Building a thriving ecommerce business requires owners to keep track of a number of functions and processes, from managing inventory in fulfillment centers to analyzing order activity across multiple sales channels. Needless to say, it can be daunting.
At the end of the day, you want to understand what’s driving sales and why certain products resonate more with customers. To gain a better understanding of your businesses, you need more time—specifically, more time to dive into data to find new growth opportunities.
Buy with Prime can help you grow by bringing the trust of Prime to your ecommerce sites, and has been shown to increase shopper conversion by an average of 25%* with fast, free shipping and transparent delivery times. Higher conversions can help you hit your growth goals, but how can Buy with Prime help free up time to better understand what’s driving their business?
That’s where the ecommerce connector apps by Alloy comes into play. The connector apps work across ecommerce sites and can help automate key business functions that can save time by giving you a way to manage all site orders and customer data in one place.
To help you understand how to choose the right integration tools and the value of the connector apps, we asked Alloy Co-founder Gregg Mojica to share his perspective.
What are the top things I should consider when choosing the right integration partner or tool to help grow my business
Gregg: The first thing to consider is how customizable the solution is. At Alloy, we realize that your needs as a business are unique and often require tailored solutions. Aside from that, you’ll want a partner that not only understands the rest of your ecommerce technology stack, but is also well connected to it. This is an important component to finding the right partner, because they need to be able to help you respond to changes as your business evolves over time.
Oftentimes, you might start out with one tool and find yourself using a completely different one a year or so down the line. When this happens, having an integration partner that supports multiple integrations is critical. You’ll want to evaluate the robustness of your partner’s integrations, too. For example, some tools don’t support real-time integrations, and this could pose a serious problem when you’re scaling your business.
Why are Alloy’s solutions important for me as a Buy with Prime merchant?
Gregg: Our integrations allow you to seamlessly connect your Buy with Prime data with your ecommerce platform. This is important because Buy with Prime sits independently from your ecommerce platform. By using Alloy apps, you can connect Buy with Prime to popular ecommerce platforms like Magento, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce to ensure you always have a single source of truth. We have apps for order syncing and catalog updating, so your critical store data is always up to date. Using the Alloy apps can save you time so you can focus on growing your business and building customer relationships.
What’s the difference between the Order connector app and Catalog updates app by Alloy?
Gregg: The Order Connector app pushes Buy with Prime order updates to your ecommerce platform to ensure that you have the latest order information in a single place. Our Catalog Updates app syncs product data from your ecommerce platform to Buy with Prime to ensure that you’re providing a consistent customer experience. In other words, whenever a product from your catalog is updated in your ecommerce platform, the Catalog Updates app pushes changes to your Buy with Prime catalog, eliminating potential discrepancies across listings on your site.
How can the Alloy apps help me grow my business using Buy with Prime?
Gregg: Because the Alloy apps make it easier to sync data between your ecommerce site and Buy with Prime, you can ensure that you always have a single source of truth. For example, once your Buy with Prime order data lands in your ecommerce platform using the Order Connector app, you can query it and better understand how your sales perform across multiple channels.
What types of data or analytics can I expect from my Alloy integration?
Gregg: If you’re using the Catalog Updates or Order Connector apps, we’ll automate the process of adding the relevant data in your ecommerce service provider (ESP). When this happens, you can refer to your ESP to identify what SKUs are most used, and (ideally) save time with improved visibility into how your Buy with Prime products are performing on your site.
How do I integrate these into my ecommerce site?
Gregg: You’ll first need to visit the Buy with Prime marketplace where you can find and install the Alloy apps. We currently support both order and catalog syncing for popular ESPs. We are continually looking for opportunities to expand our value proposition with more ESPs.
After selecting your ESP, you grant Alloy access to share data with Buy with Prime account, and then follow the relevant installation process based on the ESP that you selected. Once you’ve established the connection between the Alloy app and your ESP, you’re ready to realize the benefits of more efficient Buy with Prime catalog and order management. You can learn more about how to integrate the Alloy apps in the knowledge center.
How many Buy with Prime merchants are using the app?
Gregg: We’ve been pleased with the positive feedback regarding the apps. As of March 2023, nearly 55% of all Buy with Prime merchants have adopted the Alloy apps.
What do you forecast for the future of tech integrations for ecommerce businesses?
Gregg: Integrations are the backbone of ecommerce and will continue to become more and more prevalent as the landscape evolves and diversifies. Merchants are increasingly embracing omnichannel sales to connect with different types of customers and scale their businesses. Our job is to ensure data is up to date across those different channels, but this is a challenging prospect given the ever-changing ecommerce industry. That’s why integrations are so critical to giving online brands a single source of truth so they can think holistically about their ecommerce businesses.
At Alloy, we act as the connective tissue for the ecommerce world, connecting hundreds of integrations to one another. Visit Alloy’s website to learn more!
Learn more about the Alloy apps and how to set them up in our knowledge center article.
*This data point measures the average increase in shoppers who placed an order when Buy with Prime was an available purchase option versus when it was not, during the same time period.