Managing an e-commerce startup at the early stage is usually not a smooth ride for many entrepreneurs, as small teams and low budgets characterise most e-commerce startups. Often, they do not have the luxury of hiring full-time staff to handle critical functions such as accounting and marketing.
But in recent times, technology is providing innovative solutions to conquer this challenge as most e-commerce startups leverage a wide range of digital tools that are adept at managing numerous business activities without hiring staff.
In this article, we explore some of the best tools for your new e-commerce startup that you can use to grow your business in a highly competitive online environment.
1. Online Invoicing Software
This online invoicing tool makes it easy to manage and track your business finances online from a central dashboard.
The tool helps you create professional invoices and send them to clients instantly. You can even send payment receipts and a thank you message on receiving the payment for your products or services.
Besides this, the software helps you do numerous other things, such as:
- Keeping track of business expenses.
- Sending payment reminders to customers.
- Monitoring invoices issued and payments received.
- Scheduling invoices weekly or monthly, and accordingly take wiser decisions. Pricing starts at $ 0.
2. Proprofs Knowledge Base Software
Proprofs knowledge base software is an e-commerce customer support tool that enables you to create an online knowledge platform that your customers can use to resolve queries independently without contacting service reps.
So, you can store important information related to your business and its offerings in this cloud-based platform and make it accessible to your customers.
However, whenever they have a query, they will first refer to your self-help knowledge base instead of directly raising a ticket.
This is the best way to ensure that your customers get instant answers to any questions they have, thus reducing the workload of your support staff and keeping your customers satisfied and happy. Pricing – starts at $0.
Also Read:Top 10 Ecommerce Websites For Online Shopping In Nigeria.
3. Smile.io
Smile.io is essential for building brand loyalty for any e-commerce startup, whether big or small. This loyalty app rewards loyal customers for referring your brand to others.
You can use this tool to reward customers who regularly buy from you, boost brand advocacy by encouraging customers to refer your online store to others and promote customer engagement through social shares. Pricing – starts at $49/month.
4. Exit Bee
Hundreds of people visit e-commerce sites, but only a fraction of them make actual purchases. Exit Bee is the perfect tool for an e-commerce startup to increase conversion rates.
Besides helping you target visitors at the right time, the e-commerce tool enables you to do the following;
- Track visitor behaviour to ensure they see your marketing campaign before leaving the site
- Improve targeting by filtering visitors based on devices used, pages visited and time spent on the site.
- Create location-based campaigns to target the right audience and increase customer conversion rates.
- Improve lead generation through email subscription, and reduce cart abandonment rate. Pricing – starts at $39/month.
5. Jungle Scout
If you sell on Amazon or your site, Jungle Scout is the ideal e-commerce tool.
Jungle Scout is of tremendous help in product research, product launch, and growing your online business. Using this e-commerce tool, you can:
- Search massive product databases to find top-selling items in different categories.
- Keep track of inventory levels, daily sales and revenue for products sold on Amazon.
- Identify reliable suppliers based on the items they manufacture and the top customers.
- Use keywords to drive traffic to your product listing.
- Improve performance and lower costs using sales analytics Pricing – starts at $39/month.
6. Buffer
Social media is an integral part of online selling, and there is no better e-commerce tool than Buffer to help you manage your online interactions with customers.
Buffer is designed to help you have seamless social media interactions and also help small businesses to achieve the following:
- Planning and scheduling social media campaigns.
- Measuring the performance of social media activities.
- Tracking engagements on different social media platforms Pricing – starts at $15 monthly.
7. Sourcify
Product sourcing plays a critical role in the growth of any e-commerce startup. You can increase your profit margin by sourcing products from suitable suppliers.
This is where Sourcify comes in. This tool serves as the link between product manufacturers and businesses seeking to manufacture their products. In addition, Sourcify makes it easy for you to source products by:
- Vetting product manufacturers to ensure you get the right companies to manufacture your product.
- They are reducing the risks involved in the manufacturing process.
- Helping you pick the best manufacturers by soliciting bids from at least three manufacturers Pricing – Contact Sourcify.
Also Read: How To Start Ecommerce Business Like Jumia And Konga In Nigeria.
8. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is an excellent e-commerce tool to gain insights into customer behaviour, increase conversions, analyse the performance of content, campaigns, products, etc., and accordingly make smarter decisions. Some things that you can achieve with Google Analytics include:
- Monitor the behaviour of people who visit your online store.
- Boosting conversion rates for Pay-per-Click ads.
- Measuring return on investment for online marketing campaigns Pricing – It’s free of cost.
9. Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor works best if your focus is on email marketing. It’s an all-in-one solution to create compelling email marketing campaigns for your e-commerce startup. The tool helps you with a whole lot of things, such as:
- Creates branded email campaigns that work well on any device.
- Builds timely emails to drive customer engagement.
- Personalise your emails + Segment your customer base and share relevant emails.
- Grows your sales figure and creates long-lasting relationships with customers Pricing – starts at $9/month.
10. Bugify
Ecommerce startup usually has small teams initially, and if this is the case with you too, this tool will work wonders for you. Bugify is designed to help small groups keep track of customer issues.
It comes with a wide range of features that help your customer service staff track issues efficiently. It enables your service staff to achieve the following results:
- Locate issue tickets quickly with the help of its powerful search function.
- Create a list of issues that need to be addressed on priority.
- Categorise and locate high, medium, and low priority issues with the help of labels.
- Track the history of customer issues. Pricing – $290 (One-time payment.
Wrapping Up
Numerous tools support e-commerce startups out there, and while this is a good thing, it can create a challenge for startups. Some devices are quite expensive and may not deliver what a firm requires initially.
To ensure that you get the value, you need to grow your e-commerce business, clarify your needs, and evaluate each tool to see how well it meets those needs.
At the startup stage, keep your costs as low as possible by avoiding tools that cost so much but offer so little. Pay attention to the features that the agencies provide – the more you can get done with it, the better. At the same time, consider the ease of use. You only have a few people helping with the business – so the easy a tool is to use, the better for you.
Author Bio
Uju is an SEO content writer who writes appealing content for tech and SaaS brand. I have four years of experience in writing quality content for different industries.