Online shopping is a fixed point in the daily life of many of us. More and more eCommerce platforms are being created, which also means more competition. Many online business owners are wondering how to stand out in the market. One way is to choose the right eCommerce tools that will help you with eCommerce sales and set up your digital marketing strategy.
So the question isn’t – „Is it worth using eCommerce tools?” but „Which eCommerce tools are worth using?„. Today’s market offers a range of tools from different categories. The market provides tools for web optimization, social media platform analytics, order and product management, content management, search engine optimization, and more. Properly selected tools will allow you to develop your eCommerce site, gain more customers, build brand image, trust and, importantly, save time.
This blog has introduced the best eCommerce tools for business growth from different categories.
- Why are eCommerce tools so important for your online store?
- Sales/marketing tools for eCommerce business
- Summary
Why are eCommerce tools so important for your online store?
eCommerce tools are important because they allow an online business to manage and automate eCommerce sales and marketing strategies easily. The tools enable:
- Comprehensive customer service
- Contract management
- Inventory management
- Report generation
- eCommerce website development
- Content creation (e.g. for company blogs)
- Introduction of social media marketing
With eCommerce tools, businesses can streamline operations, reduce costs, and increase efficiency. In addition, eCommerce tools can also help online businesses reach a larger customer base by providing them with an online presence and allowing customers to purchase products or services from anywhere in the world.
Choosing the right eCommerce business tools depends on your needs, business goals, and financial resources. Well-chosen tools will definitely make work easier and save time. It is worth mentioning that a large part of them was created so that „non-technical” people could create, for example, a landing page or optimize their eCommerce website. You may decide to introduce eCommerce tools at different stages of eCommerce web development – the „basic” ones should go first (e.g. analytics tools, content management system, or inventory management), and more advanced ones may be implemented in the later stage (e.g. marketing tools that need custom integrations).
Sales/marketing tools for eCommerce business
Category: analytics tools
Data analytics is important in eCommerce as it enables eCommerce store owners to better understand their customers, behavior and preferences when shopping. Thanks to data analysis, an eCommerce store can get to know its target group and better target ads and adjust messages. Data analytics also helps online store owners optimize their business processes, including inventory management, cost management, and increasing efficiency. It also gives insight into what works, what doesn’t, and how sales can be improved.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the web analytics tools that provides users with data and shows what the traffic on their website and user behavior looks like. It can be used to track website visits, analyze visitor behavior, and measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. It also provides information on what keywords people use to find your website, which pages they view, and how long they spend on each page. Obtaining the above information will help you in eCommerce website development and bring measurable benefits. In the eCommerce case, Google Analytics can also be used to track transactions, including revenue and profits.
Price: Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google. There are no costs associated with using Google Analytics.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is one of the free tools that helps you monitor your website’s position in search results, improve it and eliminate errors. Google Search Console allows you to:
- Check if a given page is indexed
- Send a request to index new or updated content
- Display data about Google Search traffic related to your site – how often your site appears in search results, which queries trigger it to appear, how often people click on those queries to go to it, etc.; – Based on this information, you can create a content plan
- Receive alerts when Google detects errors or other anomalies on your site
- See which websites link to your pages
- Fix issues with AMP pages, mobile support, and other search features
Price: Google Search Console is a free tool offered by Google.
Category: Internet monitoring
Internet monitoring allows eCommerce companies to assess the effectiveness of their online marketing activities. Thanks to this, you can conclude and identify potential areas for improvement. Internet monitoring also allows you to learn about current trends among consumers and adjust marketing activities to their needs. Thanks to Internet monitoring, eCommerce companies can also learn about and track the activities of their competitors. It is worth monitoring, for example, your competitors’ social media to check what messages they use, what types of CTA (call-to-action), and on which posts they have the greatest engagement of recipients.
Brand24
Brand24 is a social media management tool. Using a friendly administration panel, you can quickly check mentions of an eCommerce store on the web. Then you can easily reply to any post or entry. You can build brand awareness and connect with your community by responding to comments regularly. The tool is extremely intelligent and quickly captures all mentions shared on the Internet. This tool will work well in small, medium and large eCommerce businesses.
Benefits:
- Getting to know customers
- Building an engaged community
- Finding influencers
- Increasing sales
- Brand image protection
- Competition monitoring
- Analysis of the effects of marketing campaigns
Pricing:
- Free trial for 14 days
- Individual – $59
- Team – $149
- Pro – $199
- Enterprise – $399
SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb is a website monitoring tool. Thanks to it, we can analyze the websites of potential partners or competitors. Please note that the data on SimilarWeb is estimated and approximate. The tool collects widely available information on the Internet and based on it, generates reports. Thanks to the collected data, you can determine which activities in your industry are effective and which are not.
SimilarWeb provides data such as:
- General website traffic
- User behavior
- Visit locations
- Sources of visits
Pricing
- Free trial
- Small businesses – Starts from $167/mo
- Most businesses – customer price
Category: website optimization, UX/UI analysis
Website optimization and UX/UI are very important in eCommerce because customer experience has a huge impact on their purchasing decisions. Proper optimization of the website means that customers have more pleasure from shopping, which may result in coming back to your online store. Thanks to the right use of UX/UI, you will provide customers with positive feelings from using the website. The eCommerce platform should be intuitive, clear and easy to use. Good optimization and UX/UI combined with high-quality products and services can help companies run successful eCommerce.
Hotjar
Hotjar can be used to identify areas of improvement in user interface design, including elements like menus, buttons, and forms. This tool records site visitors’ behavior on, for example, your eCommerce website, thanks to which you can observe how specific people browse the website. Then you can see which places were overlooked and which attracted the most attention. Hotjar also creates heatmaps, showing which elements on the page are most „clicked”. After analyzing the behavior of Internet users, you can implement changes to optimize your website. It happens that Hotjar detects and allows you to eliminate errors that would be difficult even to guess.
In the case of the eCommerce platform, thanks to Hotjar, you can check, for example:
- Which product categories are most frequently viewed and which are less visited
- What causes a large number of abandoned carts – maybe something is causing problems for customers, and that’s why they don’t finalize their purchases
Pricing
- Basic – €0
- Plus – €32
- Business – €232
- Scale – €312
Category: SEO
Content management and SEO is important in eCommerce store because it allows for better visibility in search engines and thus helps attract new customers. Properly prepared content addressed to a specific target group can help attract new customers and increase interest in products or services offered by a given company. Using SEO also helps in increasing website traffic, which in turn increases the chance of sales. You should also ensure that there are no errors in the form of a typo, missing header, or lack of title and meta descriptions on the page.
Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a tool that allows you to analyze the structure of a website. SEO specialists and web developers mainly use this tool in the case of „technical SEO”. It will be perfect if you manage and create marketing processes for your online store yourself. After analyzing the website, Screaming Frog presents information about internal linking, metadata (e.g., no title and meta descriptions), possible errors (e.g., typos), technical shortcomings (e.g., missing header) and many more. This tool is helpful for preparing a comprehensive SEO audit of your website. The tool will be suitable for both small and large online stores.
Benefits
- Find Broken Links
- Analyse Page Titles & Meta Data
- Discover Duplicate Content
- Generate XML Sitemaps
- Visualise Site Architecture
- Schedule Audits
Pricing
- Free Version
- Paid Version – €185/license lasts 1 year
Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO is mainly used in content marketing in such a way that the created content achieves high visibility in Google search results. The tool has a user-friendly interface, thanks to which anyone can use it quickly and easily, such as eCommerce store owners who would like to take care of the positioning of their online store on their own. The tool is used in online stores, company websites, and blogs.
Benefits
- Build a content marketing strategy
- Generate briefs with catchy headlines in seconds
- Write and optimize content in any language
- Ensure the authenticity of your article and avoid potential penalties
- Search for keywords and generate automatic content audits in terms of quality and positioning
Pricing
- Basic – $49/month
- Pro – $99/month
- Business – $199/month
- Enterprise – Custom price
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is an SEO analysis tool that helps with website optimization and search engine positioning. Ahrefs offers in-depth information on the many factors that affect SEO. Many professional marketers and SEO agencies use the tool to track search results and monitor the impact of links on search engine rankings.
Benefits
- Research your competitor’s backlinks and keywords
- Find keyword ideas and gaps
- Perform an SEO audit
- Monitor SEO activities on desktop and mobile versions
- Generate content ideas
Pricing
- Lite – $99/month
- Standard – $199/month
- Advanced – $399/month
- Enterprise – $999/month
Category: landing page creation
Creating landing pages is extremely important for eCommerce. It should be noted that the store’s main page usually contains a lot of information and tabs that can distract customers. When creating a marketing campaign that aims to increase sales of a specific product, it is worth creating a landing page that will contain information only about this product/category of products. This way, there is a greater chance of getting better results with the same budget.
Unbounce
Unbounce is one of the most appreciated landing page builders among marketing tools. It is valued in the eCommerce environment and not only. Over 1,500 companies around the world have already used its potential.
This tool offers a number of features, thanks to which you can easily and quickly create your own landing pages.
Key Features:
- Drag and drop function
- Integrations and connections (e.g. with MailChimp, WordPress)
- Wide selection of templates (over 100)
- Tools powered by artificial intelligence
- Developed community
Pricing
- Launch – $90/month
- Optimize – $135/month
- Accelerate – $225/month
- Concierge – $575/month
MailerLite
MailerLite is another tool for creating custom landing pages and e-mail marketing automation that offers a wide range of templates and is very intuitive. In the paid version, the user receives advanced tools for analyzing user behavior and the option to set up his own domain.
Benefits
- Conduct A/B tests
- Create forms and pop-ups
- Perform integration with many eCommerce tools
- Track Facebook campaigns using the Facebook Pixel
- Connect the landing page with Google Analytics
Pricing
- Free version
- Growing Business – $9/month
- Advanced – $19/month
- Enterprise – Custom price
Category: mailing campaigns
Email marketing is important in eCommerce as it effectively reaches customers and promotes your online store’s products and services. It can also help build long-term customer relationships and increase their commitment and trust. It is worth thinking about launching a newsletter and sending birthday e-mails about promotions, new collections, or abandoned baskets.
MailChimp
MailChimp is an eCommerce tool for email marketing. It allows users to create and edit mailing lists, send emails, create and manage email marketing campaigns, track results, and much more. Users can create and send automated emails to build customer relationships and increase engagement.
Benefits
- Convert more customers by sending the right message at the right time
- Use artificial intelligence to make your content more attractive
- Increase customer loyalty
- Connect additional tools, get more data and save time
Pricing
*for 500 contacts price starts at:
- Free Version
- Essentials – $13/month
- Standard – $20/month
- Premium – $350/month
GetResponse
GetResponse is an eCommerce tool for conducting comprehensive email marketing which you can use in your eCommerce sites. GetResponse offers a number of functional solutions, email templates, photos, gifs that can be used in an email and which are designed to facilitate the creation of email marketing campaigns. The tool also supports online chat, which can be implemented in an online store.
Types of available emails:
- Newsletters
- Autoresponders
- Automation emails
- Automated blog digest
- Perfectly-timed emails
- Transactional emails
Pricing
For 1000 contacts price starts at 59 PLN/month
Category: order and product management
Order and product management are crucial in eCommerce. So it’s worth using tools that will make it easier. These can include solutions supporting sales channels, shipping, payments and inventory management tools.
Baselinker
BaseLinker is an eCommerce tool that allows you to implement over 400 integrations in eCommerce. It will be perfect for multi-channel online sales. Thanks to it, you can quickly and easily manage products placed not only in the store but also on auction portals. BaseLinker can be integrated with various sales channels. Thanks to BaseLinker, sales management becomes much simpler and takes less time. Importantly, all orders will be available in one place, thanks to which you can complete them with just a few clicks.
Depending on chosen integration, from the BaseLinker level, you can e.g. create a shipment, generate a label, change statuses, send notifications to customers and check the stage of packing a given order in the warehouse. BaseLinker also provides integrations with marketing automation tools, thanks to which you can quickly and massively send e-mails and text messages to customers. You can create customer information templates and send them in bulk from your order list.
Order manager functions:
- Forwarding orders to the store and ERP
- Automatic actions
- Pick&Pack Assistant
- BaseLinker Caller
- Invoices and receipts
- Prints and statements
- Dropshipping orders
- Customer order info page
- Useful functions for Allegro sellers
- Phone and personal orders
Pricing
*for 500 orders and 5000 products price starts at $29/month
Free trial for 14 days for each version by order quantity and products
Summary
Choosing the right tools is crucial. By choosing the right eCommerce solutions, you can make running your own store much easier. Most of the presented tools are paid, but they offer various packages that are adapted to any size of business. When selecting a tool, consider the features, cost, ease of use, customer support, and scalability. It is also important to check its compatibility with the eCommerce solution and other software you may use. Depending on your needs and budget, you can choose a version that currently meets the expectations of your eCommerce business.
If you are at the early stage of eCommerce development, you want to start your eCommerce journey off on the right foot. You may want to check out our eCommerce launch support workshops and get the expertise and guidance you need to launch your store quickly and easily (it includes a selection of technologies and eCommerce tools, estimation of the project implementation, and so on). Sounds interesting? Contact us to help you get the most out of your eCommerce launch!
Want to explore the best eCommerce technologies? Check out our free e-book – A comprehensive guide to choosing the best technologies for eCommerce