What do ecommerce tools do? How do they help your business? These are all very important questions. But that’s not why I wanted to write this article. Recently I was doing some research into which ecommerce tool provides the best service for my own business, and realized that many of us are faced with a similar problem.
WooCommerce
For ecommerce store owners who love WordPress and are comfortable with it, WooCommerce is a good pick. A free option, it’s a little difficult to scale but scores well for site visitor experience. You’ll need to buy upgrades if you want all the bells and whistles, but a site built on WooCommerce can compete with those built on some of the more expensive paid carts.
Ecommerce Research Tools
Growing a successful ecommerce business is all about gaining a competitive advantage. If you’re clueless about your competitors, you lose.
Most good ecommerce research tools are accessibly priced or offer trial versions, making them available to all business owners. Of the hundreds of options that exist, we’ve identified three most ecommerce businesses can benefit from using.
JungleScout
Unless you’re in the business of white labeling or manufacturing your products, one of your store’s top concerns is the merchandise you carry. Jungle Scout helps you to identify the top products for your niche and to track their performance on Amazon.
If you are selling on Amazon and from your own site, it’s an intelligent choice for product research. Pricing for the app ranges from a $29 monthly subscription which lets a single user track up to 40 products to a $197 one-time fee for the app’s Chrome extension that provides details on profit margins, item trends, monthly revenue, and more. Check out these Jungle Scout alternatives.
SEMRush
Ecommerce business owners who want insight into their page’s performance, top keywords in their niche, and their competitors can benefit from SEMRush. This ecommerce research tool tracks more than 106 million keywords and tracking more than 87 million domains.
You can audit your own site or your competitors and receive a report indicating strengths and weaknesses of a complete site, compare sites in your niche, improve SEO and identify keywords, or analyze ad campaign performance. Prices range from a monthly subscription of $69.95 to a yearly fee of $5,499.50 based on the number, purpose, and depth of reports you need.
Ahrefs
I use Ahrefs for understanding the web marketing strategies of ecommerce sites. You can easily figure out a competitor’s marketing strategy by looking at their backlinks. If you could only afford one SEO, research tool – it would be Ahrefs. It’s a great all in one tool but does lack some deeper features like content analysis and link auditing.
Linkio
Linkio is a useful competitive analysis tool for marketers looking to improve their rankings through link building but aren’t sure how many links to build or how the competition is ranking. Using Linkio’s combination of APIs and crawlers, you can create a link building blueprint that answers questions related to quantity and types of links to build. In addition, a rank tracker and backlink monitoring module helps track progress and an email module helps you automate the blogger outreach.
Ecommerce Business Tools
Once you have a store, you’ve got to fill it with inventory, keep track of your employees or outsource workers, track your budget, and tackle the day to day financials. Starting with a good task manager helps make the mountain of tasks facing you feel a little more manageable, and tracking your time (and your employees) helps keep you on target.
Look for tools that streamline your business processes in a way that meshes with your own natural system of organization. Do the features offered match the tasks you need to do, or are they more like shiny objects that distract you from doing what you need to?
The tools below are my go-to choices for keeping operations running smoothly. Take a look at them, give free trials a chance if their function matches your business and a free trial is offered if a particular tool looks like a good fit for your ecommerce store.
Monday
Monday is the productivity tool of choice for our team at Ecommerce CEO. In addition to being a good task manager, we use Monday to manage our projects, leads, content calendar and processes. At first, it was a bit overwhelming, as most highly flexible tools are. But now that we have the hang of it, I can’t imagine life without it.
Sourcify
A matchmaking service for companies looking to manufacture a product and manufacturers looking for clients, Sourcify reduces the risk associated with the manufacturing process by vetting their manufacturers. The service provides a money back guarantee if store owners aren’t happy with the final product. Sourcify also provides project management tools to smooth the production process and provides users with bids from three manufacturers for each project. There are three pricing plans, starting at $399. The primary difference between plans is the number of units per production run.
Veeqo
Veeqo is an inventory management solution that helps small businesses selling on multiple channels stay on top of orders and avoid overselling. Veeqo offers over 40 integrations to pull in inventory from all of your channels in real-time, updating all of your stores when you make a sale. Control exactly how much stock shows for every store, keeping your inventory levels 100% accurate.
Tickspot
This time management software makes keeping projects on budget an easy task. Users can log hours, track the amount of time spent on each task, take notes, and jump between multiple timers based on the task they are working on at the moment. Ecommerce store owners can make use of TickSpot’s report functions to keep an eye on project budgets and productivity, assign tasks to members of their team, or set recurring projects from within the app. Pricing ranges from free for a single project to $149 for unlimited projects.
Asana
Available to businesses and individuals, Asana is a task management SaaS platform that allows task assignment, scheduling, and tracking. Files can be imported or linked to from within the platform and team members receive reminders for upcoming and recently missed deadlines. Discussion boards and team conversations allow for clear communication and collaboration from anywhere in the world. Many freelancers are already using Asana, making this a natural choice for managing your outsourced tasks, including content marketing and content creation. Most small teams can get by with the free membership, but Asana Premium is also affordably priced, ranging from $6.25-11.99/month based on payment options and number of users.
Inventory Source
Available as a fully-automated SaaS ($199/month) or solely for inventory management ($50/month), Inventory Source automatically syncs your inventory, updates your website, and integrates ordering and tracking functionality. You can buy additional features like Push to eBay and a Turnkey Shopify website.
Inventory Source can save you the embarrassment of “out of stock” messages on popular products on your site. Over 100 drop shipping companies are integrated with Inventory Source, but if your preferred vendor is not on the list, you can add them. Inventory Source has more than 20 integrations, including Shopify, WooCommerce, 3D Cart, BigCommerce, Walmart, Amazon, Jet, Magento, X-Cart, and Ordoro. Custom integrations are also available.
Oberlo
An Inventory Source competitor, Oberlo’s interface is more user-friendly, but many of the functions are similar. The software helps ecommerce store owners import, customize, and track drop-shipped products. Oberlo also has features to help store owners locate alternate suppliers, track sales, and connect existing store products with Oberlo suppliers. There are three pricing plans available, ranging from a no-cost option for stores with 500 products and 50 orders or less per month to a $79.90/month option for unlimited orders and 30,000 products. The caveat? Oberlo is made specifically for Shopify and sources from AliExpress.
Shipwire
Using a network of third-party warehouses and Ingram Micro’s fulfillment centers, Shipwire keeps your inventory securely stored and close to your customers. The idea behind this SaaS inventory management, tracking, and shipping business is solid. Just one catch: Shipwire is facing numerous customer service complaints due to unclear billing practices and faulty shipping practices. Pricing information is available for download on their site, but be aware that a minimum $500/month shipping fee is charged by Shipwire to all customers, regardless of the number and value of orders shipped.
TradeGecko
Founded by a former clothing retailer, TradeGecko is designed to make the backend of retail easy. The company offers four monthly plans: Basic ($99/mo), Business ($249/mo), Business Premium ($449/month, $359/month if paid annually), and Enterprise ($999/month, $799/month if paid annually).
Tackling tasks like inventory management, order syncing, product bundling, and running reports, TradeGecko helps you avoid oversells and stay on top of inventory without the need for spreadsheets and headaches. The startup is still ironing out some bugs, but is quickly gaining recognition as a vital part of many small and medium ecommerce stores. It’s compatible with Magento, Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce, and several top tools.
Shipping Easy
With more than 75 features designed to ease the process of inventory and product management, shipping, and tracking, Shipping Easy is an ecommerce workhorse. More than 50 app and ecommerce store integrations are offered for this SaaS, and shipping is handled through DHL, UPS, FedEx, and the USPS. The four standard pricing options range from $29-$99 per month and enterprise pricing is also available at $149/month.
Wave
A free alternative to apps like Xero and Zoho Books, Wave is a fast-growing accounting and invoicing platform for small and online businesses. Enterprise pricing is also available. Internationally supported and based in Canada, Wave integrates with Stripe, Workato, Paypal, Shoeboxed and Google Drive, among other apps. Features include direct depositing, payroll, yearly record keeping, invoicing, tax calculations, tax deductions, and receipts management. The interface is a little slow and the UX could be better, but this is a solid free app for ecommerce stores with small budgets.
EcomDash
This web-based multichannel inventory management tool has an iPhone app for running your business on the go and a user-friendly, intuitive design. Pricing starts at $50/month, but a free trial is available for ecommerce store owners who prefer to test the waters before committing. Solutions for enterprises with more than 10k orders per month are also available.
EcomDash offers a buffet of features ranging from activity tracking to inventory optimization, order processing, and sales reporting. Integrations include BigCommerce, Shopify, and WooCommerce carts as well as QuickBooks Online for financials.
Conclusion
If you’re an online entrepreneur or run an online business, you understand how important online tools are. From chat apps that let you communicate instantly with customers to workflow and project management software, there’s a wide range of software available—so much that it may be difficult to decide which one is best for your business.