Shift4Shop eCommerce Blog | Apps & Integrations

If your business is both online and in-store, it may be challenging to keep all of your operations cohesive. One tool may not communicate with another, and you’re left doing manual work. Luckily, there are solutions; one popular method is unified commerce.

Running a small eCommerce store is thrilling, but juggling tools, data, and orders can feel like a precarious trapeze act. Enter integration, the silent conductor transforming your chaotic digital orchestra into a symphony of efficiency. It's not just about saving time; it's about streamlining workflows, unlocking growth, and building a business with agility in the digital landscape.

The ease of launching an online store, coupled with an increase in cross-border transactions, has lowered the barrier to entry into the world of eCommerce.

Other than picking a hero product, choosing eCommerce tools to perfect your product offerings, optimize marketing strategies, and nurture customer relationships decides if you’ll win this game!

At Shift4Shop, we're passionate about giving back. That's why we're supporting an organization that gives back every day — St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital^®. We want to help St. Jude accomplish their mission: Finding cures. Saving children.^®

So, we’ve partnered with them to develop a new app that makes donating at checkout easier. Introducing: the St. Jude Donation App.

Google Analytics has been a staple of eCommerce for years. It's a versatile tool built to provide you with data you can use to better understand your customers. And as every successful business owner knows, understanding your customers is the key to growing your business.

With Shift4Shop Version 12, we upgraded our Google Analytics integration to support the newest version, Google Analytics V4. This brings powerful new features to Shift4Shop stores.

Online shoppers are more likely to make purchases on websites that offer augmented reality (AR) technology. But, those shoppers are not only making the purchase simply because the site offers AR technology.

They are likely to purchase items because AR technology compels them to do so in a way ordinary eCommerce websites don't. AR gives them a feeling of certainty about the product in a way 2D pictures or words can’t.

Online shopping has experienced unprecedented growth in 2020, partly due to lockdown orders and other preventive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. This has opened up new product opportunities and greater volumes of orders for online retailers, along with the need to increase online platform functionality.

An online multi-channel seller is someone who sells on other platforms besides their online store and/or brick-and-mortar shop. Selling on multiple channels allows buyers multiple access points to familiarize with your brand. Apart from your physical shop and eCommerce website, you can also sell on many established online marketplaces. Regardless, how you perform mostly depends on what you sell and where you sell.

There’s no denying the fact that videos are powerful tools for communication. Not only can they convey concepts and ideas faster and more efficiently than a photo ever could, but they’re incredibly engaging. One look at recent marketing metrics and you’ll wish you had been implementing videos as part of your marketing campaigns years ago. And, if you were one of video’s early online adopters, then chances are you’re still looking for ways to make the videos you post even more compelling.

Either[...]

As feature-rich as Shift4Shop is, eCommerce is always moving forward. New advancements in technology lead to greater potential for online businesses, but they also lead to new customer expectations and new pain points for business owners and customers alike. That's one reason Shift4Shop has made it easy for developers to create apps that integrate with our eCommerce software: by building an app, you can expand Shift4Shop with new functionality and help your potential clients stay on top of the[...]

For years in the internet community, there’s been constant debate over what the best browser is to use. While each browser offers its own unique selling points, there’s usually only one browser that comes out on top: Google Chrome.

After you’ve gone through all the trouble of setting up your online store on your chosen platform, it may sound like a nightmare when you’re faced with the hard decision to migrate to a new one. But, at some point, migrating may be the best option for your online store. Many merchants are enticed by Shopify’s promise of an easy eCommerce experience, only to find that they don’t offer what their business needs. If you’ve turned to 3dcart as a possible solution to your business woes, then it may[...]

Navigation is the crux of your online store’s user experience, with its quality either making or breaking a sale. Obviously, you want to make sure that it’s as easy as possible for customers to navigate your site to find the exact products they’re looking to buy. In order to get the job done right, a good menu will include categories and sub-categories that are organized properly and in a way that’s pleasing to the eye. If your store has a decent amount of categories, sub-categories and product[...]

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned our predictable normalcy upside down. The new normal has been a whirlwind of permanent changes that are happening very fast. One of the most significant changes has been the rapid digitization of businesses.

If you want to remain in business, you will need to digitize your offerings as fast and quickly as possible to stay ahead of your competition. The marketplace of firms offering services and products has drastically changed over the last six months.

If you[...]

Social proof is a tried and true method of marketing, proven in situations such as a line outside of a restaurant indicating that it’s a quality business worthy of your time. But, showing off social proof in eCommerce isn’t as easy as that, so several companies have come up to the plate to provide a solution: notifications on your website that show prospective customers what conversions are occurring in real-time. Fomo is one such company with its own social proof software, so today we’re[...]

New apps, services, and companies are constantly springing up in the world of eCommerce. Any company that does business online should always keep an eye out for the best ones on the market in order to stay fresh and competitive.

Updating your toolbox like this has the potential to make operating your shopping website far better and more efficient than before.

One example of these game-changing solutions is Zapier, a platform that gives online store owners the tools to create connections between[...]

Did you know that eCommerce is one of the fastest growing industries in the world?

In 2017 alone, more than 1.66 billion people bought their goods online. In the same year, that equated to about $2.3 trillion worth of e-retail sales.

There are lots of ways for you to sell your products online. A good homepage will only take you so far in promoting yourself. If you really want to get help selling products, in addition to taking advantage of the built-in features in your ecommerce website builder[...]

We know that multichannel shopping is the new norm. In fact, almost 75% of today’s consumers are multichannel buyers, and people who shop on more than one channel spend an average of 4% on in-store transactions and 10% more on online transactions than single-channel shoppers.

What’s more, customer retention rates sit at 89% for multichannel businesses compared to just 33% for single-channel businesses.

In other words, choosing a multichannel sales strategy is beneficial both in terms of order[...]

You may have heard of Houzz, a platform and community for homeowners, home remodeling, and design. Founded as a means of bringing homeowners and professionals together, Houzz is also a successful platform for merchants selling home décor, furniture, supplies, and more— everything needed for a home.