Starting up an online enterprise is not without its difficulties. Whether you’re just about to launch your own brand or you’re already a veteran of the ecommerce game, there are many tools out there that can help you grow your business. However, no tool will do everything. Every ecommerce entrepreneur needs to find the tools that make sense for their business and complements their vision. There is no one way to be successful in the “shop anywhere” world of e commerce.
Are you interested in learning about the best tools for ecommerce success? Since the first tool introduced by man and later machine is invented, it was used to help in the completion of tasks. This makes infrastructure a tool used to complete tasks which are related, closely attached or closely related to ecommerce business like delivery, procurement, and marketing. These days, there are very many tools used in this kind of business but not all can be helpful and effective to your business, you need to know what tool will meet your demand.
The ecommerce marketplace is a massive place, with millions of products and services up for sale through online storefronts. It can be a tremendous place for small business owners to sell their wares, but even the biggest players in the game are relying on software to help them do their job better.
It’s no secret that tools are essential to running an online business. Tools help you measure your marketing strategies, enhance your website SEO and ensure your overall success. There are thousands of ecommerce tools out there, so it can be hard to know where to start. The goal here is to help you find the best tools for ecommerce success by listing a few that have consistently helped me manage my e-commerce business and can help you do the same.
What Does eCommerce Software Do?
What does ecommerce software do? While ecommerce software in itself can handle most of the important tasks relevant to running your store, it oftentimes integrates with other apps and services to help you do some other things right from within the system. With robust features and functionalities, coupled with powerful integration capabilities, ecommerce software becomes your all-in-one integrated platform that can do the following.
- Manage customers and orders. Managing a customer’s order from product selection to payment, to checkout and delivery is vital. Every order is a sales transaction that will impact your bottom line Hence, it must be done efficiently and conveniently for the customer. eCommerce software takes care of managing orders, check order status, and making quick changes if needed. On its own or with some other third-party app or service, it can handle payment processing, keep transaction records, manage customer information, create billing and invoicing, undertake accurate accounting, provide analytics and reporting, among others.
- Manage products and inventory. You get product specifics from SKUs and variations (size, color, quantity) to names and images, allowing you to organize and catalog items. You’re also notified and made aware if stocks are low and what particular items are fast-moving and need replenishing.
- Simplify marketing. Built-in SEO allows online stores to rank higher in organic search engines for increased online discovery and presence as well as lower customer acquisition costs.
- Automates shipping and taxation. Printing shipping labels, calculating sales taxes based on customer location, and sending notification emails to customers can be done automatically and more accurately.
- Enhance customer experience. ecommerce software is meant to enable customers quickly and efficiently find what they need in your store. Hosted solutions offer service-level agreements to guarantee 100% uptime and simple but robust website management, allowing you to provide your customers with the best online shopping experience.
Wix
When your budget is strapped, Wix is a strong option. A truly exceptional ecommerce website builder, it competes with WooCommerce and Shopify in the number of features offered. For ease of use, it’s as good as you can hope for from a free ecommerce platform, although if your store grows quickly, however, it can be a little tough to scale.
Shopify
When you’re tech skills are minimal and you don’t have the resources to hire a web developer, Shopify and similar ecommerce tools are a good pick. Feature-loaded, scalable, and offering numerous templates for different niches, Shopify stores are plug-and-play ecommerce. Ranking issues, clunky WordPress plugins, and URL structures that are difficult to modify can make increasing retention rates with on-site SEO tough, though.
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.
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.
Shopware AG – The eCommerce platform to drive your customers’ experience
About Shopware AG : Shopware is a leading open source eCommerce platform and trusted by over 80,000 businesses, including leading European brands, retailers and manufacturers across B2C and B2B industries. Shopware has a global network of 1,200+ solution and technology partners and an active developer community that gives customers access to robust third-party extensions and certified professional support.
Shopware AG eCommerce Features : Catalog Management, Channel Management, Customer Accounts, Email Marketing, Inventory Management, Loyalty Program, Multi-Store Management, Order Management, Product Configurator, Promotions Management, Returns Management, SEO Management, Shopping Cart
X-Cart – eCommerce PHP Shopping Cart Software
About X-Cart : Serial entrepreneur covered by Forbes, Financial Times and Tech Crunch, Ruslan Fazlyev, one of X-Cart founders and board member, was driven by an idea of democratization of eCommerce since he founded X-Cart back in 2001. Dropped out of college to concentrate on X-Cart, and bootstrapped the company to over 100 employees in five years. X-Cart was the first downloadable PHP/MySQL shopping cart platform in the world, so the interest was growing incredibly fast..
X-Cart eCommerce Features : Catalog Management, Channel Management, Customer Accounts, Email Marketing, Inventory Management, Loyalty Program, Multi-Store Management, Order Management, Promotions Management, SEO Management, Shopping Cart
Miva – eCommerce platform for B2B & B2C
About Miva : Miva, Inc. is the creator of a groundbreaking ecommerce platform which powers more conversions, better integrations, and lower total cost of ownership for a broad range of exciting American businesses. With comprehensive solutions for all facets of online selling, Miva delivers modern omnichannel ecommerce for every customer and every industry.
Miva eCommerce Features : Catalog Management, Channel Management, Customer Accounts, Email Marketing, Inventory Management, Loyalty Program, Multi-Store Management, Order Management, Product Configurator, Promotions Management, Returns Management, SEO Management, Shopping Cart
CS-Cart – Shopping cart eCommerce software
About CS-Cart : CS-Cart is a ecommerce solution used by over 35,000 merchants in 170 countries. The software comes with an open source code and is to be installed on the user’s server for full control over the online store. CS-Cart takes into account the latest ecommerce developments, including multi-store management, block manager, visual editor, advanced order management tool, powerful SEO functionality, etc.
CS-Cart eCommerce Features : Catalog Management, Channel Management, Customer Accounts, Email Marketing, Inventory Management, Loyalty Program, Multi-Store Management, Order Management, Product Configurator, Promotions Management, Returns Management, SEO Management, Shopping Cart
Ecwid (Web, iOS, Android)
If you’re launching an online store but want to minimize your initial outlay, Ecwid is the best place to begin: it’s got a great, free plan that lets you start selling your first 10 physical products, and affordable upgrade tiers starting at $15/month as you grow or need extra features. There are also no additional transaction fees on top of what your payment gateway charges, so it isn’t skimming any profit with hidden fees.
When you sign up, Ecwid gives you the option to integrate your store with your existing website—it supports most platforms like WordPress, Weebly, Drupal, and the like—or to set up your own store with a company.site domain name (although you can change that to a custom domain at any time by upgrading to the Venture plan).
At the Dashboard, you’re presented with a big, bold to-do list that walks you through setting up your site, adding your first products, localizing your store, and choosing how you want to deliver goods—and get paid for them. Working through the full list takes less than 15 minutes.
Where Ecwid stands out from some of the other free options is its customizability. In the sidebar, click Website and then Edit Site to open the site builder. To change the theme, click Themes and choose from one of the dozens of different options. Whatever you’re planning to sell, there’s a decent base theme to work from. Then, dive deeper into the intuitive builder to customize every section, text block, and photo.
While Ecwid is a great free option, it doesn’t skimp on the features with the paid plans. It integrates with social channels like Facebook and Instagram so you can sell directly to your followers, you can list your products on Amazon or eBay, or take payments in person. It automatically calculates tax, offers discounts, and tracks your inventory. If you set up a free store on Ecwid, you don’t have to worry about moving to a new platform if things take off.
Ecwid integrates with Zapier too, so you can connect it to all your other apps and do things like receive texts when someone places an order or track sales with Google Sheets.
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.
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.
What are the Advantages of eCommerce Software?
Why use ecommerce software? Because it has plenty of benefits for your business. Here are the advantages using of ecommerce software.
- Quickly start your online business. Most ecommerce software comes with easy to use online store builders with pre-built templates and an assortment of themes to help you build your store quickly. We’re talking here of minutes, not hours, if you’re familiar with drag-and-drop functions where you just put your store elements into place, add product images, put in descriptions and prices, set up your shopping cart, and you’re basically good to go.
- Your store is always open. One of the biggest business advantages of using ecommerce software is that it keeps your online store open, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Your business hours are not limited by physical location or the working schedule of your staff. Since everything is automated, you are not required to continually monitor your online store through your dashboard.
- You can sell to anyone, anywhere. In relation to the above, which allows you to sell anytime, you can sell to everyone from any location in the world. You have a global market for your products, unhindered by time, geography, and boundaries. You harness the internet’s connectivity to sell to anyone, wherever they may be.
- You save time, money, and resources. When you calculate your expenses, you will find that it costs you less operating an online store than running a brick-and-mortar store where you’ll have to rent expensive space in a prime location, employ sales staff, and pay for utilities, among others. Paying monthly for an affordable ecommerce platform that takes care of your online store reduces expenses and maximizes profits.
- You can sell as many products. Unlike a traditional retail outlet which has limited storage space to fit all your products, an online store has no physical space to constrict the number of products that you can carry, display, and sell. Since more people are shopping online nowadays, this allows you to sell more, offering products organized in catalog web pages that can easily be searched and viewed by customers. This also results in shorter selling cycles, providing you maximum returns at minimum investment.
- Easy online payment and shipping. eCommerce software and shopping cart platforms are equipped to process online payments, either as a built-in feature or integrated with a payment gateway service, allowing for safe and secure online transactions. The software can also be connected seamlessly with 3PL or order fulfillment service providers that can offer your customers their preferred delivery and shipping options.
- Built-in marketing tools. Many ecommerce software are loaded with powerful marketing tools and SEO features to help your store rank higher in search engine results and attract potential customers. There are also built-in analytics and statistical tools that can provide you with real-time analytical data, helping you to come up with targeted marketing campaigns, special deals and offers, as well as make improvements to your product mix or promotion.
- You can provide quality online customer service. eCommerce software gives you the means to provide your customers with the best online shopping experience— from easy product selection, order, and checkout, to convenient online payment, shipping, and delivery—everything is designed through automation to make it as simple as possible for customers to buy at your store, and get the best service they can expect.
Conclusion
E-commerce is an extensive field and it contains a variety of tools to help companies succeed. From multi channel listing to SEO and data management, there are numerous tools that you can use to help grow your business. However, the key is finding out which ones work for you and will actually help increase sales in the best way possible.
E-commerce is the future, and it is all the buzz. After all, didn’t we just go through a holiday season, where millions of individuals purchased items from ecommerce sites? There certainly were more sales happening online that any previous year. So if you have an online business of your own, then you really need to be utilizing e-commerce.