3 WooCommerce integrations every manufacturer must use

You may feel as though you can make it work with just the vanilla platform, but if you want your scaling manufacturing business to succeed, you’re going to need WooCommerce integrations to help you keep up.

Once upon a time, a manufacturer would create products, and a wholesaler or retailer would purchase them to sell them on.

But, as soon as we entered the internet era, foreword thinking manufacturers started to cut out the middleman and began selling directly to consumers.

With this, entrepreneurs were able to get total control over their business, from production to sales and even their supply chain management.

And luckily for those manufacturers who took on this greater responsibility, software developers also saw an opportunity in this new digital market.

That’s why we’re investigating the best WooCommerce integrations that a manufacturer can use to boost their business’ productivity.

WooCommerce integrations are tools and apps, software that has been designed to make managing your online store easier.

As a manufacturer, finding suitable WooCommerce integrations for your store is confusing because most are tailored for dropshippers and the number of tools out there seems to be never-ending.

However, some tools are particularly built for scaling manufacturers, and we’re going to help you discover the best three your business should adopt.

If you’ve already figured out that the place to be is online, but have already made the plunge with Shopify, have no fear! Take a look at our article on Shopify tools to figure out what apps are available for you on the market.

Otherwise, if you’re already set up, or thinking about getting started with WooCommerce, then this is the article for you since we’ll be looking at the best WooCommerce integrations to help manufacturers get control over their business.

So, without further ado, let’s delve in!

What Are WooCommerce Integrations?

WooCommerce integrations are third-party plugins you can find online, which provide solutions for features missing in WooCommerce that your business needs to maximize its capacity. These plugins can range from inventory management and production to marketing.

Since WooCommerce is open-source, manufacturers can use specific WooCommerce integrations for their company’s needs to help customize their site or get tools to help with managing their business.

As for WooCommerce itself? WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to use e-commerce functionality on your WordPress website so you can easily (and for relatively cheap) set up an online business for your manufacturing company.

Here are some fun facts about WordPress and WooCommerce integrations before we look at the top three integrations your manufacturing business should consider:

— The plugin launched in 2011 and was purchased by Automattic (the owners of WordPress) in 2015;

— A massive 99% of e-commerce websites in the US, Canada, and the UK are powered by WooCommerce; and

— WooCommerce can boast of having 27,000,000 downloads and millions of active users.

Knowing these facts is one thing, but if you want to get ahead of the competition, you need to understand how the vanilla plugin works.

Be sure to read more into WooCommerce inventory management when you’re trying to figure out how to optimize your website and business.

So, that’s the basic explanation of what is WooCommerce as a WordPress integration, but before we continue with the WooCommerce integrations every manufacturer should be aware of, you will still need to perfect your processes offline to help maintain your brand image.

That’s why we’ve put together an article on the biggest challenges scaling manufacturers face, which is learning how to calculate raw materials and keep track of your materials inventory movements.

But moving on, let’s look at what are the best WooCommerce integrations to choose from?

1. Katana – Smart Manufacturing Software 

As a manufacturer, you’re going to have to contend with the issues that plague dropshippers, but also figure out how to schedule operations and develop a smooth manufacturing process.

And unfortunately, unless you want to spend megabucks on it, there aren’t a lot of great choices to choose from.

Enter Katana Smart Manufacturing Software, the inexpensive all-in-one solution, which has been developed by manufacturers, for manufacturers, who’re looking to get total control of their business, from order fulfillment to inventory management and production.

Katana’s powerful WooCommerce integration enables manufacturers to centralize their whole business into one ridiculously easy to read, visual dashboard, allowing them to get a quick overview of their company’s performance and to monitor the status of sales orders and manufacturing orders that are in-waiting, in progress, or fulfilled.

When you use Katana’s WooCommerce integration, you can easily synchronize your stock levels between the two platforms and track your inventory levels at different locations, allowing you to focus on the important stuff: making your products.

But, this piece of software doesn’t stop there, with Katana you can:

Get a Unique Auto-Booking System 
Every time a sales order is created via WooCommerce or a manufacturing order is created in Katana, the auto-booking system autonomously takes available finished goods or materials, and commits them to the open orders, so you can fulfill them as soon as possible.

Use Priority-Based Planning 
Katana automatically schedules manufacturing orders in the order in which they were generated. However, if a VIP customer’s order needs to be fulfilled first, our nifty drag-and-drop feature allows you to reprioritize your workflow, and the auto-booking system will redistribute your committed inventory following the new schedule.

Get Better Raw Material Management       
Katana allows manufacturers to easily monitor their materials stock levels so they know immediately if they can start production or if they need to order more materials.

You can easily set reorder points to create a buffer, so you don’t run out of material to avoid a production stoppage.

If you want to know more about Katana’s WooCommerce integration be sure to check out the video below:

2. MyWorks Software – WooCommerce QuickBooks

Finding one app to link WooCommerce to QuickBooks doesn’t have to be your only solution. Some Software, like Katana, can integrate with your WooCommerce and QuickBooks, meaning all the important apps that help run your store can be accessed from one point of truth.

If you’re a scaling manufacturer who is playing it safe, it is more than likely that you’re going to get yourself set up with QuickBooks Online to track your finances.

That’s why you want to look for WooCommerce to QuickBooks integrations so you can get more control over your business’s finances.

That’s why QuickBooks sync for WooCommerce, developed by MyWorks Software, is a good solution to managing both of your accounts.

The purpose of the software is to help you save time and easily monitor your business’s financial health by integrating your online store with your accounting software.

A fully automated and real-time WooCommerce QuickBooks solution that gives you the ability to synchronize your orders, products, and payments.

This WooCommerce to QuickBooks (or vice versa) software allows you to determine which information you wish to synchronize between your accounts, so you can get a better understanding of your business’s performance, and both accounts will correctly display the latest information about your business.

So, you might be asking yourself, what is the benefit of using this WooCommerce QuickBooks integration?

The biggest benefit is having access to a tool that can make your accounting endeavors effortless.

Once it’s been correctly set up, you can easily manage your business from the app and then push over any of your financial information to QuickBooks, so you don’t need to navigate between WooCommerce and QuickBooks to manually keep your bookkeeping’s up to date.

Although, we should mention that this product is perfect for anyone who is a dropshipper, but is missing some features which are needed by modern manufacturers.

You can find out more about MyWorks Software in the video below:

3. Klaviyo WooCommerce Integration

Getting your business up and running offline is a challenge in and of itself. However, it doesn’t matter how smooth your production processes are if you’re unable to attract leads and provide shoppers with a positive shopping experience.

Introducing the Klaviyo WooCommerce integration, a marketing tool that helps manufacturers create personalized, targeted emails, as easy as can be through data-driven analysis.

The importance of having WooCommerce integrations such as Klaviyo allows scaling manufacturers to create stronger relationships with their customers by collecting information on their visitors, so you can better understand their actions and anticipate their preferences.

This alone can help modern manufacturers foster a trustworthy brand, which will be crucial in facilitating faster growth.

So, how exactly does the Klaviyo WooCommerce integration help you achieve all this?

Quick Set-up
Firstly, you can almost immediately get set-up with the Klaviyo WooCommerce integration. Automatically synchronize your WooCommerce historical data and any new data to get started with your stronger marketing communications.

Data Analytics   
Klaviyo automatically takes your customer data to predict their lifetime value, churn risk, gender, optimal send time, and even goes the extra step by making personalized recommendations to customers, without you needing to input any data, simply based on a customer’s purchase history.

Complete Lifecycle Engagement    
The Klaviyo WooCommerce integration allows you to deliver targeted, branded forms for building your marketing list. This helps manufacturers engage with customers via multiple channels, and better understand if a customer is likely to churn or identify a high-value shopper.

Conclusion

And there you have it, three WooCommerce integrations that can certainly help any scaling manufacturer selling through the platform.

You don’t have to get set-up with all three integrations, or you could still play the field to see what other options are available for you.

However, if you do decide to continue looking, as a modern and ambitious manufacturer, you should be looking for tools which have:

1. WooCommerce Integrations;
2. Inventory Management (finished goods and raw materials); and
3. Production Scheduling.

Yes, marketing is equally as important, but if you’re bringing in leads but don’t have the backend to meet those increasing orders, then your company will just be wasting valuable resources.

So, why not see for yourself how important it is to have Smart Manufacturing Software that can handle the backend? Katana offers a 14-day free trial, so you can see how it can optimize your business’s performance for yourself.

We hope that you enjoyed the article, and if you have any questions, please feel free to drop us a message on here or our social media channels.

And until next time, happy manufacturing.