Ah yes! The day has finally come to launch your exclusive e-commerce site selling socks for kittens. Do kittens actually need socks? Who cares! You’re ready to make some sales.
But what are the next steps actually? How do you get leads, sales, and manage customers ALL while keeping the feet of thousands of kittens warm? As usual, egniteBIZ is here to bail you out. There are a TON of different e-commerce tools to help you accomplish your goals. However, it’s very difficult to sort through all of them and figure out which ones are best for you and your business. So, we’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite e-commerce tools for 2020. Let’s dive in…
WooCommerce
This is our personal favorite because it’s free and open-source. Its super simple to set up and it’s specifically built for those who want to add e-commerce functionality to their WordPress websites. They do offer some paid upgrades, but for a basic e-commerce site, the free version works great.
HubSpot CRM
We can’t even begin to tell you about everything this CRM has to offer. They have tools for marketing, sales, and support to help you out in a pinch. We highly suggest checking it out, and you can sign up for free. From Hubspot.com: HubSpot’s all-in-one marketing, sales, and service platform is built to help you implement inbound and grow better. It’s all powered by the same database, so everyone in your organization — Marketing, Sales, Services & IT — is working off the same system of record. This allows for a smoother handoff between teams, and a more delightful experience for your customers.
Sendible
You can not have a web presence without also having a social media presence. The two go hand in hand, like peanut butter and mayonnaise (don’t ask). Today’s consumers are savvy, and will most likely do some research about your company and products before purchasing. Now if your company comes up blank, the business comes across as untrustworthy, or fly-by-night. You want your customers to trust you. Plus having a good social presence helps with lead gen, retention, being awesome, coupons…etc.
With that spiel out of the way, this is why we like Sendible: You have the ability to schedule posts to all of your social channels rather than doing things one at a time. It also gives great insights such as the right time to post and what trending topics you should jump on.
ZenDesk
All retailers know that superior customer service is critical to success. ZenDesk helps you offer solutions to keep your customers satisfied even when you may not have the budget for full-time phone support. With affordable monthly plans, ZenDesk promotes customer retention and acquisition.
MailChimp
This is an excellent platform for carrying out email marketing campaigns, MailChimp takes advantage of the preferred communication method of consumers worldwide, and directs them to your business. Email marketing actually has a higher conversion rate than search, so get sending.
Now, this wouldn’t be a good article without mentioning these two bad boys: Google Analytics and Google Adwords.
Google Analytics
Every business should install Google Analytics on their website, especially for e-commerce solutions. This tool will help to identify patterns and conversions, so you can see where you’re profiting and what areas may be underperforming.
Google AdWords
It’s likely that a significant amount of your traffic comes from search engines, so it’s crucial that you cash in on that market. Google AdWords can help you customize an ad campaign that targets the customers you want to drive to your site.
As we mentioned, there are SO MANY tools out there it’s insane. But hopefully, this gives you a good starting point so you aren’t too overwhelmed. Now go out there and save the world one sock at a time!