There are many factors responsible for a business’ success. It is when all of these factors are combined in the right mix that the odds of success are so high. All businesses require the use of certain tools which help streamline their efforts, improve speed and enhance performance. The absence of these tools will considerably slow business operations down or even cripple the business’ growth.
In the ecommerce industry, the presence or absence of such tools can make or break your store. In this article, we’ll be looking at some of the best eCommerce tools you can integrate into your operations.
Autoresponder and Email Marketing Tools
After you’re done setting up your ecommerce store, the first thing you want to do is set up a means of capturing email on your store. This is important because email can make all the difference in the success of your marketing campaigns.
Collecting your visitors’ and customers emails means that you can and will be able to reach them with special offers, deals of the day and so on. Some of the top email marketing and autoresponder tools you can use include Mailchimp, Aweber, GetResponse, ConstantContact and InfusionSoft. They each have their pros and cons.
But if you’re really low on cash, you should try Aweber which costs $1 for the first month or so and $19 for subsequent months. Mailchimp is also a good choice if you’re on a budget, as it charges you nothing for the first 2,000 subscribers and allows you send up to 12,000 emails per month for free.
Customer Relationship Management Tools
There’s no successful ecommerce store without excellent customer relationship management tools. These tools help you manage your customers, fulfill their requests, streamline your business and puts you on a fast track to speedy growth.
They are excellent for lead generation, opportunity management, and customer service. Some examples of excellent CRM software include Zen Desk, Salesforce, Zoho CRM, and Insightly. These tools are extremely important and necessary for your success in eCommerce.
Payment Processing and Order Fulfillment Tools
All ecommerce stores must have a means of taking orders, fulfilling them, and accepting payment. In the past, this used to be a difficult thing to do. You had to have separate teams attending to that or separate software to handle each of these.
Nowadays, you can use just one platform to take care of all these. While there are many, one of the best services that provides these tools isFastSpring. FastSpring’s tools are known to do this seamlessly and can be accessed from just one dashboard.
With over 2,200 clients and counting, FastSpring’s order fulfillment, subscription service handling and payment processing tools are the best option for this part of your business. This, combined with their highly effective customer service — speedy and helpful service that always goes above-board — make them the perfect payment processing service for all ecommerce stores.
Conversion Optimization Tools
Let’s be clear about one thing: you ecommerce store is not complete without conversion optimization. You store should be designed with one purpose in mind: maximize your conversion rates.
So, from your user interface to your shopping cart and everything else in between should be designed to do just that. Luckily, you don’t have to do this by yourself. With an array of tools such as FastSpring’s shopping cart optimization and conversion tools, you can easily tweak your ecommerce store to get the highest conversion rate possible.
Now that you know what tools can fast-track your ecommerce store’s success, go get them and improve your chances of being successful.
Oscar King is a small business operator and freelance writer who contributes articles and advice on topics affecting todays digital marketplace.
