The digital transformation boom has helped retailers reach customers in more ways than ever before. By integrating their point-of-sale or POS system with their website, they can maximize their online and offline conversion rates.
Mordor Intelligence data suggests that the digital transformation market in retail is set to more than double in value from $243.57 billion in 2024 to $541.44 billion by 2029, representing a CAGR of 17.32%.
Much of this growth will be achieved through intelligent cloud-based integrations that unite physical and digital stores to bolster sales potential.
POS integration refers to connecting your point-of-sale technology with your website to unify your brick-and-mortar and eCommerce sales. This can help to provide a more holistic overview of your conversion rates, sentiment insights, and inventory management in real time.
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What is a Point-of-Sale?
We’ve all had plenty of experience with websites, but you may not have had the chance to get up close and personal with modern point-of-sale systems.
In a nutshell, a POS is a combination of software and hardware that handles in-person sales transactions. As well as processing payments, a POS solution also offers tools for managing your inventory levels, reporting on sales, and storing customer data.
Your point-of-sale spans both software and hardware, and the software aspect of the solution will take care of payment processing, inventory management, and the creation of sales reports. POS software can also seamlessly integrate with other intelligent tools to work with data and leverage actionable insights.
Point-of-sale hardware focuses on devices like POS terminals or tablets, receipt printers, barcode scanners, and card readers. These technologies can help to process transactions and manage the checkout process in its entirety.
Crucially, your POS system can connect to eCommerce platforms to help merge your online and brick-and-mortar operations. This helps to provide a more comprehensive overview of all your sales, inventory, and customer data within a single unified platform.
For instance, Shopify has its own dedicated Point of Sale app, which simply requires you to create an account and choose a Shopify subscription plan that best suits your operations. When you’re ready to create an online store, you can connect any POS hardware to set up your app to accept payments.
Uniting eCommerce and Brick-and-Mortar
Now that you’re familiar with modern POS hardware and software, let’s take a look at how this technology can help to drive transformational change for your website.
Depending on your current point-of-sale, you may need to upgrade to an integrated POS system. This would be able to handle both online and offline orders and transactions. This will help you to utilize more enhanced analytics and advanced inventory management through synchronizing your systems.
Crucially, integrating your POS with your website will also help you sell in multiple places at any given time and can pave the way for avoiding overselling and stockouts by keeping your stock levels in check at all times.
If you’re seeking to implement a BIOPIS (buy-online-pickup-in-store) selling system, this technology can pay dividends in upholding a high level of customer satisfaction.
Because integrated POS systems provide more automation technology, you can also enjoy mitigating instances of human error by no longer having to manually input data at scale.
How to Integrate Your POS with Your Website
To integrate your POS with your website, you’ll first need to decide on the application to use to synchronize your physical and digital sales.
With more than 2.1 million daily active users, Shopify is one of the world’s largest eCommerce platforms and is an excellent resource for starting a website and trading online.
When paired with a POS, you can gain simplified stock management and sales data as well as business reports easily accessible from your dashboard.
Shopify also helps you to efficiently transfer your data to sync your inventory, ramp up your security against online scams, and automate your tax collection to maintain compliance,
Another leading option is Woocommerce, which is the world’s most popular open-source eCommerce platform. With 6.6 million websites using Woocommerce, the platform has become a leading means for businesses to embrace digital transformation and move their store online.
Woocommerce also lets you track payments, orders, and inventory throughout online and physical locations, accept international payments, blend POS and website data to create a more custom brand experience, and automatically print online orders for frictionless communication with in-store staff to aid services like click and collect.
Once you’ve decided on your eCommerce application, it’s time to integrate your POS system. Although processes can differ between the applications you choose, both follow these general guidelines:
Make Sure Your POS and eCommerce Platform are Compatible
There are many different POS systems on the market, so you’ll need to do some research to choose one that not only meets your business needs but is also compatible with your eCommerce platform.
Fortunately, Shopify’s Help Center provides a list of compatible POS hardware, while there are many lists featuring the best POS systems compatible with Woocommerce available online.
Connect Your POS System
If your POS system is compatible with your eCommerce app, you can connect to your website using an API (Application Programming Interface) or a plugin.
An API enables your website and POS system to communicate with one another, while a plugin is an additional software component that will be available to download through your eCommerce application.
Set Up Your Inventory
Now it’s time to synchronize your products and inventory on both your website and with your POS system. This is a key process that ensures that you’ll have a holistic overview of your stock, helping both staff and customers to access accurate, real-time information about your supplies.
Test Your Integration
Once you’ve set your integration up, you’ll need to test your new system to ensure everything’s working as it should. Try out the checkout process and monitor for inventory updates as well as sales tracking.
Open Your Store to Customers
As long as all of your integrations are working as they should, you can open your store to customers online and reap the benefits of unified payment processes and inventory insights. Enjoy!
Here, it’s important to bear in mind that integrating POS hardware and software can involve different processes depending on the systems you’re using, and if you’re unsure of the steps to take, it’s worth reaching out to designated support systems to smooth the integration process.
Embracing Digital Transformation
Integrating your POS system with your website can pay dividends for your digital transformation efforts. This synchronization process can also provide powerful insights into your inventory management, customer data, and emerging sales trends to keep on top of.
By doing your homework to identify the best compatible POS hardware and your eCommerce applications, you can create a sustainable framework to improve your operational efficiency and customer experience (CX) that continues to contribute to your sales long into the future.
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