If you’re running an Ecommerce business, then you probably know how important it is to be productive in order to succeed. The best way to put productivity into action is by using specific free sales tools. That is why today I’d like to share my favorite tools that can be useful for your business, regardless of its size or industry. Free sales tools are going to help you save time, increase the efficiency of your team and have more time for working on the strategy.
Productivity is a multi-faceted thing that has to do with management, human relations, and personal discipline. The best productivity tools are the ones that help improve all of these aspects of your life.
Everyone wants to increase their sales and learn best productivity tools for ecommerce. If you want to run your business effectively, you need some free sales tools that help you in achieving more. But finding out about them isn’t so easy these days.
In today’s busy and fast-paced world, it is essential to use top tools and techniques to save time and money. Ecommerce business owners have one imperative need: increase the number of sales while saving time and money. To get started, you should take advantage of productivity software that has been developed specially for ecommerce. In this article we cover listing or bulk uploading tool and help desk software among other useful productivity tools.
Our criteria
To run a profitable online store, you need to think about many things at once. On top of setting the strategy, you also need to attract customers, maintain your website, provide excellent service, and manage inventory.
There’s no one e-commerce tool that does everything for you. Besides, having a computer program do your work is not the end goal. Technology will never replace your keen intuition and judgment.
Instead, we rounded up this list of tools that help you do routine and repetitive tasks faster and more efficiently so you can focus on more important things.
The productivity tools we recommend fall into four categories:
- Time and productivity measurement
- Collaboration
- Automation
- Inventory management
Toggl
Toggl works just like a traditional timesheet and has the bonus of allowing you to track and assign specific tasks.
- Pricing: Free up to five users. Paid plans range from $9-18 per user/month.
- Pros:
- Its task-specific tracking is phenomenal. With a small enough team, this could be all the project management you need.
- Cons:
- Toggl lacks other features you might want to integrate with your timesheets, like invoice scheduling. This can be an issue if you frequently work with contractors and freelancers.
Freshbooks
Freshbooks is cloud accounting software. It’s a solid alternative for businesses tired of using Excel spreadsheets for tracking hours and payments.
- Pricing: Plans start at $4.50/month for up to five billable clients. At $15/Month, you can bill 500 clients.
- Pros:
- Includes invoicing. Freshbooks can be your one-stop time tracking and accounting software.
- Designed for Small and Mid-size Enterprises (SMEs).
- Cons:
- Limited number of clients.
- The dashboard and integrations are a bit lacking compared to newer SaaS options.
Everhour
With its clean dashboard, competitive price, and integration options, there’s a lot to like about this simple hour tracker.
- Pricing: Free – $5/month
- Pros:
- Cons:
- Timer quirks take some getting used to.
- Not the best option if you work with contractors or have a variety of billing rates.
- No phone app.
Freedom
This is not a time tracker but a distraction blocker. Anything that helps your team stay on-task and off distracting sites increases productivity. Freedom blocks certain sites or the entire internet for a set period of time. Once it’s running, it can’t be turned off until the session is over.
- Pricing: $2.42/Month (billed yearly) or “forever” for $64 – 129.50 (they’re constantly running sales).
- Pros:
- Completely shuts out distractions.
- Great for crunch time as deadlines approach.
- Cons:
- More suited for makers, like copywriters and designers, than salespeople. Often, salespeople need to be connected and reachable as part of their job.
RescueTime
A time management tool that turns productivity into a game. RescueTime works sort of like Screen Time reports on an iPhone; it monitors activity and gives you a score based on how much time you spent on-task. This app is popular with individuals looking to improve their time management skills.
- Pricing: $6 per team member/month
- Pros:
- Detailed, intuitive insights into browsing and work habits. It’s like having your own productivity coach.
- Very customizable. You set working hours and what’s considered work. For example, your social media person won’t be penalized for spending time on Facebook.
- Cons:
- Pricey for what it is.
- A little bit “big brother-ish” for some offices.
MailChimp
Contrary to what most people think, email marketing is definitely not dead yet. In fact, it has become even more relevant this year. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing can yield an ROI of approximately 4,300% for businesses in the US. Furthermore, Salesforce reports that email marketing makes of 49% of the respondent business’ revenues. With these stats alone, we can see how important email marketing still is and will continue to be in the years to come.
For efficient email marketing, many online businesses use Mailchimp. Mailchimp is one of the most well known email marketing tools in the internet and offers features specifically handy with building dedicated newsletter and promotional emails that could be handy to help reactivate and re-target existing customers. Some of their features would include email campaign customization, A/B testing, social media integration, and mobile email marketing functions.
FollowUp.cc
Whenever you sell products or promote services online, you need to follow up. Following up on customers is extremely important because it can bring in sales from people who did not buy on the spot. To optimize this, you need software that automates the sales process.
One tool that can do this is Followup.cc. Followup.cc is a software that can automate the process of prospecting, pitching a sales idea, and following up on leads.
Hootsuite
These days, social media is one of the biggest and most popular marketing mediums on the internet. Because of this, most e-commerce businesses are already going toward social media in order to further promote their brands. Social Examiner reports that more than 50% of marketers say using social media has boosted the sales of their businesses for the last two years.
Hootsuite is one of the most popular social media management tools in the web and handles more than 30 social media platforms. With this handy monitoring tool, you are able to manage, schedule and create posts for all of your social media accounts from just one tool. This will save time by keeping all your accounts in one convenient dashboard.
Bit.ly
Bit.ly is a link shortening app. Most of our campaign URLs are very long and which doesn’t really appeal to regular internet users. For this purpose, Bit.ly was created in order to shorten your campaign URL link. Aside from just shorting it, Bit.ly also tracks the analytics of the links so that you know how your campaign is doing and how it is performing.
Exit Bee
Exit Bee analyzes the behavior of the visitors of a website to find out how they interact and analyze conversion rates.This took looks at things like the cursor movements of a visitor in order to know which parts of the website are clicked the most. Exit Bee enables you to create exit intent campaigns for re-targeting the visitors who exit, and reduce cart abandonment. All of these contribute to boosting your e-commerce website’s sales.
Zopim
63% of customers who shop online are more likely to return to a website with a live chat system. Furthermore, another report states that 62% of online customers are more likely to make a purchase in a website if there is a live chat system available. With these stats, we can see just how effective a live chat system can be in increasing conversion rates and ultimately, sales.
Enter Zopim, a live chat system that can be installed on to your website that will allow you to chat with your customers in real-time to address any concerns or aid any purchases. Directly engaging with your customers is a great way to improve experiences.
SearchSpring
SearchSpring is a program that connect potential customers with products that are relevant to them. For example, if the data shows that a certain customer is into tech gadgets, then SearchSpring will feature all the tech gadgets that your website is selling.
It’s a great site navigation solution that can increase customer experience as a whole by showing customers that you know exactly what they want. This would possibly translate to more purchases, because you can show customers what they want without them having to look too far.
Kissmetrics
An analytics tool can help you understand your customers better by monitoring their activity while they are on your website. This in turn, will help you make decisions that can switch visitors into actual customers. While there were some analytics tools mentioned above, it is important to have one main comprehensive analytics tool to give you your whole market data.
Kissmetrics is one of the best tools that can gather data on customers. Kissmetrics can show you what your customers are looking for when they visit your site, and the behaviors that lead to a sale.
Hubstaff
Hubstaff makes it easy for e-commerce teams to track time at home or even in the office. It’s an excellent tool for managing virtual assistants, too.
With real-time productivity measurement, you gain visibility into how your team works without interrupting productive time.
Built-in automations help you save time on tedious back-office tasks like payroll and budget management. The detailed reports show you how to save time and money. In other words, you get more done when you work smarter with Hubstaff.
Track time by project or task for more valuable insights. This detailed information helps you find and eliminate time wasters. Maybe those quick social media checks aren’t so quick, or maybe you underestimated how long it takes to add products to the website.
Hubstaff’s time tracking reports are even more powerful when paired with the other productivity data the app gathers.
For example, URL and app tracking shows you which tools and websites your team uses most often. If you pay for tools that your team doesn’t use, consider canceling the subscription. Or, if specific apps or websites are distracting your team, give a gentle reminder.
Hubstaff automatically creates timesheets from hours logged. There’s no need for manual time cards or spreadsheets, which means you also eliminate the time and errors that come with manual entries.
You can customize rates for each project or team member, and Hubstaff will take care of the payroll calculation. Managers can approve timesheets and pay employees via integrations with:
- PayPal
- Payoneer
- TransferWise
- Bitwage
- Gusto
Hubstaff integrates with over 40 different apps. Keep using the business and project management tools you already have. Popular integrations include:
- ActiveCollab
- Asana
- GitLab
- GitHub
- Insightly
- Slack
- QuickBooks
- Gusto
- Salesforce
- ZenDesk
- Zapier
Who is it for?
E-commerce businesses should consider Hubstaff if they want to:
- Better understand what their employees do during work hours
- Uncover and fix bottlenecks
- Measure and increase productivity
Build your ecommerce website today
When it comes to creating a successful ecommerce site, design is one of the most important things business owners and marketers need to consider. After all, your visitors can form an opinion about your site after just 50 milliseconds. First impressions, much like book covers, matter.
Conclusion
Productivity and efficiency are the most important factors in running a successful home-based ecommerce business. Getting work done on time is essential for growing your business and earning money. Sales productivity levels can have a significant impact on your business growth. In today’s competitive market, eCommerce businesses have to work hard to maximize their sales and optimize their efforts.
Every Seller needs to keep their eye on sales performance. The strength of your sales will determine whether you are going to surpass expectations or fall way below the line. What’s more, you need to have your finger on the pulse so that you can manage product promotions and inventory in real time.