According to Social Media’s Today 2019 State of Marketing Automation Survey report, 75% of all companies already use at least one kind of marketing automation tool.
Does your application need to have 2-way communication with another service? If so, you will be working with some kind of API. Our team has experience building and integrating custom APIs from 100’s of services. Sometimes, you might only need to be notified when something happens in another system, then webhooks are the way to go.
Any type of e-commerce will inevitably have to integrate with some kind of payment gateway. We recommend that clients ask agencies which gateways they have experience with because they are not all the same. Stripe and Braintree are super nice and easy to integrate but have higher fees. Others are cheaper but poorly built.
Many sites and applications import data from other sources. Real-estate websites share IDX/MLS data, and entertainment sites import Rotten Tomatoes reviews, the list goes on. We’ve worked with a large amount of data sources and follow best practices ingesting, organizing, and ensuring that 3rd party data is reliably imported into the apps we build.
In the last few years, some exciting platforms have emerged that provide tools for integrating systems. iPaaS or integration platform as a services like Zapier provide non-programmers a way to send data from one SaaS platform to another. This solution is especially beneficial when working with Google Sheets or other cloud platforms.
The most common type of marketing automation integration is by adding a 3rd party form on a website. Other times, it could be adding custom event tracking to activities users are performing while browsing. We’ve learned about the benefits and limitations of these platforms, and we can help you access the decision making data that you need.
Chatbots are all the rage right now and for a good reason. Websites that need to provide customer support find that they can help their customers faster, with high reliability, and that means their customers get better overall customer service. Bots can help reduce the overhead of your support staff and help your customers faster.
Before we begin, it’s essential to understand the pains we are trying to solve as well as the expected gains you are trying to achieve. The first step in this process is to learn as much as we can about the needs of our clients.
Here we need to prove that the solution will indeed perform as we intend. Think about how a carpenter will “rough-in” something to make sure it fits. We do the same thing, make sure it works before fully committing, we meet again to review.
Designers will evaluate what parts of the solution are customizable and how we can fit this with our client’s brand. The development team fully hooks up the solution and makes sure it is thoroughly tested and will be bug-free when it goes live.
It’s important to us that our clients feel supported when they launch new features. That’s why we fix any issues found up to 30 days after your website goes live. Most of our clients that have interactive websites also work with us to support their website.
The agency you are partnered with must know how to integrate with payment gateways securely and properly. Personal Identifiable Information (PII) should be protected, and PCI best practices should be followed. Here is a list of specific payment gateways that we have experience with:
Typically, we see this go one of two ways. Firstly, you are already working with a solution, and you know that it needs to be implemented, like a Hubspot form. The other, a decision hasn’t been made, and you are looking for help. Here are some common types of integrations.
The first method is through APIs, think of an API as a way for two computers to talk to each other directly. It can be a web browser communicating with a remote service, or one application talking to another application behind the scenes.
A webhook is a type of callback from one service to another, usually triggered by some event. When that event occurs, the source site makes an HTTP request to the URL configured for the webhook.
A bot or widget is typically some JavaScript code that you can easily add to any page.
We prefer you to contact us and discuss it. It’s a lot easier to start working with an agency to arrive at these decisions collaboratively. At our agency, we perform research on your options and put together the pros and cons of multiple options. Based on the features and your needs, we provide a recommendation that demonstrates the benefit as well as the tradeoffs (there are always tradeoffs).
Sometimes the tradeoffs of using an existing solution are just too much, and you might decide not to use it. That’s ok, depending on how important the functionality is to your business, you might consider having the specific solution you are looking for custom-built for you. With custom web development, you own the solution vs. lease it. Usually, the upfront costs are higher, but you have the full ability to customize it.
Our customer-focused team is ready to support your next initiative.
