Simplifying the new post-purchase tech stack - 2026 & beyond
Ecommerce brands know that building a best-in-class post-purchase journey is key for driving customer loyalty and retention.
The problem? Understanding where to start. With more than 8,000 business apps available on the Shopify App store alone, you could spend weeks researching all of your options and still not know which way to go. So many apps have just one function – order tracking, returns management, or analytics, just to name a few. Simply stacking them on top of one another can lead to a disjointed experience for both your team and your customers, and may result in poor visibility across all of your operational channels.
Rather than piecing together a post-purchase solution out of fragmented technologies, look for a complete post-purchase technology platform that can bring together all the features you need in one centralized dashboard. By adopting a comprehensive post-purchase operations platform, you’ll be able to onboard quickly and activate all the tools you need to delight your customers in the seconds, days, and weeks after their purchase, from order tracking through to returns and exchange management.
Why a cohesive post-purchase experience is critical
There are plenty of great tools out there – but stack on too many, and you risk creating a bewildering user experience for your shoppers that doesn’t maintain a consistent brand tone. That can lead to higher bounce rates, cart abandonments, and even usability issues.
It causes problems on the merchant side, too. You might have limited visibility around all of your data from different channels, and struggle with ensuring that integrations work seamlessly. Plus, the costs of a big tech stack can add up fast: Enterprise businesses lost an average of $104 million last year due to mismanagement of their tech stacks, which included around 625 total tools. While your business may not be at that scale, even smaller tech investments can drag on your profit margins and hinder your growth.
By embracing a unified post-purchase platform, you’ll be able to build an integrated system for managing the entire post-purchase journey, resulting in a superior and more efficient experience for both your customers and your team.
Auditing your post-purchase tech stack
If you’re struggling to keep up with your ecommerce tech stack, it’s a good time to go Marie Kondo on your apps and discover which ones truly bring you (and your customers) joy.
Chances are, the niche apps that serve a single function (but still cost hundreds each month) don’t pass the sniff test. Conduct an audit of your ecommerce software to evaluate them according to criteria such as:
- Monthly or annual cost: How much are you paying for each tool? Make sure that you’re factoring in any add-ons you’ve purchased, and any additional costs you may face based on scale as your business grows.
- Functionality: Look at your use case for each tool, and identify redundancies between different tools.
- Integration capabilities: Does the solution integrate seamlessly with your ecommerce platform and other technology you’re using?
- Adoption: Are your team members even using the tools? Look at whether you’re paying for technology that’s just collecting dust.
Work with your brand’s IT department to determine which tools are critical to your business’ operations – and which ones can be easily replaced with an complete platform.
Choosing a complete post-purchase solution
If you’re ready to cut costs, reduce confusion, improve data visibility, and build a consistent brand experience, then it’s time to make the transition to a complete post-purchase platform.
Your solution should include features such as:
- Real-time order tracking: Give your shoppers visibility on their order status from the moment they’ve checked out until the package arrives at their door. Your solution should offer branded order tracking pages, with notifications available via SMS or email to alert shoppers when their delivery status has changed. Providing transparency around order status will ensure peace of mind for your shoppers, and cut down on “Where’s My Order?” customer service inquiries.
- Self-service returns management: Shoppers shouldn’t need to wait for customer support to approve a return. Instead, set up a self-service returns portal where shoppers can take care of it themselves. If you have different returns policies for different item categories or events, you can set up custom Workflows that ensure each returned item is handled properly, saving your CX team time on managing exceptions.
- A streamlined exchange tool: As many as 30% of sales can end in a product return. But by making it easy for shoppers to exchange one product for another, you can retain more of the revenue from those returns and boost your customer loyalty rates. With Loop’s Instant Exchange tool, customers can exchange their product for any item from your inventory, even if it costs more or less than the original item.
- Fraud detection and mitigation: Returns fraud and abuse is escalating in ecommerce, and it can have a serious impact on your brand’s bottom line. Don’t wait until the abuse has already happened to act: With Loop’s fraud detection tool, you can identify key risk indicators for fraudulent return transactions in real time, and flag them for manual review. Loop’s fraud tool can correctly identify $0.87 of every dollar of confirmed fraud – helping your brand protect its profits without damaging the customer experience.
- Returns analytics: Your solution should make it easy to understand which products are being returned most frequently, and more importantly, why they’re being returned. With detailed analytics to monitor trends in product returns, you’ll be able to optimize your product development and marketing to lower your return rates in the future.
By adopting a unified post-purchase platform that integrates seamlessly with the Shopify ecommerce platform, you’ll be able to bring together all of your ecommerce data in one place, and provide a consistent and streamlined experience for your customers and your operations team. Pare down your tech stack, and invest in a multi-functional platform that can help you deliver a superior post-purchase experience from start to finish.
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Retain more revenue with Loop today
With Loop, your brand can offer everything from refunds to direct exchanges to shopper incentives and more. Even better? These exchanges build your business.