Here’s Why You Don’t Need a CRM
If you’re selling online, you’ve probably heard about WooCommerce, one of the most popular and widely used shopping cart services currently available. This shopping cart is a plugin for the WordPress backend and hosts millions of the world’s most visited websites.
WooCommerce is loaded with user-friendly and powerful features that give retailers complete control of their online store, their inventory and even their shipping and returns processes. A wide variety of plugins and third-party integrations can add even more usability to WooCommerce. Here’s how a CRM can help users build stronger relationships that help increase sales uplift, loyalty and long-term retention.
Why Plugins Aren’t the Only Solution
WooCommerce is one of the few online stores that’s powered by WordPress, one of the most popular web hosting platforms in the world. WordPress is made popular by the unending amounts of varying plugins that users can add to their website in just a few clicks. But these plugins don’t come without some drawbacks.
For example, many plugins can add “bloat” to a website that can cause it to slow in speed or sometimes even malfunction. What’s more, plugins can often interact with each other and can cause conflicts, which can also result in malfunction or disruption of service.
Certainly, plugins have their place in any WordPress powered site, and when carefully used and implemented, they work well. But they’re not the only answer for users who are seeking a WooCommerce CRM software solution that helps them build relationships with customers.
How a WooCommerce CRM Works
While most types of add-ons that you’d use for WooCommerce would have to be WordPress plugins, a WooCommerce CRM isn’t one of them. These types of software solutions are independent, and work as a third-party SaaS option for your online store.
How this CRM works is by connecting to your WooCommerce store to import your data (it also simultaneously connects to your marketplace accounts, too). In this way, it’s able to import all your order data and create customer profiles with relationship-building procedures that include things like email marketing, teams and tasks, calendar, growth marketing and more. Retailers can harness this data to build stronger relationships with customers and improve the customer journey.
Tips on Getting Started
To get started with any CRM for ecommerce, you’re going to want to assess the size of your operation from top to bottom. One thing you’ll want to know is how many user licenses that you’re going to need, what that monthly cost will be and whether this type of a solution fits into the budget for your needs. Given that newer CRM solutions that work with WooCommerce are rather affordable, it’s comforting to know that this type of a solution is available to every online retailer regardless of budget or size of operation.
When planning to integrate a CRM into your WooCommerce store and marketplace accounts, you should also consider your back office staff and any added plugins that you might want to integrate, such as a plugin for shipping and one for returns – which can give you a one-size-fits-all solution for your online store spanning relationship-building, growth marketing, shipping and returns.