What is a Point of Sale System (POS) and How Does It Integrate With Your Website?
In both brick-and-mortar and online stores, the point of sale is where you ring up customers. The spot where they check out online, walk up to your counter, or pick out an item from your stand or booth is the point of sale.
These days, the online point-of-sale system is something all retail owners must seriously consider if they want to take their business to the next level. How can this tool integrate with your website?
What Is A Point-Of-Sale System?
A point-of-sale (POS) system allows your business to accept customer payments and keep track of sales. POS systems are more than a means of receiving payment, though! Integrating a POS system with overall e-commerce goals is essential for any retailer doing business both on and offline. A quality POS system on your website will communicate with its physical counterpart, making inventory and customer data flow a smooth process from one system to the other.
The setup can work differently depending on whether you only sell online or use your website with your physical storefront. Whatever your situation, the goal for small businesses adding e-commerce POS systems is to be where the customers are. You physically cannot be in multiple places at once, but your e-commerce POS integration can!
How Can A POS System Integrate With Your Website?
POS system integration streamlines the connection between your POS system and other operations platforms, including multiple retail systems. It opens up capabilities on the operations side, including inventory management, as well as the customer-facing side, such as online ordering and mobile shopping. You can even get more sophisticated tax information and manage the discounts and coupons available to your customers.
By integrating your channels into one POS, your customers will get a complete view of your business while relieving the stress of adding the numbers manually. The inventory synchronizes between your e-commerce site, other online marketplaces, and your point of sale system.
WordPress And POS Systems: A Match Made In Small Business Heaven
Integration sounds like a highly-technical term, but it’s easy for non-programmers to understand. In our business, SlyFox uses integration to describe how we create shared communications between different platforms to provide more complete solutions for our clients. When sales are taking place both online and in-person at your small business, integration can make a huge difference – especially in this age of COVID-19.
We develop all SlyFox websites using the WordPress content management system. It simplifies integration because we can add complete POS systems using programs called plug-ins. We install the plug-in, create a frontend interface, and add products, choosing products from specific categories. We can then connect your online store data to your physical POS system (if you are a small business adding e-commerce) using API credentials.
If you’re using the same system at your physical store or when attending events (e.g. pop-up shops, trade shows, etc.), the POS integration will automatically connect to your online order store to sync inventory, orders, and other appropriate information. You can pull detailed data directly from your POS in real-time, helping you make important marketing and sales decisions for your future!
