Ecommerce is a massive opportunity for entrepreneurs – if it’s done correctly, you could easily transform your side hustle shop into a legitimate income stream.

Digital, cloud-based tools are a vital part of establishing your eCommerce startup. The right tools can help you scale your business. The industry has a robust arsenal available for shop owners; marketing tools that aid in customer acquisition, analytics tools to help you gain a better understanding of your audience to improve your strategy, and competitor research tools to help you crack the competition’s code.

This article will explore different tools that are centered around growing your business. We won’t be discussing eCommerce platforms, however, but we’ll cover tools that are handpicked to set you up for success once your shop is up and running.

MailChimp for Winning Inbound Marketing

If you’re not treating email marketing as a vital channel for the business growth you’re missing out on one of the most cost-effective marketing channels available. To create a successful email marketing campaign, you need a solid tool. 

One of the best-known tools that is a great option is MailChimp. It offers a ton of integrations with all the well-known eCommerce platforms with a serious number of fantastic features. By using MailChimp, you get all of the features you’d expect from email marketing tools, but you also get numerous features that are aligned for eCommerce businesses- things like abandoned cart email automation, personalization while customers browse to use with product upsells, and order notifications.

You are also able to set up multivariate and AB tests, the ability to segment your list and optimize delivery times, and a full suite of reports to analyze your efforts. 

Dominate SEO With SEMRush

Are you sure that your target is able to discover your products online? Furthermore, are you positive that you have an edge over the competition?

Unless you’re completely certain, you need more data. The kind of data that is in a robust SEO tool like SEMRush. You can use SEMrush to help optimize your shop for search engines, but you can also use it to spy on the competition and get an idea of what their online strategy is in detail.

For competitor analysis, SEMRush empowers you to :

• Do organic analysis to discover what your competitor’s targeted keywords are and discovering new competitors that should be on your periphery.
• Backlink analysis to help you gain an understanding of how your competitors are acquiring backlinks and how it affects their domain authority.
• Complete in-depth advertising analysis to help you gain an understanding of their ad strategies, budgets, and keywords they’re using in campaigns.

But really, the magic in SEMRush lies in their SEO tool suite. It allows you to do a deep audit of your site to get an idea of your SEO’s health and empowers you to easily make the necessary changes as well as get recommendations on what you should do next.

Be A Logistics Superstar With Shipwire

Establishing your shop as a successful eCommerce business takes more than just an amazing offer, you must deliver an incredible shopping and user experience throughout the entire process- from the moment your customer starts browsing to the second they make a purchase and through to the delivery.

Logistics can quite literally make or break your eCommerce store- especially with a global audience. Having major players as competition like Amazon that has millions to spend on their logistics systems, the ecosystem is fierce. A great solution for building your own global logistics system is Shipwire. 

Shipwire is a cloud-based platform designed to handle end-to-end logistics from a single dashboard. Shipwire allows you to manage every transaction from their dashboard, manage work orders and order flow among your various acquisition channels. You can also easily keep an eye on inventory, sales orders, delivery statuses, returns and anything else that you need in relation to product delivery.

Go Totally Global With Lengow

Growing beyond your current country and want to expand globally? If this is a goal of yours in the near future, plan on taking a deep dive into Lengow.

This software offers an incredible user interface that puts you in the position to connect your online business with numerous different channels – everything from comparison shopping sites to affiliate networks. Selling your products to international customers via a sponsored link or connecting global consumers in mobile shopping markets has never been this easy.

If you’re prepared to embrace everything that becoming a global entrepreneur entails, take a look at Lengow’s potential and how it might fit into your eCommerce business’ workflow.

Collect for Easy Marketing Automation

No matter if you’re searching for marketing automation tools that fit into your online business or working to create a loyalty program as an incentive for recurring sales, you’ll find what you need with a tool like Collect.

Collect boasts integration with the major eCommerce platforms. This tool is even great for brick-and-mortar stores- retailers can use Collect with integrations with Vend, LightSpeed, and Kounta POS platforms. 

Collect offers you anything from automated email marketing tools to customer-targeting interfaces with special offers and will likely leave you impressed with the options at your fingertips.

Conclusion

It’s time to transform your eCommerce venture into a business instead of a hobby, so it’s absolutely vital that you treat your efforts as such. 

Neglecting to explore and investigate potential revenue opportunities when your company is young is a mistake and holds your business back. Entrepreneurs that are willing to invest a little time into doing their due diligence might just be able to transform their little eCommerce shop into a highly profitable revenue stream.

Author Bio:

Kristen Bowie is a marketing obsessive & advocate for the knowledge economy. When she’s not writing for Qwilr, she’s hanging out with her two goats & painting.

Increasing your eCommerce Network Using Online Tools

Understanding eCommerce | Digital Media Services to Grow Your Business