Physical store and eCommerce website complements each other in today’s market scenario. Most organizations use a mixed approach for business where they not only have ecommerce store for selling online, but also have Physical Stores where consumers can visit and buy. Let’s see what are the advantages of this approach in business:
- Consumers are more closely related with the business through this approach as they can visit Physical Store and can register themselves as customer. They can also visit the website of the same business and purchase online.
- In business one can use this approach to reduce the hassle of shipping as well. Ecommerce website gives the flexibility to be open 24/7 where consumers can buy online and later collect those products from Physical Store. So even when physical store is closed the business gets orders through the online eCommerce website.
- Centralized Stock Maintenance is another biggest advantage. Stocks will be associated with Physical Stores. If any product get sold online, store manager can separate that product from Physical Store stock and later proceed for shipment.
- Inventory procurement and planning will be another advantage because online and offline orders reduce same Inventory. Thus procurement planning will be much easy for the retailer
Lightspeed POS
Lightspeed POS is one of the most popular POS products available in the market. Lightspeed gives flexibility to the Merchants having Physical Stores to use a flexible selling system without investing heavily on any additional hardware. Sales Representative can traverse through the physical stores by just carrying their iPad attached with Card Swapper. They can attend customers by showcasing them products or explaining about the product and instantly giving the customer an excellent shopping experience by punching their order through Lightspeed POS in iPad and swaping their credit card and completing their transaction. Customers need not go to any queue to purchase. In this way Lightspeed POS offers next generation shopping experience in Physical Stores.
Shopify eCommerce
Shopify Cloud eCommerce Platform is perhaps the most trending in eCommerce industry in the last couple of years. Shopify is available On Demand for merchants. They can choose flexible pricing plans and need not worry about the infrastructure or resources to be managed. They would have to just choose design from thousands of templates and add their products. Using Shopify, a merchant can launch his/her eCommerce website in few days without any coding needed and all by him/herself. This is the reason, Shopify has earned a large market share globally and specifically in US.
Integration between Lightspeed POS and Shopify eCommerce through APPSeCONNECT (Watch Demo below)
APPSeCONNECT being an integration platform that offers data transfer on relevant points between Lightspeed POS and Shopify eCommerce in fully bi-directional way. Let’s see what are the relevant points where APPSeCONNECT is syncing data and giving benefits to the merchant using Lightspeed POS for their Physical Store and Shopify as their eCommerce.
Customer Information transfer from Shopify to Lightspeed
APPSeCONNECT transfers registered Customer details from Shopify eCommerce to Lightspeed POS and create new customer account in Lightspeed POS.
Business Benefit – eCommerce Customers will have their credentials stored in POS as well and so in future if they visit Physical Store and purchase then their data will already be there in POS System. This will also help to maintain a centralize Loyalty Point management system.
Order creation in POS based on eCommerce Order
Whenever any Sales Order is placed by consumer in Shopify then that will get synced to Lightspeed POS, thereby creating a corresponding Sales Order in POS.
Business Benefit – Merchants can fulfill eCommerce Orders through their Physical Stores. Even Consumers can purchase online and can pick the items from Physical Stores. This saves separate shipping costs for businesses.
Product and Price Updates
If any new product is added in Shopify or Lightspeed then the product information and pricing gets updated. APPSeCONNECT transfers all these updates to the other platform. Product and Price updates happen in Shopify or Lightspeed which gets synced to the other platform automatically.
Business Benefit- Merchants can do product management from a single platform viz POS or eCommerce. APPSeCONNECT can transfer the product and pricing updates to the other platform automatically. This is highly necessary for businesses where product pricing gets changed frequently or discounts are introduced frequently.
Stock Update from POS to eCommerce
APPSeCONNECT can transfer stock updates happening in Lightspeed POS to Shopify eCommerce. It helps to eliminate the ‘Out of Stock’ scenario.
Business Benefit – APPSeCONNECT helps to manage stock centrally for business. When ecommerce orders get synced to POS then the stock decreases from POS. Shipping for eCommerce Orders can be managed from Physical Store.
Shipping in Lightspeed POS fulfills Shopify Order
Whenever an order which is generated in Shopify and synced to Lightspeed gets shipped from the POS system, it updates the Web Order Status in Shopify.
Business Benefit – APPSeCONNECT helps controlling centralized shipping for Web Orders and POS orders all from Lightspeed POS and updates Web Orders status against Order Fulfillment.
So these are the basic areas where APPSeCONNECT creates a close connection between POS and eCommerce thereby helping businesses to merge their operation of eCommerce with their Physical Stores.
Interested in integrating Lightspeed POS with Shopify? Get a FREE Trial Now!
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