10 Must Use Tools for Your New Ecommerce Startup In 2020

Managing an ecommerce startup at the early stage is usually not a smooth ride for many entrepreneurs as most ecommerce startups are characterized by small teams and low budgets. 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 ecommerce startup leverage a wide range of digital tools that are adept at managing numerous business activities without necessarily having to hire staff.

In this article, we explore some of the best tools for your new ecommerce startup that can use to grow your business in a highly competitive online environment.

1. Online Invoicing Software

This is an online invoicing tool that makes it easy for you 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 along with 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 on a weekly or monthly basis, and accordingly take wiser decisions Pricing – starts at $ 0.

2. Proprofs Knowledge Base Software

Proprofs knowledge base software is an ecommerce customer support tool that enables you to create an online knowledge platform that your customers can use to resolve queries on their own without having to contact 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.

So, every time 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 ecommerce startup whether big or small. This loyalty app enables you to reward loyal customers, who then get encouraged to refer your brand to others as well. 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 encourage customer engagement through social shares. Pricing – starts at $49/month.

4. Exit Bee

Hundreds of people visit ecommerce sites, but only a fraction of them make actual purchases. For an ecommerce startup that wants to increase conversion rates, Exit Bee is the perfect tool. Besides helping you target visitors at the right time, the ecommerce tool enables you to do the following;

• Track visitor behavior 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, increase customer conversion rates.
• Improve lead generation through email subscription, 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 ecommerce tool for you. The tool Jungle Scout is of tremendous help when it comes to product research, product launch, and growing your online business. Using this ecommerce 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 they serve.
• 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 ecommerce 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 ecommerce startup. You can increase your profit margin just by sourcing products from the right suppliers. This is where Sourcify comes in. This tool serves as the link between product manufacturers and businesses seeking to manufacture their products. Sourcify makes it easy for you to source products by:

• Vetting product manufacturers to ensure you get the right companies to manufacture your product.
• 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 ecommerce tool to gain insights into customer behavior, increase conversions, analyze the performance of content, campaigns, products, etc., and accordingly make smarter decisions. Some things that you can achieve with Google Analytics include:

• Monitoring the behavior 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 ecommerce startup. The tool helps you to a whole lot of things such as:

• Creates branded email campaigns that work well on any device.
• Builds timely emails to drive customer engagement.
• Personalizes your emails + Segment your customer base and share relevant emails.
• Grows your sales figure and create long-lasting relationships with customers Pricing – starts at $9/month.

10. Bugify

Ecommerce startup usually has small teams in the beginning, and if this is the case with you too, this tool will work wonders for you. Bugify is designed to help small teams keep track of customer issues. It comes with a wide range of features that help your customer service staff track issues and resolve them easily. It enables your service staff to achieve the following results:

• Locate issue tickets easily with the help of its powerful search function.
• Create a list of issues that need to be addressed on priority.
• Categorize and locate high, medium, and low priority issues with the help of labels.
• Track the history of issues raised by customers Pricing – $290 (One-time payment.

Wrapping Up

Numerous tools support ecommerce startup out there and while this is a good thing, it can create a challenge for startups. Some tools are quite expensive and may not deliver what a firm requires at the initial stage. To ensure that you get the value, you need to grow your ecommerce 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 tools 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.