7 Must-have E-commerce Tools For Starting Your First Online Store

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Many businesses are using ecommerce to build their brands and increase their business conversions. They will do everything possible to increase their return on investment, which is at the core of every business. While it is okay to focus on the output, it is still important to put suitable and proper action into the input.

One of the best ways to do this is by creating a profitable ecommerce store. There are many tools available to give you a reliable platform, and ensure your customers get excellent service. If you have no idea what e-commerce entails and how it can benefit your startup, you can hire freelancer.com experts to help you out.

The following e-commerce tools go a long way in providing you with everything your business needs for better management.

  1. Shopify

Shopify is one of the most popular and well-established e-commerce tools on the market. Since its inception in 2004, it has offered businesses an easy-to-use interface, where admins can add products or customize the look of their business with ease. For businesses that are new to Shopify, there are a number of places you can hire Shopify experts to walk you through the process.

The benefits of using Shopify are:

  • Setting it up is easy and quick and you do not need any servers, technical expertise or extra costs to launch your online store.

  • The interface is clean and very user friendly, with well-structured features.

  • There are extensive guide videos and enough documentation on the Shopify site to answer any queries.

  • It takes care of your software updates allowing you to give more focus and attention to your business.

  • It is reliable and very secure and none of your customer information will leak out. As for reliability, Shopify takes care of all upgrades and server maintenance to keep your store constantly available, and by making sure your web pages load fast.

  • You get 24/7 customer care support with very fast response times, irrespective of where you are.

  • It is mobile friendly. Considering that many people use their mobile for business transactions, Shopify has a fully optimized mobile site, which includes a built-in shopping cart.

  • There are over 100 themes to choose from, and you can easily customize Shopify to any theme you want.

  • Its main selling point is the high SEO features which help in ranking your website, driving in more user traffic.

2. WooCommerce

WooCommerce, unlike Shopify, is a plugin on WordPress that allows you to manage and build your online store. The same company that operates WordPress, Automatic, boasts of being the most popular ecommerce online platform.

WooCommerce’s advantages over other platforms:

  • It allows you to explore many online business avenues due to its versatile payment system, and its host of compatible plugins.

  • Allows you to restrict access to your products based on your clients levels of subscription, and brings your online store exclusivity.

  • Allows you to create membership levels for all your clients, and gives you full control over your own site.

  • Since social media is a big asset to every business, WooCommerce has a free plugin that allows you to connect your store with your Facebook page.

  • If you want to bid your products on e-bay, WooCommerce is flexible enough to turn your store into a credible auction site on e-bay and other auction sites.

  • As much as product reviews are important to every business, there are times you want to stop reviews on certain products for one reason or the other. WooCommerce allows you to do just that.

  • In conjunction with WooCommerce slack, you receive instant notifications about your products on all slack channels.

  • If you have any products that require reservations, WooCommerce takes care of it. This includes bookings, invoicing and payments. Customers can check any available dates on the calendar for reserved events or products they need.

3. Xcart

Xcart allows easy creation and operation of an online store by offering self-hosted, downloadable software options that you can install on a cloud-based cart. It has continually improved over the years, making it a very popular e-commerce tool with many benefits.

Some Xcart benefits are:

  • It has excellent search capabilities, making it a good marketing on site tool.

  • It upgrades all your information in just a few clicks.

  • Mobile friendly, with very fast responsive abilities.

  • Uses easy encryption.

4. MailChimp

MailChimp is an automation tool that allows you to run your business and engage your customers using automation instead of manual campaigns. It does everything, from finding your customers, building your brand, advertising your products and engaging with your clients. MailChimp is more like a second brain that every online business needs. It takes many tasks off your plate, and you can leave some work to MailChimp while you carry on with other work.

Its benefits are:

  • It has pre-built automations with set event-like notification orders and abandoned cart series which you can change to customize your own automations.

  • Helps in purchasing and running campaigns in many channels, including social media.

  • Helps in building your client list and audience placement.

  • Helps in customer retention, thus boosting your business sales and profits.

5. PrestaShop

Another great ecommerce tool to boost your online business is PrestaShop. This is an open source platform that allows you to extend its main features by using different extensions to suit your needs. This means you can change the original PrestaShop catalogue to create your own, and make any modifications you deem necessary on your products. The modifications you can make are on the prices, product features, product attributes and combinations, quantities and other necessary details.

It allows you to import files in any format and structure, to build up category trees of your products, upload images, manage your accounting systems and integrate additional sales channels into your system.

Other benefits of PrestaShop are:

  • It is easy to install.

  • It gives great reports and powerful analytics.

  • It supports several payment systems like Google, PayPal, Payments Pro, Skrill and others.

  • It has an on-page checkout, which makes it convenient.

  • Allows for several delivery options.

  • Ability to create your own designs and logos with its themes.

6. SEMrush

Just running a blog might not be enough for your business. You need more than that, like SEM, SEO and SMM to be on top in SERP. You can attain this by using SEMrush, which is an ecommerce digital marketing tool, started in 2008 for fair and transparent online competition. It creates a platform where everyone gets equal operation opportunities. With SEMrush, you can start your business as a small entity or a bigger organization.

It is now a world leading e-commerce tool, due to efforts and experiments to make it what it is today. It is not only good for small businesses; larger businesses like eBay, Amazon, Disney and Hewlett Packard are full time users of SEMrush.

The benefits of SEMrush are:

  • All your websites problems are found and resolved with ease.

  • It closely monitors the performance of your website.

  • When it comes to keyword rankings, SEMrush updates you on what is trending so you can improve on your rankings.

  • If your website's SEO is low, be sure of major improvements by using SEMrush.

  • The search engine robot gets easier to crawl.

  • It is user friendly and easy to comprehend.

7. Dropshipping

When you run an online store, one of the most important points to consider is where to get the products and where to sell them. You need a strong supply chain for long-term success. When it comes to inventory, you need to invest heavily and still sell your products. Dropshipping comes in handy when it comes to carrying out these tasks. No costs are required to set it up, and there are absolutely no logistics to the actual shipping of the products.

Business people use Dropshipping to fulfill their customer’s orders from other wholesalers and other trading companies. This cuts off any supply chain because you do not need to carry out any inventories and do any shipments. The Dropshipping partner you have selected does all the work of shipping, whatever product your customer wants.

Other benefits of Dropshipping are:

  • You cut out on immense costs, as there is no inventory.

  • There is no need to make large orders as you only order what your customer needs. If you only have one customer ordering, you only order for that one customer from the Dropshipping partner.

  • Saves you lots of space as there is nothing big to order and store for future reimbursement. You can use that space for something else.

Conclusion

E-commerce tools will always give you a solid edge during the launch or in the continuity of your online store. They are the newest, fastest ways of achieving total control of your business and competing well against others.

Have you learnt anything you did not know about the above tools? Is there anything you want to add? If this article has helped you or if you have anything to say, drop a comment in the box below.

Posted 14 November, 2017

TomCoulter

Designer // Writer // Creative

Tom is a Design Correspondent for Freelancer.com. He is currently based in Melbourne and spends most of his non-work moments trying to find the best coffee.

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