To start things off, we’d like to share a story that we think really illustrates the importance of integrations. Some time ago, we wanted to surprise our project manager on his birthday and give him a beanbag chair as a gift from the entire team. So we find the right chair in an online store, place an order and pay for it. Fast forward several days of waiting, and the website still says that the order is “being processed”. Naturally, we call the company, and the manager says, “Sorry, we’ve been snowed under with work lately. We’ll get to it right away.” But before we can breathe a sigh of collective relief, the same manager calls us back a couple of hours later to apologise and say that the item is out of stock.
In the end, the story did have a happy ending: we chose a different model on the same website, and the company arranged for an express delivery free of charge. Now, Pavel facilitates customer communication from the comfort of his new beanbag. This situation, however, clearly demonstrates how lack of website integration with external services (in our example, with CRM and stock control systems) can hamper a company’s operations.
We encounter examples of integration on a daily basis, such as when we chat on WhatsApp via a widget, make purchases online, sign in through social networks, or watch videos without being redirected to YouTube. For the audience, this improves convenience and quality of service; for businesses, integrations help retain customers and streamline processes. Besides, external services make your life significantly easier: it’s obviously more practical to place a Google Maps widget on your website than to draw the entire map of the city by yourself.
Here are some of the most commonly integrated services that can do wonders for your business:
- CRM
- Online payment services
- Delivery services
- Web map services
CRM system
The gift delivery issue we’ve just talked about could have happened because the online store had no CRM integration. Since incoming requests aren’t logged automatically, managers have to type them in by hand – this always runs the risk of overlooking an order. Besides, such routine work takes a large chunk out of employees’ time.
CRM integration is especially relevant for online stores, which have to keep records of purchases and transactions, track order statuses, and monitor stock items. Had the company from our example had integration with 1C, the website would have automatically received a notification that the item was out of stock.
By integrating your platform with a CRM, you’ll be able to track lead sources and use this information to allocate the marketing budget. In addition, you can also connect a call tracking system to your CRM to further enhance your analytics capabilities.
The process of setting up integration with a CRM system is usually pretty straightforward: a lot of popular services – such as 1C CRM, CRM Bitrix, and amoCRM – already have pre-built APIs for connecting the CRM to your website. Moreover, some CMS platforms have connectors to the most popular websites. Standard CMS versions differ from custom ones in terms of configuration but, regardless of your choice, Toimi will make the entire process feel like a walk in the park ;)
Online payment services
Online stores are not the only kind of platform that need to support digital payments. Pre-paying an online medical consultation, buying a gym membership, or subscribing to a streaming service – all of this can only be done if the website has integration with a payment service.
These services can be provided by a bank (e.g. Sber Acquiring or Tinkoff) or by a payment aggregator (such as YooKassa). Banks usually have lower fees, but aggregators offer more payment options.
However, this is just one of many differences, so the choice of your payment service provider must be the result of a weighted decision that factors in all the technical nuances. For example, if the provider offers a module for CMS integration, all you will need to do is connect it to the website and configure the settings. If there’s no such module, the connection will have to be made via an API. In any case, you’ll most likely need help from a software developer – the only question here is, how deep they will have to delve into the process. If you don’t have an available specialist on your team, you’ll either have to look for contractors with ready-made solutions or outsource to an IT agency; for example, to us ;)
When choosing a service provider, you also need to consider its own integration requirements. Some companies used the white label model, where the payment solution is seamlessly embedded into a website and tailored to its design, so there’s no indication that a third-party provider was somehow involved. But oftentimes you’ll still have to add a reference to the provider; e.g. by adding its logo to the webpage.
Delivery services
There are two ways to order goods with delivery. The first option is to place an order, select a delivery method, choose a pick-up point or a convenient delivery time, and then track the order status. The other option is to wait for a call from the manager, tell them the address, and then do some more waiting – this time, for the actual delivery. If the parcel is delayed, the customer will have to contact the call centre, and God forbid they do it somewhere around Christmas holidays.
By choosing the latter option, you create a poor customer experience, undermine the loyalty of your audience, and put additional strain on call centre managers. So the most optimal decision here is to integrate your website with delivery services, such as PEC, CDEK, PickPoint, or others. To do that, you can either use an API – such companies usually offer a ready-made solution – or use connectors that sometimes come pre-built with online store builders. If neither is the case, you can contact tech support on the partner’s side or engage programmers.
Web map services
Each time you make the user switch to another tab, you risk losing them forever. This is often the case with the contacts section used to display a company’s address: the user has to manually copy it, open Yandex or Google maps, paste the link into the search box, and calculate the route from home to the desired location. While that happens, the potential customer may become interested in another company or even forget why they came to your website in the first place.
At the same time, setting up integration with services like Yandex.Maps, Google Maps or 2GIS is relatively easy; in Yandex.Maps, for example, all you have to do is copy the link to the widget and then add it to the webpage.
Besides helping visitors plan their route, this widget will also allow them to look at reviews of your company on the map, as external resources are always more trustworthy. As a business, you’ll be able to add all of your stores to the map and thus enable users to locate the closest outlets provided they have geolocation turned on. And if you’re selling products with delivery, this integration will allow customers to select the delivery address or the nearest pick-up point.
Summing up
- integrations make your website more convenient for the user, improve the quality of service, and ease the strain on employees
- some of the most important services for integration include CRM systems and payment, delivery, and web map services
- popular services already have ready-made modules to connect to your website’s CMS, and sometimes the CMS itself will have the necessary plugin for integration