The past few years have been undeniably remarkable for the eCommerce industry. First, people started to favor shopping online more instead of going out, especially during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, eCommerce has been on an upward trend, and it’s safe to say that it will continue to do so. A forecast from Insider Intelligence even suggests that eCommerce sales will go over $1 trillion in 2022.
Online businesses will need to catch up to the growing trend. Traditional digital marketing strategies like eCommerce SEO aren’t enough to grow an online business. Like brick and mortar businesses, eCommerce stores will need systems to help them keep up with their customers’ demands. These demands include customer support, sales and marketing, and creating a website suitable for online shopping.
If you’re searching for tools to aid you in managing your online store, this is your lucky day. We’ve listed below fifteen eCommerce tools to help you manage and grow your online business.
Shopify
Shopify is a popular eCommerce platform, and there are several reasons for this. First, it is a platform that has all the things you need to start, grow, and manage your online business. It’s a cloud-based tool that lets you build customized websites that you can use to sell your products across online marketplaces and even social media.
Available in different subscription plans, Shopify also offers many essential features for an eCommerce business. All plans come with useful features like unlimited products, unlimited bandwidth, Shopify point of sale (POS), and staff logins. Shopify is a great SaaS eCommerce platform because it makes it simple for businesses to run their online stores.
Stripe
If you’ve been in the business for a while, you’ve probably heard of Stripe. It’s a no-code online payment processing platform that uses an arsenal of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to help business owners accept payment from different methods. Stripe is like PayPal but more appropriate for large companies that would greatly benefit from payment customization options.
Stripe allows you to accept, process, settle and manage payments. Its most valuable features include customer interfaces, revenue optimization, payouts, reporting and insights, and third-party integrations. Unlike other websites that redirect you to other sites when making payments, Stripe will let you stay on the website. This platform is also ideal for setting up recurring payments. You can set it up instantly without paying any setup costs or monthly fees.
Sharetribe
A professional-looking website is essential for converting and retaining customers. Sharetribe is an eCommerce platform that helps entrepreneurs create a fully-functional marketplace like Airbnb or eBay without needing you to write a single line of code. If you’re running a startup, then you’d benefit from this platform more since it offers good value for its price.
Sharetribe is ideal for B2B eCommerce since it brings the benefits of custom development to marketplace SaaS. It can offer you features like listings, stock management, availability management, transactions, and reviews, to name a few. This platform allows any entrepreneur to build their marketplace cost-effectively.
Sharetribe offers its services in two different types: Go or Flex. With Sharetribe Go, you can launch your desired marketplace as fast as possible. And with Sharetribe Flex, you’re given more freedom to customize your marketplace’s essential features.
Octane AI
Did you know that integrating quizzes on your eCommerce business is an excellent way to generate more leads? Check out Octane AI, a code-free platform designed to combat the rising costs of advertising in the eCommerce industry. Octane Ai does this by leveraging personalization to increase your business’ revenue.
Octane AI is a platform that allows you to create engaging quizzes for your customer base. Countless Shopify and Shopify Plus users use this platform to connect with their customers through customer journey personalization, thus giving them more confidence to purchase.
The best feature of Octane AI is its chatbots. It can provide you with Facebook chatbots integrated into your Shopify store. You can answer questions, send receipt and shipping notifications, and even dispatch abandoned cart messages with these bots.
Squarespace
Building an eCommerce website may sound intimidating at first, but that’s only true if you don’t have the proper tools. Squarespace allows online store owners to build stunning websites without needing to be a coding wiz. You can use this platform to help your business establish a solid online presence through a well-designed and well-developed website. In addition, it has many built-in features that can make your job of building an eCommerce site much more effortless.
Unlike other website builders like WordPress, Squarespace doesn’t come with a free plan. However, we can argue that the benefits of this tool outweigh its costs. This website builder can be ideal for you if your top priority is to make your products shine online. Squarespace has an array of beautiful visual templates that you can use to put your products in the spotlight.
Squarespace has three different eCommerce plans: business, basic, and advanced. Depending on your budget, these subscription plans can cater to your specific needs.
WordPress
Perhaps the most popular website builder today is WordPress. Most people use this platform for generic reasons like blogs and portfolios, but did you know you use it for eCommerce purposes? It can be instrumental if you want to build an eCommerce website, especially if you don’t know how to design one and would like to use pre-made themes.
WordPress has a plethora of themes that are ideal for online storefronts. It also features plugins that can add complete eCommerce functionality to your website. These plugins can range from product display to product checkout. Most of its features are free to make things even more interesting, but if you’re looking for more options, you can try other paid plugins to make your store even more riveting.
With WordPress, you can create eye-catching storefronts, use SEO, customize product pages, and choose multiple payment gateways, to name a few.
Contalog
Contalog can assist you if you have problems keeping track of your inventory. It is an eCommerce automation tool that can help you keep track of your inventory effortlessly. It’s a SaaS platform built for online businesses that want to get into multiple selling channels. Contalog provides a one-stop solution to aid you in selling your products better, both online and offline.
The main selling point of Contalog is its robust inventory and order management system. Its system can handle a vast range of product attributes and quantities. Not only that, it’s smart enough to handle inventory level predictions to ensure that you can commit to your customer’s orders efficiently.
All of the information you can get from Contalog are synced across all of your sales channels, allowing your online store to perform even during the busiest of shopping seasons.
Chatfuel
Talking to your customers one by one can be incredibly tedious. Even if you have a competent customer service team, they will eventually get burnt out from answering product inquiries repeatedly. With chatbot tools like Chatfuel, you can finally deal with bursting inboxes and free up a massive chunk of your customer support team’s time so they can focus on more critical tasks.
Automating your customer support can be easy with Chatfuel. This tool offers chatbots for Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and Shopify platforms. Chat automation is not only a great way to get rid of the iterative query answering process but also automate your sales and maximize your return on advertising spend (ROAS).
Chatfuel uses the power of AI to create pre-made answers to the questions your customers always throw at you. In addition, its analytics for common inquiries can be pretty handy for online stores because it can automate more conversations.
MailChimp
Email marketing is among the best ways to improve sales and generate traffic to your business. MailChimp is a leading eCommerce automation tool specializing in establishing and managing email marketing campaigns. With their built-in campaign manager, you can easily create and launch campaigns to generate leads, sales, and retain customers.
Its marketing automation features can also aid in helping your store attract more customers and follow up with your existing customers through personalized and targeted emails. Additionally, Mailchimp can assist you in setting up and managing ads on all major social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The tool also has beautiful pre-made templates you can use to let your brand shine.
The most excellent part about MailChimp is how simple it is to integrate it with other powerful eCommerce systems, such as WooCommerce, Shopify, and Magento.
Scapic
If you genuinely want to set your online business apart from the competition, you should think about incorporating augmented and virtual reality. With the help of Scapic, AR and VR in eCommerce can be easy.
Scapic is a one-stop shop for 3D models you can use to give your customers a better idea of your products. This tool uses 3D CGI technology, making its 3D visuals look realistic and striking. With Scapes, you can let your customers see a 360° view of your products and other 3D experiences, all within their browsers.
VeeQo
If you’re worried about managing your prices, promotions, order details, and other similar aspects of your eCommerce website, you can benefit from what VeeQo offers. Veeqo is an eCommerce automation technology that assists retailers with their total backend management. For example, you can sync customer orders to multiple sales channels into one central platform with Veeqo. This is possible while keeping an accurate inventory across all of your stores in real-time.
This eCommerce tool allows you to keep track of your inventory across your sites, marketplaces, and even physical stores with 100% accuracy. It can also help you avoid overselling or missing out on another order again. What’s more, Veeqo can help you pick, pack, ship, and manage your entire warehouse operations – all in a single easy-to-use system.
OptinMonster
Conversion optimization and lead generation have never been this easy, thanks to eCommerce tools like OptinMonster. One of the leading SaaS in its field, OptinMonster allows you to create various email signup forms such as floating bars, slide-in scroll boxes, gamified spin-to-win options, etc.
OptinMonster can help you drastically improve your store’s conversion rate and increase your subscribers. It could effectively redirect your site visitors to particular pages with its behavior detection rules. It also allows store owners to reduce cart abandonment rates by retargeting customers with abandoned carts by offering them special discounts.
Some of the features OptinMonster offers include MonsterLinks™ 2-Step Options, Geo-Location Targeting, and Exit-Intent® Technology.
Zapier
Aggregating your tools and applications into one place is essential for keeping a seamless workflow process, especially in the eCommerce industry. With Zapier, you can avoid juggling multiple tasks between two or more apps without learning how to code. Instead, it works by letting another app perform a particular action whenever an event is triggered.
Zapier allows you to “zap” actions between different apps to avoid repetitive and time-consuming tasks. Each zap can contain up to 100 actions, making workflows frictionless between apps and services. You can either create your customized workflow or use their pre-made templates, depending on the needs of your online store.
Google Alerts
Simply relying on your intuition is not enough to keep up with the competitive nature of online business. To beat your competitors, you’d need to build a better business strategy using competitive intelligence. Luckily, Google can help you with that dilemma with one of their most esteemed eCommerce SaaS products: Google Alerts.
This notification service sends online store owners emails a summary of the search activity around their product’s search terms. Retailers can leverage this free tool to collect information about their competitors’ businesses, products, and developments, to name a few. Utilizing this tool can help you avoid being blindsided by competing stores when changes in prices and product ranges arise.
Buffer
If you own a small business and look to market your products on social media, you should check out Buffer. It’s an eCommerce automation tool that allows you to schedule posts and publish them according to your desired schedule on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Buffer is a solution for small business owners looking for automation tools that are cheap and easy to use.
Buffer offers cost-effective subscription plans for retailers who want to gain more control over their social media marketing. Their programs include Free, Essentials, Team, and Agency.
