E-Commerce Software Resources

Articles, Glossary Terms, Discussions, and Reports to expand your knowledge on E-Commerce Software

Resource pages are designed to give you a cross-section of information we have on specific categories. You'll find articles from our experts, feature definitions, discussions from users like you, and reports from industry data.

Contents

E-Commerce Software Articles

What Is Social Commerce, and Why We Created a New Category for It

The fact that social media is critical for e-commerce is obvious. There are billions of users on social media platforms, and many of them buy online. It is estimated that the number of social media users worldwide will reach 5.85 billion by 2027. In addition, sellers also use social media to share and promote their products—the value of social commerce sales worldwide is estimated at 2.9 trillion dollars by 2026.

by Gabriel Gheorghiu

COVID-19 Drives E-Commerce Growth for Brick and Mortar Retailers

The coronavirus pandemic has compelled consumers to stay home in quarantine, driving some brick and mortar stores to either move online or adopt a combination of both in-store (curbside pickup) and online sales methods for the first time.

by Nathan Calabrese

E-Commerce Software Glossary Terms

Customer Experience Management

Customer experience management (CXM) prioritizes personalized experiences at every customer interaction. Learn more about its benefits for businesses.

by Holly Landis

Headless CMS

A headless content management system is back-end software that allows connection to any presentation layer via application programming interfaces (APIs.)

by Kelly Fiorini

Go-to-Market Strategy

A go-to-market strategy is an all-encompassing plan for launching a new product or service. Learn how to create a GTM strategy and why it’s important.

by Holly Landis

E-Commerce Software Discussions

Which visual customization platforms integrate cleanly with production and inventory management systems?

Question for the ops folks who've connected a product configurator to an ERP and lived with the result. Which visual customization platforms actually integrate cleanly with production and inventory systems, so a customer's design becomes a manufacturable order without someone retyping it?

The front end is the easy half. A shopper picks a colour, adds a name, sees the preview, pays. The hard half is what happens next: does the order arrive in production as a print-ready file or a bill of materials, does stock get decremented for the right variant, and does anyone have to open the design to check it? What I'd want a platform to prove:

Output the factory can use: print-ready PDF with bleed, a BOM, or a CAD drawing, generated automatically
Stock awareness: a variant that's out of stock can't be selected
Order data that lands in the ERP, OMS or fulfilment partner with the configuration attached
Pricing computed from the same rules production uses, not a separate table
A preflight or validation step that catches an unmanufacturable choice before checkout

From the Visual Product Customization Software category on G2, four cover different parts of that chain:

DesignNBuy (4.2/5, 45+ reviews): Built for print. CMYK-accurate print-ready PDFs with crop marks, automated preflight checks, and print job management from order to delivery, plugging into Shopify, WooCommerce and Adobe Commerce. E-commerce integration scores 0.89. Trade-off: the production side is print production; it isn't a general ERP link.
Brikl (4.3/5, 20+ reviews): B2B storefronts for team wear and promotional products with order management built in, integrating with 12 fulfilment providers including Printful and Taylor OnDemand. E-commerce integration scores 0.93. Trade-off: industry-specific, so it's the wrong shape for a manufacturer.
Epicor CPQ (4.5/5, 95+ reviews): Formerly KBMax. Generates prices, quotes, CAD drawings and bills of materials automatically from a 2D or 3D configuration, enforcing manufacturing rules at the point of choice. 3D Configurator scores 0.93. Trade-off: configurator changes need a specialist, and it's priced for mid-size and enterprise manufacturers.
Configure One Cloud (4.5/5, 110+ reviews): From Revalize, with 20+ years in manufacturing CPQ. Quotes carry production data, and ERP and CRM connectivity is the core of the product. E-commerce integration scores 0.90. Trade-off: it's a CPQ that visualises, not a visual tool that quotes, so the 3D is functional rather than photoreal.

For anyone who's run one of these past go-live: where did the "integrates with production" promise quietly stop being true, and was it the file, the stock, or the pricing that didn't match?

The most revealing test may be changing something after the initial integration works. Inventory rules, SKUs, pricing, and manufacturing constraints rarely stay static. I’d want to know whether those changes propagate cleanly without rebuilding mappings. Which part of the integration required the most maintenance after go-live?

Answered: Shubham Gupta on September 2, 2026

Your answer

What personalized product customization options do online shoppers actually prefer?

Hey G2 e-commerce reviewers and researchers. What personalized product customization options do online shoppers actually prefer, as opposed to the ones that look impressive in a vendor demo?

The obvious answer is "more options." The evidence in this category points the other way. Across the Visual Product Customization Software category on G2, reviewers rate real-time preview the highest of any feature group, at 0.89 on average, and virtual reality the lowest at 0.83. That gap is the whole story: shoppers don't want to explore, they want to see their choice, right now, before they commit. The options that hold up are the ones with an immediate visual answer.

Four kinds of customization, and the tool that defines each:

Text and image personalization with a live preview. The most common form, and the one small stores adopt first. Kickflip (4.6/5, 115+ reviews) shows the personalized product from multiple angles with pricing that updates as the shopper picks, and holds the highest Satisfaction score in the category at 97. Trade-off: 2D previews, so it doesn't rotate.
Colour, material and component choice in 3D. For furniture, machinery and anything sold in variants. Dopple (4.5/5, 55+ reviews) scores 0.96 on 3D Configurator and 0.97 on 360 View, both near the top of the category. Trade-off: 3D assets have to be built for every product first.
Print-on-demand design. Shoppers laying out their own artwork on a product. DesignNBuy (4.2/5, 45+ reviews) runs a browser design studio used by 2,000+ print businesses, with templates and print-ready output. Trade-off: 3D Configurator scores 0.67, well below the 0.87 average, because it's a print tool first.
Try-on and see-it-in-my-room. The AR layer. Zakeke (4.6/5, 85+ reviews) bundles virtual try-on and AR view with web-to-print and 3D configuration for 10,000+ retailers. Trade-off: AR is the feature shoppers rate lowest across the category, so it earns its place for glasses, jewellery and large furniture, not for a mug.

Cylindo's own case claims a 35% lift in conversion and an 88% lift in average order value from 3D visuals, but that's a vendor figure, and it's a furniture number.

For anyone who has watched the analytics after adding one of these: which customization option did shoppers actually use, and which one did you build and then quietly turn off?

The strongest signal here is that shoppers value certainty more than novelty: a fast, accurate preview of the exact configuration they chose usually matters more than adding another customization mode. I’d compare feature usage, abandonment, and conversion lift separately for live preview, 3D, and AR to see which one actually earns its complexity.

Answered: Darshayita Thakur on August 27, 2026

Your answer

Which review management software offers strong integrations with CRM and POS systems?

Hi G2 community, direct question from someone mapping this category: which review management software offers integrations with CRM and POS systems that go deeper than a logo wall? The difference I care about is direction: a real integration means the CRM or POS triggers the review request (a closed deal, a checkout) and review data flows back into the record, not a nightly CSV. Comparing review management software, four stand out with G2's current numbers:

Birdeye (4.7, 4,205+ reviews): the integration catalog is the pitch, connecting the CRMs and POS systems local businesses already run so requests fire off a closed sale or job with no manual exports.
Reputation (4.5, 2,465+) (formerly Reputation.com): enterprise-lean connections with Salesforce among the CRMs, and review data flowing back for multi-location reporting.
Feefo (4.6, 155+): third-party integrations rate 88% on G2's feature data, with Salesforce commerce connections built around its verified-invitation model.
Yotpo (4.3, 265+): the ecommerce lane, where POS means Shopify POS and purchase events trigger requests in-store and online alike.

When two of these both claim your CRM on the integrations page, what actually separated them in practice: the direction the data flows, or who had to maintain the sync?

For me, the bigger differentiator would be who has to maintain the sync. Bi-directional data flow is useful, but if the integration constantly needs manual fixes or IT support, it stops feeling like a real integration pretty quickly.