Thanks to the world of e-commerce, the way people shop online has revolutionized. The process is now incredibly straightforward: Individuals can browse various websites, select products, add them to their virtual cart, and proceed to checkout. It sounds simple, doesn’t it?
E-commerce stands as one of the most rapidly expanding industries, predicted to generate a revenue of 6 trillion by 2024 since billions of customers now choose to shop online. With this number continuing to increase in the years ahead, it’s important for brands to innovate and find new ways to cater to their digital audience.
Besides offering top-notch products and services, consider investing in web design, content, search engine optimization, and customer service to upscale your e-commerce store.
Now, the question is how? Luckily, there are several tools businesses can leverage to level up their e-commerce setup. It can help them smoothly transition from offline to online operations while tracking performance and streamlining processes. If you are ready to jump on this endeavor, keep reading. Here are some must-have tools for e-commerce success.
Content Creation
Content is the king in the e-commerce world. It can make or break your digital store. Hence, leverage its power wisely. Depending on your business niche, you can publish guest posts and articles to educate your audiences. You can also add a few backlinks to the published articles to direct visitors to your offerings.
While it is important to produce valuable and relevant content to attract potential customers, it is equally important to make your website engaging and appealing by adding graphics and visuals. To achieve this, you can browse through a stock photography agency to find suitable images. Additionally, if you are seeking content management ideas, WordPress is an excellent choice. It can help you develop a blogging strategy to generate recurring traffic.
E-commerce Platforms
Another crucial step when building an e-commerce store is selecting the correct forum. Most e-commerce platforms are software solutions that help brands set up online stores. From adding product pages to order fulfillment, these platforms have everything a business needs to succeed online. Here are a few options.
- BigCommerce: BigCommerce is built for large-scale businesses with multiple paid and free features. Besides web design and hosting, it offers domain name registration and many more marketing tools.
- Shopify: Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms where brands can access multiple tools. It includes website builders with uncountable themes and built-in marketing tools that could analyze digital trends. It also offers webpages to create a shopping cart with 100s of products and multiple payment gateway options.
- Wix: If you are getting started with your e-commerce store, Wix could be the perfect choice. It covers basics like customizable templates, web hosting features, and online payment options. It also allows marketers to add plug-ins for accessing additional features like inventory management.
Analytics & Marketing
Once you have your e-commerce store up and running, it is essential to evaluate its performance. Is it generating leads? Are people buying products? What is the bounce rate? To find answers to these questions, you must resort to savvy analytical and marketing tools. They measure consumer behavior, purchase trends, and return on investment (ROI). Here is a list of analytical and marketing tools.
- Google Analytics: Google Analytics makes gathering all insights about your target market possible. You can collect data on returning visitors – the loyal customers, helping you design a loyalty program accordingly. Similarly, it gives access to real-time stats like website traffic, traffic source, and user engagement.
- Buffer: Social media plays a crucial role in improving online visibility. If you want your e-commerce store to have a stellar virtual presence, leverage Buffer. It is a social media management platform allowing brands to schedule content via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram in advance.
- Constant Contact: Constant Contact is famous for its email marketing services. It has a user-friendly forum for new business owners wanting to develop an email marketing campaign. It can manage email lists, track outgoing emails, and send reminders to prospects.
Sales & Logistics
Most e-commerce store owners don’t pay much attention to sales and logistics, considering they operate online. Despite that, sales and logistics are crucial in running an online business. If you don’t have any fulfillment software yet, opt for Shipwire. It is a global forum that fulfills orders for retail partners, direct customers, and wholesalers. You can integrate this with your marketplace and shopping cart. That way, your store will automatically inform your warehouse whenever an order gets placed.
Further, Veeqo is another fulfillment and inventory management tool specially designed for e-commerce websites. You can get real-time inventory updates, order status, and detailed reports. It also ensures all your products are in stock to avoid shortages. Above all, Veeqo has forecasting tools that can predict stock requirements based on past trends, helping your prep for the future.
Customer Service
Undeniably, e-commerce stores allow people to shop themselves without any human intervention. But what if they need help with something or have a query? An e-commerce tool that supports users during their online shopping journey is essential. Hence, consider investing in a customer support platform. Here are a few options.
- Zendesk: Zendesk is a popular forum that offers customer support around the clock. It enables brands to integrate the option of ‘live chat’ into their website and access relevant customer data.
- Acquire: This forum helps online stores improve workflows and provides up-to-date customer data to customer service representatives.
- Gorgias: Often, people have to wait until a support agent is available to answer their query. Gorgias aims to save your customers valuable time by automatically responding to standard questions like delivery time, charges, etc. It has a single dashboard, helping support agents manage communications and automate interactions of their choice.
Final Thoughts
Today, almost every business has an e-commerce store up and running. But how your e-commerce store performs sets a pathway for success and profitability. So you must integrate e-commerce tools to build an aesthetically pleasing website while keeping your routine operations organized. In addition, these tools can drive consumer insights and offer top-notch support to prospects, giving you an edge over competitors.
