Shopify Automotive Stores: Why to Migrate Your Auto Parts Business to Shopify

In the past, most of us had to visit our local mechanic or auto shop for automotive parts. However, the future of selling auto parts and accessories is online.

The global automotive ecommerce market size is currently valued at $75.28 billion. Experts predict this market to exhibit a CAGR of 16% by 2029—reaching an impressive $213 billion.

If you own an existing automotive parts business, you should consider creating an e-commerce store to meet the increased demand for automotive components online. Keep reading to learn how to migrate your auto parts business to Shopify.

Why Start an Automotive Parts Business on Shopify?

Some of the factors fueling the growth of the automotive parts market include:

• Increased average age of vehicles
• Increased number of automotive dealers with an online presence
• Fast development of newer, more modern, and sophisticated automobile accessories

The abundance of new automobiles, auto parts, and components online is driving the growth of the ecommerce automotive market. Today, most customers prefer the ease of ordering car parts online.

While the market is competitive, vendors find success through competitive pricing models to compete with traditional retailers.

How to Build an Automotive Ecommerce Store on Shopify

Selling auto parts to automotive aficionados, DIY car owners, and repair shops may be a high-risk, high-reward business. There are no limits to what you can achieve if you bring your automotive parts business online.

Your auto parts ecommerce store’s success largely hinges on your store platform and design.

Several well-known brands use Shopify as their e-commerce platform, including Whole Foods, Sephora, and Fitbit. Many business owners prefer the Shopify platform because it’s easy to set up but offers customers a robust and user-friendly interface. More than 457 million consumers order from Shopify merchants each year.

Tesla Motors, the electric car company, is another major company on Shopify. The website’s responsiveness and clean design complement its products’ look, improving the user experience.

Depending on your chosen plan, your business may be up and operating in less than 30 minutes. Plus, Shopify has outstanding options and additional features for boosting the success of your new online business.

Create a Shopify Website

It’s easy to create a Shopify website from scratch. However, you can also take your pick of Shopify store themes (available in free and premium versions) specifically designed for your chosen sector.

You can create your website yourself if you’re up to the task. If your store requires unique shopping cart functions, custom design, setup support, or something else, consider hiring a Shopify Expert to get up and running more quickly.

Focus on Content

As you build your website, ensure you have the right amount of content—complete with high-resolution images and web copy written with SEO optimization in mind.

Use keyword-rich copy to boost your search engine results while informing your customers about your products. Before making a purchase, most customers will research the items they’re interested in. This means you should define your products to the last detail to earn your customers’ trust. Always indicate product material, function, size, inclusions, fitment compatibility, and other attributes in your product descriptions.

You can also include a product FAQ to highlight any questions a potential customer might have.

Also, don’t forget to use professional photographs. Most customers won’t purchase from auto stores unless they know what something looks like—and they’re more likely to abandon a purchase due to poor photography.

Professional photographs of your products will impress potential customers and enhance their online experience.

When you can, share closeups and photos of various perspectives. You can use photographs supplied by your suppliers or schedule photoshoots to take your own, which will better match any store branding you’ve created. When you can, share closeups and photos of various perspectives.

Complete Your Ecommerce Tech Stack

Technology solutions for virtually every ecommerce need exist, including specialized tools for inventory management, order processing, fulfillment, and everything in between. In fact, the pool of available solutions grows larger every day.

So, with so many different solutions, the key to success isn’t about selecting any particular platform or tool. Instead, it’s about securing the proper framework to experiment, grow, and scale your new ecommerce auto parts business effectively.

Avoid Monolithic Applications

As you research ecommerce solutions, you’ll come across monolithic applications. These are single-tiered, self-contained platforms that operate independently from other applications. While monolithic applications were effective as first-generation ecommerce platforms, they limit the growth of your business when compared with other, newer options.

The issues with monolithic applications become apparent when businesses try to innovate. Companies can quickly run into trouble when trying to innovate.

When using monolithic applications, all components are tightly coupled. This means that changing the logic of one part can affect all components connected to it—making it difficult to diagnose issues.

These interdependencies make changing to new or advanced technology, language, or framework challenging. Usually, the impact is not very well understood, requiring extensive manual testing.

Monolithic architecture can meet some of the needs of small business owners, as it is typically easy to test, develop, deploy, and scale horizontally. However, you’ll likely run into issues if you want to scale and innovate across channels and markets.

Use Composable Commerce Architecture

Composable applications are basically the opposite of monolithic ones. Composable architecture allows you to pick best-of-breed components and combine them into a custom application built for your business’s specific needs.

Composable architectures break down giant monoliths into smaller “microservices” that can be disassembled and assembled again to meet changing business requirements.

Composable architecture is made possible through APIs—these are what make all of your ecommerce applications work together.

For this reason, make sure that any platform you select allows for custom integrations through a well-documented and easy-to-use API. Your team can work with theirs to understand the business processes that will flow through the shared API—allowing you to anticipate and address any problems that may arise.

Look for Headless Commerce Solutions

Finally, you should opt for headless commerce solutions whenever possible. It is considered one of the easier ways to improve an ecommerce technology stack and address common shortcomings.

Headless commerce is a modern approach that allows companies to become more flexible and agile by separating the front and back end of their ecommerce solutions.

Compare this with traditional ecommerce platforms, where any change you make to the back end must also be done to the front end. This is because your back-end commerce functionality is coupled with your front-end framework, such as your website.

Headless commerce means that changes to data and functionality only need to be made in a single back-end, with all front-ends then having direct access to those changes. You then have a single source of truth that you can deploy across your website, customer service channels, mobile app, and more.

Why does this matter? As you separate the front and back end, you’re no longer limited to pre-defined themes or ecommerce suites that don’t have everything you need. Instead, you have the complete flexibility to integrate with any “head” (or channel) you like.

In a world with available solutions for every pain point, you don’t want to end up in a situation where your website, app, or other front-end platform dictates what you can and can’t use.

Some other vital reasons to switch to a headless commerce approach include the ability to:

• Improve the digital experience on your existing website, applications, and mobile apps
• Cultivate a true omnichannel experience for your customers
• Reach customers across touchpoints
• Speed up developer workflows and eliminate downtime

Your automotive parts business would greatly benefit from one central API to manage all commerce operations.

Essential Business Functions for Automotive Ecommerce Tech Stacks

Once you’ve established the basic guidelines for your technology stack, you can begin thinking more about your specific requirements. Here are the key components of an ecommerce business to focus on building your ecommerce tech stack around.

Content Management

For your auto parts business to be successful, you must be able to provide an online shopping experience that is functional, visually pleasing, and enjoyable. Therefore, one of your first steps is to select a content management platform. This isn’t easy, but it is critical.

The good news? Shopify offers a growing list of ecommerce CMS features, including customization settings and advanced search features.

Product Information Management (PIM)

Product information management tools help you store, organize and handle your product data, content, and other information and materials needed to market your products—including product reviews.

A PIM centralizes all your content into one place, making it easy to update and deploy across channels.

Digital Asset Management (DAM)

Like PIM, digital asset management tools provide a systematic approach to efficiently retrieving, storing, managing, organizing, and distributing any digital assets (such as product images, documents, files, and more).

Payment Processing

You can’t run an ecommerce business without a payment processor.

When choosing a payment processing partner, consider their acceptance of different types of payments in conjunction with their fraud prevention services.

Find a secure and trustworthy payment processing company that flags and rejects suspicious transactions. Security, encryption, and ease of integration are among the most important factors when choosing a payment processor.

Inventory and Order Management

Investing in warehousing, inventory, and order management technology can lower your inventory costs and protect your cash flow, all while improving customer experience.

Use a reliable, user-friendly, robust inventory management solution to manage your parts inventory effectively. With inventory management software, you gain access to features that help you automate otherwise tedious, error-prone processes.

Fulfillment and Shipping

Fulfillment issues are one of the quickest and most common ways to get into trouble when running an ecommerce store. Choosing the right ecommerce fulfillment and shipping tools will help you manage and forecast stock levels effectively.

Business Intelligence and Analytics

Finally, you can have the most advanced software in use, but if you don’t know how to analyze the data they produce, they won’t be worth much. Business intelligence dashboards are critical for this reason.

With a birds-eye view of your data, you can obtain insight into your most profitable sources, products, and channels.

It’s Time to Build Your Shopify Automotive Store

Customers expect brands to provide them with convenient shopping experiences alongside trustworthy products. If you’re contemplating selling automotive parts online, consider migrating your auto parts business to Shopify.

With the Shopify platform and the advice above, you can easily set up an auto parts ecommerce store. Talk with an expert today if you’re looking for help implementing these ecommerce tactics and more.