Ecommerce is one of the most unstructured and fastest growing retailing industry in the world. With this kind of competition, it’s necessary to use marketing tools that would make you stand out from the crowd. A blog can provide a window to your target customers and e- mail can help you build up a strong contact with them. That’s why there are thousands of online tools avaialble for ecommerce. All these e-commerce tools will help you to collect data, interacts with the customers and make sales without leaving your website.
If you are an ecommerce business, then you know how important it is to stay competitive. Businesses compete with others constantly in order to gain and retain customers. One thing that many ecommerce businesses do not realize is that they can benefit from using online tools in order to gain a competitive edge. This article will help you discover some of the best ecommerce tools available today.
The tools for ecommerce allow you to manage your business efficiently and keep track of your product’s performance. These tools enable you improve your customer conversions and also enable you to reach out to your clients. This article reviews the e-commerce marketing tools available for companies to enhance their online presence with the help of ready-made solutions. Whether you are considering to sell in your website or build an online store, the platform these e-commerce marketing tools offer will surely work in favor of your business.
One of the most vital components of an ecommerce business is the ability to keep track of customer data. This allows you to communicate with them in a more personalized way, giving you a better chance to make the sale. Before you can do this though, you need to start tracking them. One of the most common, and convenient ways to do this is through email marketing. A number of ecommerce businesses are making use of email marketing after their initial contact with a client, but in order to provide more of a service to your customers, it’s important to offer something that feels high-quality and personalized, which is where these tools come into play.
Tips And Strategies For Using Ecommerce Platforms.
With the numerous advantages ecommerce offers over traditional retail, it’s a great avenue not just for buyers to save money, but also for sellers to maximize outreach at a minimal cost.
During the Black Friday online sales in 2017, US shoppers alone spent $5 billion.
96% of all Americans have made an online purchase at least once in their life.
However, with more intense competition, it’s challenging to stand out in a crowded market.
Merely using excellent software isn’t enough. You need to have a proper full-funnel ecommerce marketing strategy in place from day one.
Here are some tips and tricks to help your marketing strategy this year.
1. Focus On Mobile Users.
We all know that mobile phones are now more popular than personal computers.
In fact, in July 2019, Google announced that the mobile-first index was a new ranking factor and here to stay.
This means that Google predominantly looks up to the mobile version of your site for ranking and indexing.
Statistics show that over 63% of online users used mobile to browse online vs. desktop.
Naturally, focusing on your mobile site is now imperative.
Thus, make sure you’re using your ecommerce platform to optimize your mobile website along with your desktop site.
Shopify is one of the industry leaders when it comes to mobile optimization and theme design.
Many other ecommerce platforms provide similar benefits that can help you provide better mobile browsing experience to your audience. First, make sure your software provides a mobile-friendly homepage, category pages, and product pages.
Also, optimizing your mobile checkout experience and ensuring that your buying process is user-friendly is paramount.
Provide Ease of Navigation.
It’s essential that your ecommerce site is well-structured and easy to navigate.
To make things easier for your website visitors, you can add numerous plugins with the help of the ecommerce platform you’re using.
For instance, WooCommerce allows you to automatically add a plugin that can let your users go back to the items they recently viewed.
When you integrate your website with these tools that make navigation more comfortable, you provide a positive user experience and are more likely to generate sales.
Additionally, leveraging product navigation with recently viewed and suggested products can increase ecommerce conversion rates.
Make Your Ecommerce Website Visually Appealing.
Studies suggest that it takes a user 0.05 seconds to decide whether they like your website or not. If they don’t find it visually appealing or understand what it’s about, they’re likely to exit right away.
Therefore, you have a shockingly small time frame to pique the visitor’s interest.
You have to make sure that you choose a website theme that is not only relevant to your niche but also appealing to look at.
On top of that, it’s important to pick a logo and imagery to give your visitors an idea about your brand right from the moment they enter your site.
The idea is to be as inventive as possible while offering a smooth browsing experience to your visitors.
Have a look at this website:
It is an excellent example of a visually appealing page, one that will make you want to scroll down. It is also easy to navigate and has relevant call-to-actions that are placed appropriately to draw the audience’s attention.
1. Shopify: Web Store Solution
Shopify is well known, but can’t be left off this list, because it’s still one of the best all-in-one ecommerce solutions for 2021. It includes all you need to create your own website with shopping cart integration and doesn’t require any technical skills. It’s super easy for anyone to set up and sell online from anywhere in the world.
Every Shopify theme is mobile optimised, supports third-party marketplaces, and social media sales, so you’re ready to go right out of the box.
Shopify’s versatility makes it a popular choice for small businesses and larger enterprises with a pricing plan to suit all pockets. The basic plan is just £22 per month, but you can try Shopify free for 14 days – a generous test-run to see if it suits your needs.
2. Canva: Design Solution
Canva is a design tool that can make even the most uncreative look like a professional designer! Zero design skills are required to produce stunning graphics for your web store, social media, flyers, business cards and any other marketing or sales visuals you need to drive more engagement.
Featuring pre-made templates, Canva is perfect for small ecommerce businesses as it’s loaded with easy to use infographic, video and illustration options allowing you to create everything you need with minimal effort or creative thinking.
There is a free version available with limited scope (but still 8000+ templates), with the Pro version costing a very affordable £10.99 per month.
3. Sourcify: Product Sourcing Tool
The reputation of your ecommerce business will rely mainly on the quality of your products. This means you, in turn, will need to rely on your manufacturer, but speaking with manufacturers overseas is challenging.
Sourcify solves this problem by helping you connect with manufacturing platforms and pre-qualified factories worldwide so that you can source and ship stock quickly.
Perfect for serious ecommerce entrepreneurs looking to create private label products, if you want to order a product, there is a $500 fee plus 1 to 10% of the total order cost required. However, then it’s over to Sourcify who will send your information to factories for quotes, lead times and samples, taking much of the stress and hassle out of your hands.
4. QuickBooks: Accounting Tool
Keeping your accounts in order is not high on most ecommerce business owners’ lists, but none-the-less, it’s a job that must be kept on top of, so some decent accounting software is required.
Enter QuickBooks. This accounting software can help your business at any stage and is slick enough to allow you to manage your business as you grow.
You can use QuickBooks to manage your income and expenses, to invoice customers, pay your bills, generate reports, and prepare your tax returns. However, although it’s comprehensive, it will take time to learn how to use it to get the best out of the software, so be prepared for a steep learning curve!
Options include a 30-day free trial followed by pricing starting from £12 per month for the Simple Start package, or no free trial and a discount to £6 per month.
5. Smile.io: Loyalty Programme Software
Keeping customers coming back can make a massive difference to your revenue. After all, it’s easier to try and keep a customer than continuously look for new ones! This is where a loyalty programme can be highly effective.
With Smile.io, you can set up a bespoke loyalty programme to keep your customers coming back. Choose from points-based programmes, tiered VIP programmes and referral rewards so that you maximise single sales and turn them into repeat orders.
You can integrate Smile.io with all the major ecommerce platforms: Shopify, BigCommerce and Wix from $49 per month. Of course, there is also a free plan available so you can start building customer loyalty immediately.
6. Constant Contact: Email Marketing and List Building Software
One of the most important aspects of running an ecommerce business is regularly keeping in touch with your audience. It’s easy for them to forget you, so emailing consistent weekly or monthly eletters is vital so that you remain in their subconscious thoughts. Of course, this would be hard work if you had to individually email every one of your customers or subscribers, so automate it instead.
Starting at just £15 per month, Constant Contact is ideal for ecommerce businesses looking to create professional email marketing campaigns to engage customers, build relationships, and drive real results.
With customisable templates, A/B testing, tracking, reporting and automatic resends included, the Email Plan is a decent starter package. Upgrade to Email Plus at £30 per month if you require more features including surveys, polls and a welcome series.
7. JungleScout: Amazon Research Tool
As an ecommerce seller, you may choose to sell through your own store, the Amazon platform, or indeed both. Your success on Amazon will be largely dependent on the popularity of your chosen product – and so research is key.
This is where JungleScout can help. From product research to your product launch, you’ll be able to build and grow your Amazon business with this tool.
You can find any product by keyword, categories or custom filters and save time with your research by drilling down deep into categories and niches to find the products with the highest demand.
In fact, JungleScout captures, analyses and refines billions of data points directly from Amazon so that you have access to the most accurate data when researching products to sell.
JungleScout offers a 14-day free trial and its basic package for one user is $19 per month.
8. Buffer: Social Media Account Management Tool
Social media posting and engagement is essential for every ecommerce business. You’re selling online, so you should be posting online too as that’s where your target audience is.
The trouble is, it’s time-consuming. But that’s where Buffer can assist. It’s a simple tool which posts your content automatically to your social media accounts according to the schedule that you create.
Buffer is fully customisable, so you can schedule posts in specific time-zones, days and dates and it ultimately frees up your valuable time so that you can get on with all the other aspects of your ecommerce business.
Buffer offers a free 14-day trial, and then packages start with Pro at $15 per month for one user. This allows you to schedule up to 100 posts on eight social media accounts.
9. Oberlo: Dropshipping Solution
Dropshipping is still a very tempting prospect for ecommerce sellers who don’t wish to hold any inventory. When you sell a product in your store, you’ll buy it from the supplier, and they will ship it directly to your customer. Dropshipping is still a hugely viable business model – but only when done correctly and with a reliable dropshipper.
Oberlo is just that, a dropshipping tool with a fantastic reputation, perfect for ecommerce sellers with a Shopify store. You can easily choose products, add them to your Shopify store and ship them directly to your customers.
The best thing about Oberlo is that it’s entirely free for up to 500 products so you can get started with no investment.
10. PackHelp: Branded Packaging Tool
Do you ever think about your packaging, and how your customer perceives your ecommerce business when they receive their order? Your product might wow your customers, but what about your packaging which plays an essential but often overlooked role.
First impressions count, and quality packaging can take your customer’s first impression from indifference to ‘Wow!’, so it’s worth considering upgrading your packaging to match your brand.
PackHelp is based in Warsaw, Poland and connects you with affordable custom packaging suppliers. Solutions including carrier bags, boxes, poly mailers, paper tubes and packing papers are all available for small ecommerce brands just like you who can’t afford to invest in an order of thousands of units at once.
In fact, the minimum order is just 30 pieces.
11. Moz Keyword Explorer Tool
Keyword health is crucial in ecommerce to ensure your products have high discoverability and visibility so you should keep a sharp eye on your keywords and tweak them regularly to avoid losing traffic.
Moz is a useful analytics tool perfect for helping you do just that and to scale your ecommerce business.
Keywords are vital for your products to rank, and ultimately for you to achieve traffic and sales. Using Moz, you can track actual keyword rankings for your website, making it easy for you to see which keywords are effective. Even better, you can track keyword rankings on competitor sites, identify potential new keywords and crawl your own site to find and fix any SEO issues.
You can access a 30 day free trial of Moz before committing to a Pro subscription which starts at $99 per month. Although higher-priced, you do get a lot for your money. This includes access to Moz Campaigns; Moz Research Tools including Keyword Explorer, Link Explorer, Fresh Web Explorer, On-Page Grader; plus, there is a Q&A forum with active Moz staff and industry experts.
12. Olark Live Chat Software
When customers browse your web store, they may have questions about your products. Unfortunately, most people are impatient and want answers immediately! So, considering a live chat facility is an ideal solution and the easiest way to talk to your hottest shoppers if you run a medium-size ecommerce business or larger.
Real-time chat allows you to engage, answer questions, gather feedback and make immediate sales and can be done by adding a simple widget to your site.
Olark integrates with most ecommerce platforms and simply makes your business human!
Give it a whirl with a 2-week free trial which allows up to 20 individual conversations, and then upgrade to the premium plan if you decide it’s for you. You can choose to pay monthly ($17 per month), yearly ($15 per month) or bi-yearly ($12 per month).
13. BuzzSumo: Content Ideas Tool
Attracting new customers to your ecommerce store should be a regular task. But sometimes, coming up with new ideas and compelling content can be challenging.
If you create boring content that provides no value, nobody will read it! And even if they do read it, they won’t share it, and that means Google won’t recommend it.
So, if you are stuck for ideas as to what to write on your blog, social media or in your newsletters, BuzzSumo lets you search for specific topics and see the most popular articles written about that topic. You can then capitalise on those ideas to create fresh content for your business. That’s all there is to it.
It’s free for 7 days and then $99 per month for the pro package.
Is ecommerce easy?
Ecommerce is easy to get started in but challenging to be highly successful in. You don’t need much money to get started – you just need a website and a list of products. You can even use dropshipping suppliers to outsource your inventory and shipping process.
However, it can be difficult to be very successful as marketing your ecommerce brand is one of the most important factors. In addition to posting your inventory online and handling customer service, you need to focus on SEO, PPC, social media marketing, email marketing, and other tactics to generate sales.
CONCLUSION
The e-commerce industry is booming with digital marketing tools and resources that you could only dream about a decade ago. From inbuilt shopping carts to digital payment processors, e-commerce platforms are convenient for businesses of all sizes. However, this ease of use has led to a flood of products that lack the quality you need to reach the top.
There are a lot of tools out there designed to help you run and grow your ecommerce business. These days, it is just easier to purchase things online than any other time in history. In the past, people would have to go to the store to purchase items or walk around their neighborhoods until they found something they wanted. It could take a long time. Now, you can sit at home and order something with two clicks. Information that brings benefits