Ecommerce is having its moment. The pandemic highlighted the importance of online shopping, and with new players entering the market all the time, it’s a smart play to invest in your current ecommerce infrastructure. What are the tools that can make a difference? Here’s a list compiled by our experts.
- Website tools – To streamline and improve your ecommerce site, there are a number of options. Some of today’s more popular ones include Wix, WooCommerce, and Magento. Wix is an intuitive website builder that makes it easy to create an online store without knowing any programming language. The platform offers more than 500 designer-created templates divided categorically to make it easier to cater to your particular business. They use drag and drop functionality to make pages that online shoppers find engaging. Plus, you can create and view mobile-friendly versions of your desktop site. WooCommerce is owned by WordPress and is an open source plugin for the platform. You can choose to use dedicated hosting with them and it also pairs well with other systems. They also use a drag and drop functionality so that you can quickly build and launch a store. Best of all, it’s free to use (though more successful stores use a few paid add-ons). Magento is a powerhouse when it comes to building scalable websites. It’s free to download due to open source design, and users say it scales very easily. Offering an intuitive backend packed with helpful features, Magento also offers an online community where users can get great advice. They also make it easy to integrate multiple payment options.
- Research tools – It’s difficult to create a thorough marketing strategy without understanding the market, your customers, and competitors. Using the right research tools ensures that you have accurate information to inform your strategy. We like Semrush, Ahrefs, and KWFinder. Semrush is a powerful SEO tool that gives you all the relevant data you need for a search engine optimization project. The platform comes with a plethora of link building and auditing tools that can help you to boost traffic. You can also find a lot of helpful traffic analytics and compare your store with specific competitors. There are a few different pricing tiers depending on your specific needs. Ahrefs was originally only a link building tool, but it’s grown beyond that into a valuable resource with keyword filters and helpful metrics. You can use the site to analyze organic traffic and all backlinks to a website. Many users feel that Ahrefs is one of the most important tools that can be used in SEO. KWFinder is a high-quality research tool that is used to perform essential keyword research which forms the foundation of SEO efforts. It has a broad range of features that can not only help you choose the keywords to target, but also filter results or analyze SERPs. Users say it has an intuitive interface that makes it simple to see where you stand compared to competitors.
- Business tools – Since the online store portion of an ecommerce business, it’s easy to forget there is a lot going on in the background. An ecommerce company is, after all, a business. It’s worth investing in tools that can automate certain tasks and focus on areas for growing the business. Some of the tools that can help are Rewind, Veeqo, and Monday. Rewind helps ecommerce companies stay secure in a complex data security landscape. This is particularly important if you use big ecommerce platforms like Shopify. This tool captures daily backups of your database and lets you restore deleted files when necessary. Companies can save themselves hours of potential downtime. Veeqo is an omnichannel inventory management tool. It lets ecommerce business leaders manage their orders, ship, and sync inventory from multiple channels. The tool integrates with a wide range of ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, and a lot more. Monday is a project management tool that has a streamlined user interface and can be customized according to unique needs. It has lots of templates to choose from and allows team members to collaborate. It has a tiered pricing structure and teams of up to 20 cost about $200 a month.
- Marketing tools – People can’t buy from your ecommerce site if they can’t find you in the first place. Marketing is an essential component of any online business. Here are some of the best tools to choose from. OmniSend is an email marketing software that makes it easy to automate messages and newsletters. It also helps with other channels like social media and brings everything together in one platform that’s easy to view. It also makes it easy to create and manage lead magnets which are an important part of filling your sales funnel. Buffer is marketed as a complete brand building solution. Designed to help with social media scheduling and management, it gives users more control over their campaigns. The tool offers a range of analytics and post-interaction metrics that provide real insight into performance and areas to improve. Retainful is helpful for visualizing your customers’ journey and plotting emails across the entire funnel. It’s an automation tool that sends emails at the right time, including abandoned cart recovery, thank you, order follow up, and welcome emails. You can use the tool to engage with customers at any point in their relationship with your company.
- Analytics tools – Of course, the most commonly known (and most used) analytics tool is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a powerful analytics and optimization tool that is free to use. Not only does it give marketers access to robust metrics and reporting, it offers visualization features that allow you to easily track what’s happening on your website, with site traffic, and customers. Microsoft PowerBI is one of the most efficient and user-friendly reporting tools available. It’s a good tool for larger ecommerce brands to get all the details they need about their website’s performance. It also integrates with other tools like Salesforce or MailChimp.
The right ecommerce tools are vital for online store owners looking to grow their business. Granted there are tons of tools to choose from and we have just scratched the surface here, but this post should give you some ideas about tools that are worth looking into. While you’re implementing time-saving technology, try downloading Shift and improving your productivity. Shift streamlines all of your accounts and your overall work environment so that you can work more effectively and make the most of the tools you already use.