Starting an Ecommerce business can be difficult and the demands from consumers add to the challenge. If you are looking to jump-start your Ecommerce business, you will need a few tools to help ease the process. The following are five tools that help with business building.
If you want to jump-start a business that offers customers the ability to shop online, you will need a fully functioning online store. PrestaShop gives you the ability to create a fully functional online store within a matter of minutes. They have designed their site so people who have programming experience can fully customize the site, while beginners can use templates. Nevertheless, more importantly, they offer you the ability to make the store user friendly with product overviews, cross-selling ability, ability to filter the search, and much more. The best part about PrestaShop is it is free to create a store and have it online in no time.
Once you have built your store, you will want to make sure you market it. This means creating newsletters that you can send to your customers (or potential customers). MailChimp offers a free service, as well as options to upgrade. They are very simple to use and you will even be able to see the benefit the newsletters serve by seeing which orders come from newsletter campaigns.
One thing that all online marketers struggle with is consumers that abandon items in their shopping cart. This problem happens to big businesses, as well as the small businesses. The remedy is to make sure you make profit on the sales that go through to make up for the lost sales. However, there is also a way to persuade people to return to their cart and finish the purchase.
Abandon Aid is a resource you can use that will help remind your customers who have left items in their cart. Abandon Aid is also free to start and helps you create customized emails to urge your customers to come back. They will offer you, the marketer, metrics to see how you are doing with number of purchases compared to abandoned carts. This will help you see if any changes need to be made to the shopping experience overall.
Another way to help prevent people from abandoning their carts is to offer live chat. Many times, consumers will stop shopping because they have a question that needs to be answered. With ZopIM, you can talk to your customers and answer any questions they may have. The best part about ZopIM is the ability to use Google translate to talk to your customers in whatever language they speak, without having to hire people who are fluent in another language. When consumers feel comfortable with you, they are more willing to buy.
The final tool you want to have when starting an Ecommerce site is a help desk for you and your customers. ZenDesk offers you the ability to provide your customers with support and problem solving, without having to spend a lot of money. They work with support tickets and will even create a self-help section for your site.
What are your go to tools for your eCommerce website?