As your ecommerce company grows, you’ll gradually add additional technology to your storefront to accommodate customer requests, handle data analysis, and fulfill orders, among other initiatives. All that technology can be extremely helpful, but it can eventually cause your systems to become confusing and bloated.
For this reason, it’s important for all ecommerce business owners to know the benefits of consolidating their ecommerce technology stacks. Today, let’s break down the advantages of doing so and how to consolidate your tech stack in beneficial ways.
Why Consolidate Your Ecommerce Tech Stack?
Simply put, because it’s better for your customers and your employees!
Imagine that as your ecommerce company grows, you add more and more programs or software to the list of tools your employees must learn to use. Eventually, onboarding a new employee will become so draining and time-consuming that it becomes infeasible.
Your “tech stack,” of course, is just the collection of tech tools your employees and customers use to do business. By consolidating your tech stack, you:
- Get rid of redundant or overly-complex programs
- Combine software or tools where possible
- Install new programs and platforms that include multiple functionalities
Consolidating your ecommerce tech stack will make it easier for you to bring new employees to your enterprise. It’ll also simplify handling customer requests, fulfilling orders, and analyzing data. Plus, consolidating your tech stack means that you’ll be able to scale your business more easily in the future.
How to Consolidate Wisely
Now that you know the benefits of consolidating your ecommerce tech stack, let’s break down how you can do just that without causing chaos in your organization.
Consider Customer Access and Ease of Use
First, always consider whether a given technology tool or platform will improve your website’s user experience or customer access. These days, B2B and B2C customers and buyers want digital, personalized interactions. That means you should prioritize tech stack tools and software that:
- Improve your employees’ responsiveness toward customers
- Don’t come with high load speeds
- Are easy and intuitive to navigate through
Basically, if a tool doesn’t help your customers get what they want quickly, it’s probably worth cutting if another tool can take its place.
By trimming the fat from your ecommerce technology stack, you’ll also remove the software you have to update and secure against digital intrusions. Tools such as text-to-pay software, customer self-service portals, and other related technology can significantly impact customer satisfaction.
Data Management and Analytics
Similarly, you should prioritize platforms and software that allow you better data management and analytics performance. For example, you probably have a CRM plus other software tools to monitor customer relationships and gather data over time.
But these days, lots of software tools collect the same data. Not only is this redundant, but it also eats into your man-hours by forcing your employees to analyze data from multiple sources that all say the same thing.
It’s a much better idea to consolidate your tech stack for data management by:
- Having one dedicated data collection and analysis tool instead of many
- Integrating data management with other tools, like a CRM software
Fortunately, many project management and CRM software suites already offer data analytics tools in addition to their primary functions. If possible, eliminate extraneous or redundant programs and use versatile platforms instead.
Automation Tech and Tools
Many of the best tech stack tools for ecommerce companies feature heavy automation controls. Automation provides a lot of benefits for your ecommerce business, namely:
- Reducing the time your employees have to spend on repetitive, manual tasks
- Limiting human errors when it comes to data entry and analytics
- Providing faster customer responses to consumers who need assistance, thus increasing customer trust
- Automating shipping orders and forecasting
Again, you can consolidate your tech stack by installing software or platforms that implement automation tech and tools whenever possible. Get rid of tools that don’t leverage automation. Sooner rather than later, they will be very outdated, and you’ll wish you had gotten rid of them anyway.
AI and Machine Learning
It may be wise to lean into AI and machine learning developments. AI and machine learning play a major role in ecommerce success. They can:
- Help you identify your target audience more successfully
- Help with data analytics
- Improve productivity among your employees, etc.
Therefore, you should consolidate your tech stack and get rid of old software programs in favor of AI or machine learning tools. As you start to leverage AI and machine learning tech more regularly, your employees will get the hang of it quickly, and your productivity may just skyrocket.
Back-End Consolidation
Lastly, don’t forget to consider back-end consolidation when consolidating the tech stack. Your back-end IT architecture and infrastructure must be able to handle the load from all your ecommerce tools and software.
For many ecommerce businesses, that means shifting away from legacy systems and upgrading to new technologies. These include software as a service or SaaS tools and cloud computing platforms. Other tools like APIs and microservices could assist with scalability and agile customer responses. Regardless, double-check that any new tool won’t overwhelm your existing IT systems before implementing it.
Summary
Consolidating your ecommerce technology stack will go a long way toward ensuring your company’s flexibility and performance in the years to come. A consolidated tech stack is a good tech stack and one that may help you scale your business readily and consistently.