.jpeg)
Trying to get your online business going but frustrated at the endless choices of ecommerce tools, apps, platforms and options??
I know how you feel.
And what’s worse is that - there are hundreds and thousands of ecommerce tools that you could potentially choose from. Yet, despite this abundance of choice, you’re suffering from analysis paralysis.
Which one works? Which one helps?
Would I get ripped off?
That’s why to help you out, I’ve listed out some of the most popular tools in the market that you can consider testing. These tools have been proven to work over the years - and are built to solve different problems for your ecommerce store.
Have a look at them - and see if they are a good fit for your store.
Before you even begin looking at some of the more sophisticated tools on the market, you need to have an ecommerce store.
If you don’t, then perhaps it’s time to start creating one.
Fortunately, there are several easy-to-use ecommerce platforms out there in the market that you can consider using to set up your store.
Official Website: https://www.shopify.com
A plug-and-play ecommerce platform for anyone who isn’t as technically-gifted, Shopify is one of the fastest growing platforms right now. Powering about 500,000 ecommerce websites, Shopify is easy-to-use and offer tons of ready-to-plug templates for you to get started.
The downside is probably their on-site SEO, as URL structures are hard to modify.
NOTE: Learn how you can set up your own referral program on Shopify.
Official Website: https://woocommerce.com/
One of the largest, if not the largest, ecommerce platforms on the market, WooCommerce powers (at time of writing) almost 3 million websites in the world.
If you’re a fan of Wordpress as a content management system (CMS), then WooCommerce is probably your best bet. Also, it’s free to install, plus, there are a bunch of quality WooCommerce hosting providers in the market.
NOTE: Learn how you can set up your own referral program on WooCommerce.
Official Website: https://www.bigcommerce.com/
A Shopify competitor, BigCommerce offers similar features to Shopify - a drag-and-drop, ready-to-go ecommerce platform for you to get started quickly.
It is, however, more expensive than Shopify though.
NOTE: Learn how you can set up your own referral program on BigCommerce.
Official Website: https://www.squarespace.com/
Initially more popular with bloggers, artists, photographers and musicians due to its beautiful templates, Squarespace has slowly begun to be a platform of choice for some ecommerce stores.
NOTE: ReferralCandy integrates with Squarespace!
Official Website: https://www.3dcart.com/
Another alternative to Shopify, 3dcart offers a complete ecommerce website builder for small businesses, with many out-of-the-box features, 100+ supported payment platforms and over 60 mobile-ready themes. They also offer a Dropshipping plan starting at just $9.99/month.
NOTE: Learn how you can set up your own referral program on 3dcart.
What happens after you’ve set up a ecommerce store?
Simple - you need something to sell. Not only that, you’ll need tools to help you with inventory management, shipping, accounting, etc. - all those boring, operational stuff that you probably hate… but needs to get done.
Here are some of the tools that can help you simplify and systemize these operational activities.
Official Website: https://www.oberlo.com/
Recently acquired by Shopify, Oberlo is an app that allows you to easily import hundreds of products to your store. They even help you fulfill your orders automatically.
Official Website: https://www.junglescout.com/
JungleScout is a tool that helps you find lucrative niches and products across the entire Amazon catalog. Their Chrome Extension feature even allows you to see every product’s price, estimated sales, review count and more.
Official Website: https://www.trysourcify.com/
One of the toughest things to do is to source for products or suppliers. Sourcify helps you automate them. All you have to do is to simply submit your concept to them - and they will help find your suppliers!
Official Website: https://www.sellbrite.com/
Sellbrite helps you automate listing, syncing and shipping across all your sales channels. That means, if you’re selling on multiple marketplaces, e.g Amazon, Shopify, eBay, Walmart, Newegg, etc. - Sellbrite will help you make sure everything is neatly managed and easy to read and observe.
Official Website: http://printful.com/
Just simply looking for an easy way to print and sell apparel? Printful is an on-demand printing, fulfillment and shipping tool that can help you sell T-shirts anywhere, be it your own store or another marketplace.
Official Website: https://www.easyship.com/
Working with multiple couriers is a great way to reduce shipping costs. Easyship is a one-stop shipping platform where you can contact multiple couriers, negotiate with them and form a partnership.
Official Website: https://www.tradegecko.com/
Based in Singapore, TradeGecko is an inventory management software that allows you to see your products, orders and business contacts all in one place.
Official Website: https://www.xero.com/
Xero is an online accounting software that keeps track of your cashflow, categorizes your latest bank transactions and even send invoices for you.
Official Website: https://www.taxjar.com/
TaxJar is a tool that helps automate your sales tax calculations, reporting and filings.
Official Website: https://viabill.com
ViaBill is an online payment solution that allows shoppers to buy now and pay in easy monthly installments with 0 interest, while merchants get paid upfront and in-full. They take care of all credit and fraud risks and integrates directly into your website so that your shoppers would never have to leave your page. All they have to do is to simply select ViaBill at checkout.
Official Website: https://www.proofhub.com
Want to keep your teams, tasks, and communications at one place? ProofHub will do that for you. Add tasks with deadlines, share files, proof and annotate them using markup tools, collaborate in real-time, track project progress, and do a lot more using this all-in-one project management software. Loved by thousands of teams across the globe, this easy-to-use software simplifies task management and collaboration among teams to help you remain in ultimate control of everything.
With your store ready, and products to sell, how then do you start getting sales? By generating awareness and acquiring customers.
That’s marketing.
Fortunately, there are also tools in the market that makes marketing tactics easier to execute. Here are some of them.
Official Website: https://www.referralcandy.com/
Dropbox, Airbnb, Uber, YouFoodz, etc. are some of the largest companies out there that have grown by using a referral program. ReferralCandy is the tool that makes setting up a referral program possible (and easy!). No tech-savvy needed.
Official Website: https://mailchimp.com/
Originally an email marketing service, Mailchimp is now the world’s largest marketing automation platform. Mailchimp can serve as your email database where you can send emails, engage your customers, build your brand and get them to buy.
(NOTE: Even better, ReferralCandy integrates with Mailchimp!)
Official Website: https://www.klaviyo.com/
Another marketing automation tool, Klaviyo has powerful segmentation ability that helps send super-targeted emails so that you can make more sales.
Official Website: https://sumo.com/
Most marketers will agree that the “money is in the list.” Meaning - if you have your own email list, you will be able to generate sales anytime you want. But how do you build a list?
Use Sumo. Tools like Sumo provides pop-ups, scroll boxes and welcome mats that allows you to capture the email addresses of visitors who visit your site.
Official Website: https://optinmonster.com/
Like Sumo, OptinMonster is a email capturing software. Use OptinMonster to capture the email addresses of your visitors, because there is a high chance that they may never return again.
Official Website: https://getshogun.com/
A hugely popular landing page tool on Shopify, Shogun helps you build beautiful custom pages with a simple drag-and-drop editor.
Official Website: https://unbounce.com/
Running tons of ads on Facebook and Adwords? Then you’ll probably need a lot of highly-relevant, super-targeted landing pages to convey your offer. Unbounce is a advanced landing page tool that can help you improve your PPC conversion rates.
Official Website: https://buffer.com/
It can be difficult trying to manage tons of social media channels at once. Buffer helps you schedule posts on the different social media platforms (e.g Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest) - and also provides a dashboard that helps you see your social performance over time.
Official Website: https://www.osiaffiliate.com/
Omnistar is an easy way to set up an affiliate program, see the results and integrate it with your website.
Official Website: https://kingsumo.com/
Want to run a giveaway that generates hundreds (if not thousands) of emails that you can later remarket to? KingSumo is a free, and easy-to-use tool to set up your own giveaway. It even has its own viral component built in for you.
Official Website: https://www.usefomo.com/
Your friend has just bought X. What happens if you saw this on an ecommerce website? Would you feel more inclined to buy if you saw one of your close friends buy too?
The data says yes. Fomo is a tool that shows all your visitors social proof of your store’s success. By emulating a busy cashier in a retail store, all your visitors can see how many sales you’re receiving at any given time.
Official Website: https://ahrefs.com/
You can’t create a comprehensive SEO strategy without knowing what your competitors are doing, how to build links and where you stand. Ahrefs is the tool that allows you to grow your search traffic, research your competitors and monitor your niche - all in one platform.
Official Website: https://www.addthis.com/ecommerce-tools/
AddThis has been known for their easy-to-use share buttons, trusted by millions of brands around the world. But they also offer a full suite of website tools to help you grow your online business and engage with visitors, all for free. They create email list building tools and promotional CTAs, with little to no code experience required.
Official Website: https://www.intercom.com/
Intercom is both a customer support and a conversion tool. By integrating live chat, emails and helpdesks, Intercom helps you serve your customers better by allowing you to chat with them in real-time, or offer proactive help through targeting.
Official Website: https://www.zendesk.com/
One of the incumbents in the customer support software industry, Zendesk offers an easy-to-use platform for your customer support agents to provide support to your customers.
Official Website: https://www.promoter.io/
Promoter.io captures your customer feedback on how you’re doing through the Net Promoter Score system. Know why you’re doing well, or why you’re not favoured through direct, personal feedback from your customers.
Official Website: https://www.messenger.com/
Messenger isn’t just a place for you to chat casually with your friends. Your customers want to reach you via Messenger too. Provide customer support, or build messenger bots to help answer customer queries fast.
Official Website: https://analytics.google.com/
Probably the most used analytics tool in the market, Google Analytics shows you everything from how many visitors you’re getting, which channels are performing, what pages are performing best and so on.
Official Website: https://app.neatly.io/
Neatly gathers all of your data into one dashboard & provides you with the insights you need to reach goals and grow your business.
Official Website: https://vwo.com/
VWO helps you run effective A/B tests, so you will always have data supporting each and every of your decision.
Official Website: https://www.proprofsdesk.com/
As a growing online business, it is natural for you to receive hundreds of product feature/pricing/refund requests. ProProfs Help Desk allows you to stay on top of every customer communication and solve customer problems faster.
Features like shared inbox, knowledge base, canned responses, ticket prioritization, etc. make ProProfs Help Desk a must-have e-commerce tool. The best part? They offer a Forever Free plan with basic features.
These are some of the most popular ecommerce tools used by thousands of ecommerce stores worldwide to run their businesses.
Each of them were made for a specific use, so don’t feel the rush or panic to try to install them all.
Instead, find out what problem you need to solve, then have a look at the tool that would solve the problem. Give it a test run (most of them have free trials), and decide if it’s good for your store (or helps you solve your problems.)
That way, you will be able to manage your costs and spend only on the tools you need.
(Note: If you want to read more about how the e-commerce pros are doing it, check out our post on the best e-commerce blogs).
Si Quan is ReferralCandy's Content Marketing Manager. He is also the co-founder of BreakDance Decoded, an online breakdance training company. He loves standup comedy, and has a dream to visit at least 100 countries in his lifetime.
.webp)
