5 crucial ecommerce tools for new or established online stores

When you search for ecommerce tools that you can use for your online store, you will find that there are thousands of them available at your disposal.

They range from ecommerce website platforms to those with more specific functions like automation tools and form builders.

With the multitudes present, it can feel overwhelming to select which tools are ideal for your needs.

Just by using the right tools, you can achieve optimum operational efficiency, better customer relationships, and improvements in your sales and conversions.

That said, here are five crucial ecommerce tools you should use for your online store.

There’s no shortage of ecommerce platforms available to help merchants build websites, maintain product catalogues, manage shopping carts, process payments, fulfill orders and market brands. Amid this crowded market, BigCommerce has risen in prominence in recent years, thanks to its embracing of the “headless commerce” trend.

Today’s ecommerce merchants need more than functional storefront websites. You need to offer your products on several digital sales channels, and your site needs to be a media-rich destination led by content, brand and community experiences. By allowing merchants to manage the commerce side of business in one centralized place that’s optimized to sync effortlessly with other channels through plugins, APIs and other integrations, BigCommerce’s headless commerce offering is where it’s at.

To support that experience and raise your income and visibility, you should also be where your customers are, whether that’s with social commerce, mobile apps, blogs, marketplaces or price comparison engines.

BigCommerce can help you with just that. It builds stunning and seamlessly integrable storefronts for Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Google Shopping, WordPress, Instagram and others. And you can do all that while handling products, payments and deliveries all in one place. The platform allows you to develop whatever digital experience you like and link out to a BigCommerce-hosted checkout interface, or to host it all yourself.

For your online store to give customers a stellar brand experience, sell where they are, and generate more sales, you need a headless commerce tool like BigCommerce.

Engaging with your customers through direct messages is essential to the success of your online store. If you can accommodate your customers’ inquiries instantly, you will make them feel valued, and they’re more likely to patronize your products and services.

To make that happen, you can use a tool like Crisp. It automates chatting with your site visitors when pre-set triggers are prompted. This makes for more personalized and highly interactive customer engagement.

It allows you to send files, documents and images – and to connect your live chat with social networking sites like Messenger and Twitter.

Scheduling calls with your customers is also more convenient with Crisp. Instead of using a third-party communication software, your customers can enjoy video and audio calls right through Crisp.

Plus, if you have customers speaking a different language and you’re worried you can’t converse with them, you can breathe easy. Crisp can translate both your and your customers’ messages automatically so you can still interact in real-time.

With Crisp, you can foster customer relationships through live chat and significantly improve your conversions.

Did you know that when it comes to purchasing decisions, 83 percent of consumers trust their peers’ recommendations more than advertisements? Moreover, if they see people patronizing a product, they are likely to consider it as attention-worthy. This reality is called “social proof,” and if you haven’t leveraged it yet, you should now, because it can increase your conversions by 15 percent.

To make that happen, you need a tool called TrustPulse. When you install it on your online store, visitors can see real-time and recent activities such as sign-ups, purchases and product demonstrations.

Such notification creates a “fear of missing out” (FOMO) in your visitors and prompts them to participate, just as the others have. And if you want to see how your conversions and pages are doing, TrustPulse can provide you analytics and reports.

Additional tip: aside from TrustPulse, you can also leverage user-generated content (UGC) such as testimonials for social proof. Testimonials will help convince your prospective customers that your products are worth it. Not leveraging UGC is one of the biggest branding mistakes online retailers can make, mind you.

When you’re running your online store, one of the basic things you’d want to be doing is monitoring your ads performance and conversions from specific products.

You do this by inserting tracking codes and scripts of appropriate plugins into your website. To organize and manage these codes efficiently, you need a tool like IntellyWP.

With it, you can see all your tracking codes and scripts on one page. You can also opt to display them on the whole website or in particular pages or posts only.

If you ever fret losing your previous tracking when your website theme is updated, fear not because that won’t happen when you use this tool. With IntellyWP, you can manage pixels for tracking your ads, codes, and conversions in a more organized manner.

Imagine this. Your shoppers browse through your product list on your ecommerce site and add items on their virtual carts one after another.  Suddenly, when they’re about to hit checkout and seal the deal, they leave without making any purchase.

Is this a common scenario in your online store? If so, then you need to win your sales and shoppers back using strategies and a powerful tool called Sumo.

Sumo is built to help you supercharge your ecommerce sales and conversions. It has a neat pop-up feature which helps you gather emails and regain lost revenue. In this way, Sumo decreases cart abandonment and increases your average order value.

Here’s what happens when you wield abandoned cart popups using Sumo:

• Sumo recognizes signs of shoppers who want to leave the site.
• It launches an attractive exit intent pop-up form to bring shoppers back to the purchase funnel immediately – or at a later time through its autoresponder email.
• Using the popup, you can present irresistible discounts or value offers when shoppers try to click away or desert their carts.
• Sumo delivers an exclusive discount code in the success message and the auto-response email.

Sumo’s abandoned cart pop-ups help online store owners to recover sales from potential buyers who don’t make a purchase.

Wield these tools

These tools are well-known in how they have significantly improved the performance of many ecommerce websites.

If you have not used these tools yet to achieve the best possible results for your online store, it’s about time you do.

Photo by Igor Miske on Unsplash

Five crucial factors for a successful web design

Not dissimilar to fashion, web design is subject to constant change, with current trends coming and going.

When it comes to creating a sleek website for your company that will leave a lasting professional impression, it’s crucial to ensure that both the initial and ongoing design is up to date, current, and on-trend.

Businesses today are relying more than ever before on online interactions with their customers, so your website and online presence plays a huge, central part when it comes to achieving business success and turning over a growing profit. It’s never been more important to have a website that’s up to date, interesting, and easy to navigate for your users, both in terms of SEO, your Google ranking, and the reputation that you build with your customers.

We’ve put together five of the best web design tips that any online company can use in order to boost and improve their website, getting the most from their online presence.

#1. Consider Using a Professional:

Today, there’s an abundance of options available when it comes to creating and designing your own website, and thanks to user-friendly design tools, it’s become easier than ever to put together a website that you love and that works well for your business, even if you have no previous experience of coding or web design at all. But, whilst creating your own website to save money can be a useful option to have, it’s wise to be aware of the limitations that this can have on your company and the website’s growth overall.

Many DIY web design platforms work on a template basis, which can be great if you need something quickly, but will limit the amount of bespoke design that you can do for your site. We’d recommend checking out PWD for professional, bespoke design services with no limitations. Their portfolio really stands out and shows how diverse their client base is, so no matter what your website is about, they can create something bespoke.

#2. Clean and Clutter-Free:

Whether you’re using a professional web designer or doing it yourself, one of the key things to remember when building your website is to keep the design clean and clutter-free. Less is definitely more when it comes to successful web design; whilst interesting or unusual design elements can grab attention and keep visitors on your website for longer, bear in mind that trying to do too much or incorporate too many different design elements into your site can make it look busy and cluttered, leading to it having the opposite effect. Minimal web designs are one of the longest-standing trends in the industry, and it’s easy to see why – you simply can’t go wrong with a site that is simple, easy on the eye, and uncluttered, therefore, allowing you to navigate and get to where you need to be quickly and easily.

#3. Easy to Read:

When it comes to visuals, it’s important to make things as easy and hassle-free as possible for your users. Whether you’re running a blog or an online shop, you’re likely going to have some text content on there to help your visitors understand more about the website, your business, the services that you offer or the products you sell, and much more. You might not put much thought into inputting text content into your site, but the truth is that how it’s laid out and how well it reads can have a huge effect on user satisfaction. For example, choose a font that’s easy to read and understand, make sure that it is sized large enough, and break down any large chunks of text into smaller, more manageable segments. This is especially important if your website has a lot of text content for users to take in, like long-form blog posts or lengthy informational pages about your services.

#4. Great Visuals:

Whilst less certainly is undoubtedly more when it comes to your website design, don’t forget to include interesting visuals in the design, which will help your brand stand out, generate more interest in your content, and give visitors a clearer idea of what your brand is all about. A hero image on your front page, for example, can be just what it takes to incorporate an interesting visual into the design without going overboard, whilst a carousel can be ideal for helping your users learn more without taking up too much site space. Or you could even opt for a background video, for even more interesting visual appeal.

#5. Responsivity:

Last but certainly not least, a key web design element to consider is how well the site responds to being viewed on a range of different devices. Mobile-friendliness, in particular, is extremely important, as more and more users are choosing their smartphones and other mobile devices to browse the web, compared to laptop and desktop PC use. Ensuring that you are using a responsive design will not only boost your reputation and trustworthiness with users who land on your site but also improve your standing with Google, who are quick to penalise any sites that haven’t incorporated mobile viewing into their design.

When it comes to success with your business website, these factors are absolutely essential.