With e-Commerce touting as the most happening thing in the business world, it is interesting to know that the total value of global sales would be around $3.45T in 2019. Consumers are greatly inclined towards online shopping and it is estimated that 95% of purchases will be made online by 2040. Just in the USA, e-Commerce represents 10% of retail sales and it is expected to grow by nearly 15% with each passing year. These stats are opening doors of bigger and better opportunities for budding entrepreneurs.
Are you planning to sell online? Or you are running a new e-Commerce startup?
While every business is vying to get a pie of this developing sector, it won’t be wrong to say that the competition has turned out to be cutthroat. In such circumstances, it is your e-Commerce website that can make you stand apart in the crowd. Further, if you want to sail through the tide of competition with success, you need a dynamic and highly interactive platform to make shopping easier for your customers.
Now the question arises- how?
How to Boost Your New E-commerce Business?
Running a start-up is not an easy game. It requires time, effort, and dedication. You need to look for tools for startups to manage everything. There are times when you have to wear many hats. In the meanwhile, it can be really challenging to deal with complexities related to your website. The answer to all your problems is with some simple tools and platforms which can help you set up an e-commerce store easily, and get it running.
Firstly, let’s have a quick look at some of the finest platforms first, and then proceed with few tools to simplify the process of running your e-Commerce business.
What Are The Best Platforms For Your E-commerce Website?
Magento
Being a powerful platform that can be used to run multiple stores, it serves to be a very SEO friendly option. It is the reason why popular brands including Nike, Cisco, Procter & Gamble, etc. trust Magento. With a developer on the budget, you can have a truly customizable, powerful, and feature-rich online store. You will also benefit from a marketplace where you can look for extensions and themes to boost functionality.
While it is majorly used for free, but you can always switch the paid level for enterprise solutions when your business turns larger. Even if it sounds to be a little expensive, yet it is worth investing for additional features like automatic cross/up-sell and automatic trigger-based email campaigns.
Advantages:
- Versatile content management
- Advanced search engine optimization
- Robust and feature-rich
- 1-click selling, powerful and spacious
- Mobile-friendly configuration
- Lots of users and community
- Scalable and highly customizable
WooCommerce
Another platform that you can use to run e-commerce is WooCommerce. If you are familiar with the WordPress platform, working with it will be a breeze for you. Just install it, add your own products, and manage the settings. WooCommerce is helpful in turning any website into a functional e-commerce store. As there is a number of extensions available, you can easily integrate features such as email marketing, integrate payment gateways, social media, 1-click selling, and shipping. While it is available for free, the major drawback is scalability and lack of support.
Advantages:
- Ease of use (if you have good hands-on WordPress)
- 1 Click selling app available
- Highly customizable
- Various marketing options and integrations
Shopify
When it comes to selling through different channels like Facebook or Instagram, Shopify can be a good choice. It is perfect for startups with a lesser number of products. However, if you plan to extend your business with a larger number of products, you can go for other options. There is a downside that rated poorly in SEO in consecutive studies.
Advantages:
- Visually appealing online store
- Easy to set up and use
- App integrations
- Allows multiple channel and social selling
- Great themes with different designs
BigCommerce
For the newbie, BigCommerce can be a great way to start. Having a robust product search engine, it serves retail brands very well. The wide availability of tools makes it of great use for different businesses and industries. It has a simple interface that lets you customize your online shop, even if you don’t know how to code. There are ample customizable templates to help you design your store, sell and market. You can use either free versions or the paid ones, as per your requirement.
Advantages:
- Numerous Theme Designs
- Strong SEO Performance
- Flexible and scalable
- Excels with multi-channel selling
- Payment Gateways Supported
Wix
Though this one is still newer to the e-commerce space, you will get the best design choices on Wix. You can create websites via drag and drop. However, there are limited features and the storage space is quite low. A large number of products can be a problem. You can consider it as a beginner-friendly platform.
Advantages:
- More than 500 templates specifically made for online stores
- Fully-featured shopping cart with all the functionality
- Really simple to use and set up
- On-page support for numerous needs
Using any of these platforms you can build your online store. While most of them come with tools to create and manage products and day-to-day operations, there is a number of other tools to make a difference in the market.
What Are Some Essential Tools To Enhance Your E-commerce Business?
The list of tools available seems to be endless. Some of them can be helpful for managing your online store, others can be used to know more about your competitors, improve your campaigns, traffic, convert leads into customers, and much more. Here is a list of some of the most efficient tools you can count on.
SEMRush:
The best part about this tool is that it tracks more than 106 million keywords by tracking them in more than 87 million domains. SEMrush can provide an insight into the page’s performance, your competitors, and top keywords in your niche. So for the start-ups, it can be used to audit their own site or the competitors.
Crazy Egg:
If you have just started with the eCommerce store, you might be wondering why your visitors are not converting. To find the answer, you can trust Crazy Egg. It tells you why your customers are leaving. It allows you to see where users click with heat maps. This means you can enhance your pages and work for a better customer experience.
Zendesk:
It is not necessary to spend a fortune to boost your customer service. You can try Zendesk as it is known for serving better customer service. There are many advanced features that can be used to create self-help sections, track your customer service performance, create customer support tickets, resolve tickets, and do much more. With the help of this magnificent tool, you can collect all questions/issues asked by customers through social networks, email, and phone calls, and compile them.
ShipStation:
When you want to simplify the process to import, manage and ship your orders, the answer is with ShipStation. It can be integrated with almost every shopping cart and marketplace. It allows you to import orders from unlimited selling channels. With their mobile app allows you can ship, manage, and track all orders from your phone.
Appifycart:
Today it is important to offer your customers a smoother mobile experience. And Appifycart allows you to easily create a mobile app for your Shopify store. Just connect your store with the app and your mobile app will be ready for upload. There are different themes available and you can even customize them to match your branding. Moreover, you can push notifications and increase your conversion rates and sales.
MailMunch:
Need to grow your email list, meanwhile generating more leads? It is possible with MailMunch. From top bars, slide boxes, popups, sidebars, to landing pages, you can experiment with different things. With this tool’s exit monitoring technology you can convert visitors into potential leads. Simply, when the user is about to leave, you can convert him into an email subscriber with the help of a nice pop-up. You can benefit from various themes that are fully customizable.
These were a few e-commerce tools that can be a part of your store’s success journey. While these have the potential to increase your sales in one way or the other, you can experiment with them to find out what works best for your business.
