The world of e-commerce is relatively dynamic, and therefore, this selection of tools that would be appropriate for the successful management of an online store can mean everything to a business. Everything-from operationally optimizing a business to delivering the best customer experience-depends on the chosen software solutions. This is an all-inclusive review based on features, benefits, and potential drawbacks of some of the best tools that can be used in order to manage online stores.
1. E-Commerce Platforms
Ecommerce sites underlie your virtual shop. Among the most widely used are these two:
Shopify
Shopify is an e-commerce solution giving a user-friendly interface to first-time and experienced entrepreneurs. It has customizable templates, integrated payment options, and endless app marketplace which makes creating a professional-looking store with not much hassle possible. It also boasts features friendly to search engines which can help your store gain more visibility.
WooCommerce
Given that WooCommerce is essentially a WordPress plugin, its versatility is perfect for users familiar with the platform; the tool offers comprehensive customization and flexibility, so you can tailor your store to meet the requirement needed. Conversely, setting it up and particularly maintaining this website will be a technical process, mainly if you compare it with Shopify.
2. Tools for Managing Stock
Inventory management is one of the things that need to be in play for success in the business of e-commerce. There are two tools that come up there-TradeGecko-now QuickBooks Commerce and Skubana.
TradeGecko
TradeGecko is an inventory management tool with real-time tracking, order management, and reporting. It easily connects with various forms of e-commerce and accounting software, hence making your work much easier. Some of the users find it a little complicated to navigate at the start.
Skubana provides the complete inventory management and order fulfillment solution. The application generates automatic purchase orders automatically based on the analytics, hence making it convenient for the businesses to carry out their management processes on the inventory. Skubana is suitable for a bigger company that has a heavy sales volume. This may be more than a small business would require.
3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Any eCommerce business requires to have a great customer relationship. Here are two best crm tools:
HubSpot CRM
HubSpot CRM is completely free and provides you with the basics of contact management, email tracking, and reporting. It is quite easy to use and integrates really well with other tools under the HubSpot marketing suite. Advanced functionalities do cost you, though, when scaling up needs.
Salesforce
Salesforce: This CRM is feature-rich and more personalized with automation. Suitable for large organizations that require a full-fledged solution to manage the relationships with customers, to work through sales processes, and to run marketing campaigns. Complexity and cost may overwhelm smaller operations.
4. Marketing Automation Tools
Reach your customers better using these two top-of-the-line marketing automation tools:
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is an innovative solution for some components of email marketing with auto-capabilities to connect you with your audience. You add campaigns; work with the subscriber list and see how they react in accordance with its really simple dashboard functionality. The free version, in terms of capability, is limited; however, it is an excellent value for a small business that has recently started email marketing.
ActiveCampaign is extremely powerful for automation: it enables you to create personalized journeys on the behalf of the customer. You get features like segmentation, which allows you to optimize your marketing efforts really deep, but perhaps this could be tricky for someone to get started.
5. Analytics Tools
You must know how your store is performing so you want to grow. There are two analytics tools that you should check:
Google Analytics
Other installations in any e-commerce store would also be Google Analytics. This gives all the following: more detailed insight into traffic, behavior, and conversion on websites. The data collected can be very helpful when it comes to making some intelligent marketing decisions about products and strategies.
