy, you have to take the time to find the right apps and extensions to create the storefront that best suits your brand. 

Lucky for you, there's no shortage of great apps to extend your Shopify store. The biggest challenge when you go to create a Shopify tech stack for e-commerce is narrowing down your options and then deciding how to bring them all together. That's where a platform like Integrate.io will prove crucial to convenience, visibility, and scalable success.

Integrate.io is a very fast CDC platform that offers all the features your e-commerce store needs to thrive. Interested in learning more? Contact us to schedule a demo so you can see for yourself how Integrate.io can support your e-commerce brand.