10 Must-Have eCommerce Tools for Growing Your Online Business

ecommerce tools

When you create an ecommerce site, you have many important decisions to make. You need to choose what platform to use, website hosting and more. Once the site is up and running, it must turn a profit and grow. This can be the hardest part of running an online business. There are many ecommerce tools available to give your website a fighting chance.

There are so many tools available that it can be difficult to discern what to choose based on your business. It’s not a matter of which tools are good or bad. It’s more like which tool works best to assist you in your business goals and ecommerce platform.

Optimizely is One of the Must-Have Ecommerce Tools

It’s always difficult to make changes to your site. You never know how it’s going to impact sales and user experience. You may notice an uptick in sales, but what can you attribute it to? Was the change in color of your call to action button or was it the new copy on your landing page?

Optimizely lets you conduct A/B tests on a range of changes. You can see exactly how and why sales improved or declined.

Google Analytics Gives You Website Insight

Business tools often come with a price tag, and that can be difficult for a new ecommerce business. Google analytics provides you with complete analytics information. It includes traffic numbers and sources to page popularity and sales funnels. It’s also free.

It’s free unless you’re an enterprise-level business, but most ecommerce sites aren’t. There is so much data with Analytics that it can be difficult to navigate and sort through. Google has plenty of help articles and educational material for you. It’s hard to grow if you don’t know how many people visit your site and where they’re coming from.

Photoshop is an Industry Photo Editing Standard

When you’re selling items or services on your website, a picture is worth a thousand words or dollars. Professional quality photos can make or break a customer’s buying decision. The proper lighting or angle can make an image stand out from a field of stock photos.

Photoshop is the gold standard for photo editing. It turns your product or business photos into images for online ads, billboards, and more. It isn’t something you’ll pick up right away unless you have graphic arts training. After practice and online tutorials, you’ll create professional quality photo editing.

MailChimp Manages Email Marketing

Email marketing is still one of the most successful marketing options for a new business. MailChimp is perfect for businesses starting out who don’t have many email addresses. The cost is free for a set number of addresses. It helps with everything from email address management to newsletter and email design. It even sends out emails.

MailChimp is also integrated with your social media as well. After you reach a certain email address number, the email distribution does have a cost. It’s not as robust for email analytics, but it does provide rudimentary information.

SEMRush Is Your Go-To SEO Tool

Organic search from search engines is the primary source of traffic for many sites. Many sites can’t afford Google Ads. SEMRush provides many tools for search engine optimization.

It has a website audit, keyword list creation, and competitor keyword analysis. You can get information on any website, including your competitors.

It’s not SEO. The platform also provides insights on social media, brand awareness, and content effectiveness. If you do create a pay per click campaign, then it can help with keywords and ad creation. It’s an all-in-one tool that many ecommerce sites use to boost traffic and conversions.

Akeneo Provides Product Information Management

Akeneo is an open source product information management system. It helps ecommerce managers maintain product data consistency and demonstrate its impact. Akeneo can also maintain technical information. It helps with measurements and specifications, product descriptions, images, and product stories.

Without a platform like Akeneo, you might be using many different platforms to manage this information. These platforms are likely not integrated. It streamlines data collection and allows you to manage sales channels. Don’t underestimate the necessity of a product information system.

HootSuite Knows Social Media

Social media is how businesses connect and engage not only with existing customers but also potential customers. They use social media like Facebook and Twitter to connect with businesses. They share compliments and concerns. Social media is part consumer engagement and part customer service.

HootSuite helps you manage your different social media platforms from one place. Schedule updates for many platforms and have access to analytics for several channels.

You can see how well your latest content is working or what people are saying about your brand. Get ahead of any problems and catch those compliments and offer thanks.

BuzzSumo Makes Your Content King

Content marketing and content creation are powerful tools for educating your consumers. It also puts you in Google’s good graces. Content marketing spreads your brand and gain powerful authority and thought leadership. How do you come up with ideas?

BuzzSumo helps you develop compelling and authoritative content for your blog. It provides topic ideas and showing you the most popular articles for that topic. Content is more than king, it’s the whole kingdom, and BuzzSumo helps you rule.

OptiMonk Lures Customers Before Leaving Site

Many tools help you get people to your site, but what about the ones already there? How many customers come to your site, browse and leave? It might be a high number. OptiMonk creates a pop-up when people try to leave your site.
The pop-up shows them products they might want and entices them to stay on your site.

Google Ads

Google Ads (formerly AdWords) is the search engine’s pay per click advertising management system. It allows you to create display ads on websites, search ads, mobile ads, video ads, and product listing ads. You can manage all these using Google Ads, and retargeting as well.

The company shows ads based on your ad budget and quality score. People click on the ads and go to your site. If you have a budget for advertising, then it should go to Google ads.

If you’re a new online business and need the best ecommerce tools, then visit our site. We show you the many options available.