post by:
Michael Goldstein
Once you have successfully attracted customers to your store and find you are generating revenue, it is time to start scaling your business. Scaling is a term used to describe increasing your growth potential without sacrificing all of your profits. You are taking your business to “another level”. In order to scale your business profitably, you will need the right tools at your disposal. We have compiled a list of the 16 tools you need to scale your eCommerce business based on marketing, analytics, customer service, business management, and “the extras”.
Marketing
The right marketing tools help drive your customers to your store. Simple programs help you navigate the algorithm to make your eCommerce business more visually appealing and available to your customers.
1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a marketer’s dream when it comes to managing multiple social media business accounts. It is tedious and time consuming to research trends, create ads and promotions, and post them to individual accounts across the six major social media platforms.
Hootsuite allows for customization of trend-watching and content scheduling so you can pop in and view all of your content in one place. In addition to being a great tool to post across platforms, you can schedule your posts ahead of time. Set it and forget it – you can post without logging in to all of your accounts.
Pricing: Hootsuite has multi-tiered plans to fit your budget as low as $50/month to custom pricing plans to include all of your needs.
2. Drift
Interacting with customers is always important, but many times, if the customer does not initiate the conversation, they are left with questions and will move on to another store. That is where Drift changes things. Drift is a conversation starter with customizable chatbots designed to engage your customers, keep them on your website, and help you increase your sales.
A custom chatbot can promote products and discounts while providing helpful Q&A to your customers. Drift also knows that sometimes preprogrammed conversations are not the end-all-be-all so they also offer a “Live” chat feature where the customers can talk to a customer service representative directly.
Pricing: Drift tends to lean on the pricey side once you get into their paid options, but they do offer a free and trial service. Paid plans are between $400-$1500/month and a custom plan depending on the level of services you require.
3. Google Ads (Formerly Google Adwords)
Over 80% of people use Google as their primary search engine, so it only makes sense that advertising with Google will improve your conversions. With Google Ads, not only will you appear on the first page of search results, but you can customize your keyword searches and location range to improve your visibility.
Google uses the keyword “florist” for their example business with the additional keywords “wedding florist”, “flower shop”, and “flower delivery”. These custom and additional keywords allow you to reach a wider target audience.
Pricing: Google works with your budget, setting a custom dollar amount per day which it will not exceed. You can increase, decrease, or cancel your budget at any time. You can also get $500 in free credit once you spent $500 on ads.
4. Photoshop
Most people play around with Photoshop as a kid – and we know social media influencers love the app. But Photoshop is an effective business tool as well, and it is key to creating original and eye-catching content for your website and marketing ads.
With Adobe Photoshop, you can create your own branding, enhance customer photos, and design an ambiance for your website. Photoshop is one of the most powerful image-creating tools at your disposal. Adding Photoshop creations of your own design and editing to your website, social media posts, and email promotions sets you apart from the competition.
Pricing: Adobe Photoshop doesn’t have tiered pricing. Instead, they offer one plan with a monthly flat fee of around $20/month. However, there are multiple apps provided by Adobe which range from $10-50/month per app. Adobe offers a discount if you purchase their Creative Cloud All Apps for around $60/month.
Analytics
Interpreting the data you receive is just as important as collecting it. These programs help you to separate and decipher the important metrics to continue to scale your store.
As we mentioned before, Google is a behemoth. Google has the ability to take all of the information pertaining to search results, website clicks, traffic monitoring, and sales to categorize it into measurable metrics that translate into how your business is performing.
Google Analytics integrates with the rest of Google’s platforms such as Google Ads (formerly Adwords) and Google Cloud. You can use Google Analytics to track how long a customer spends on your site, different types of conversions, remove spam/junk emails and information, and identify your customer demographics to ensure you are reaching your targets. This information helps you to define and refine your goals to improve business functions and customer service.
Pricing: The best part? Google Analytics is free to use. You don’t have to spend extra money to get insights into your own business.
6. Moz
Part of analyzing data is trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Moz is a Search Engine Optimization website designed to improve keyword search results to land you on the first page of search engines. But Moz does so much more than pump up keywords.
Moz also offers a digital “crawl” of your website to fix any issues that are standing between you and a higher ranking in the search results. Moz allows the user to track SEO data to ensure their website is improving with their service and provides insights and suggestions to improve search engine rankings.
Pricing: Moz offers three packages – Moz Local, Moz Pro, and STAT which range in price from around $15/month to $720/month and they offer free trials when you get started.
7. Kissmetrics
Understanding your customers can be a major hurdle in the eCommerce business, but you can overcome that struggle with analytics provided by a program that really gets into your customer base. With Kissmetrics you can track your customer’s conversion funnel from beginning to end while making improvements to increase the conversion rate.
Kissmetrics provides a full demographic report of your customer’s habits and website clicks, allowing you to provide interventional and follow-up service. You can track product and consumer trends, and detailed reports of who is buying which items, especially what your big spenders and repeat customers’ habits are.
Pricing: Kissmetrics offers two tier price plans that run around $300-$500/month and a custom plan where you can add and subtract information as you need it.
Customer Service
Arguably one of the most important factors of your business is your customer service department. Without customers we wouldn’t have anyone to sell to, which is why you need to scale your customer service management effectively and efficiently.
8. Smile.io
Consumers love to feel special and it has been shown that individual attention helps bring customers back to your store to make more purchases. Providing the VIP experience to each customer was challenging enough when you were a startup, but now it is near impossible. Smile.io is designed to help you create loyalty for your brand with point tier reward systems, VIP programs, and referral promotions.
The loyalty programs are completely customizable without requiring the user to be versed in any coding. Smile.io integrates with big named platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, and Wix for convenience and faster implementation.
Pricing: Smile.io has an interesting pricing structure which depends on the eCommerce platform you use. Shopify and BigCommerce plans range from $50/month to $600/month. Wix plans offer a free version or a $50/month premium plan.
9. Zendesk
Keeping track of customer emails, phone calls, and live chat messages does get messy after a while. Which ones do you respond to first? Zendesk is designed to help manage the customer relationship management side of your business by using a ticket system to organize your customer interactions and queries.
Zendesk also allows you to respond to your customers in real-time through live chats both on the phone and online. Zendesk integrates with over 1000 apps and platforms to ensure your customers are receiving the quality service you want to deliver without causing a headache pile up in your inbox.
Pricing: Zendesk offers a helpful option for foundational customer support which is their most basic plan starting at $20/month. Their sales platforms start at $20/month as well. For their all encompassing suite packages you are looking at $50/month-$215/month.
10. Yotpo
Yotpo is an all encompassing program designed to seamlessly integrate with major sales platforms and create a long-term customer out of a first-time visitor. This program allows you to engage your customers through multiple avenues. For instance, Yotpo helps you set up SMS (text message) conversations with your customers using simple yes/no (or other preset prompts) answers, then allows the customer to make their purchase directly from the text.
Yotpo also helps you manage subscriptions so you can keep your customer’s orders arriving on time. Additionally, Yotpo allows you to customize a loyalty program to continue bringing customers back to your store. And with all of this hard work, Yotpo also helps you design follow-up questionnaires to generate five-star reviews to display on your site.
Pricing: Many businesses will love giving Yotpo a try with their free service. Yotpo also offers pricing options for their SMS ($19-$200/month), Reviews ($15-$120/month), and Loyalty ($30-$250) packages (subscriptions are FREE!). They also offer a bundle package to pick and choose which products you want for a discount fee.
Business Management
From your supply chain to daily business activities, you need programs that make your life as a seller easier, not more complicated. These business management tools are designed to keep you organized, ontime, and on budget.
11. Shipbob
If you’re looking for a fulfillment center that stores, picks, packs, and ships your products – and that’s it – then Shipbob is not for you. Shipbob offers more than the traditional pick/pack/ship algorithm. This fulfillment center spans across three continents (Europe/UK, US/Canada, Australia) and generally offers 2-day shipping for domestic delivery. Fast and efficient shipping is key to keeping customers happy and having reach across borders broadens your target base.
On the business management side, Shipbob provides you with live inventory counts so you know exactly when to reorder. They also offer drop shipping in the US to keep your sales high. Shipbob integrates with your eCommerce stores and major platforms while providing you real-time analytics so you can find room for improvement.
Pricing: There are all kinds of little fees that are associated with picking/packing/shipping and handling with almost any fulfillment center. Shipbob provides a complete custom program to fit your individual needs so you only pay for the services you use.
12. Quickbooks
At first glance, someone might not assume Quickbooks is the best eCommerce accounting software, but their versatility works well with online selling. In fact, Quickbooks has an entire section of its programming dedicated to eCommerce sales. You can add payroll options to easily pay your employees.
Unifying your sales platforms into one accounting software to keep track of costs, payments, and taxes helps keep you on track. Quickbooks integrates with your Shopify, eBay, and Amazon stores and includes inventory monitoring, invoice batching, and spending analytics with varying tiered subscriptions.
Pricing: Quickbooks is affordable for most businesses starting at $15/month up to advanced plans at around $100/month.
13. Hiver
Emails tend to get lost in the endless inbox of doom and pertinent information gets lost right along with it. Hiver takes the communication conundrum and turns the tables to make sure your team is actually getting the information they need – and it all takes place from an email platform you are already using: Gmail.
With Hiver, you have complete visibility of your team’s work and assignments. You can assign customer emails and projects to individual team members, create group projects, and handle instant message chats right from your Gmail account. Now your team won’t miss a message and you can keep projects on track.
Pricing: Hiver offers discounts to their customers who pay for a full year of service, but if you prefer month-to-month payments, plans start from $20/month to $70/month.
“The Extras”
There are a lot of programs that do not fit directly into one category or another. These are the additional helpful programs that you can apply throughout your business to help fill in the gaps and make selling more successful.
14. Campaign Monitor
Don’t have the time for Photoshop or custom creations? Campaign Monitor understands those issues, so they decided to make their email campaign marketing program easy to use with a variety of templates. Simply drag and drop the text, images, and links and you are good to go. Campaign Monitor also helps you navigate and create SMS (text message) marketing to reach your mobile users.
Campaign Monitor provides analytics regarding the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, tracking conversions and leading to higher sales. You can find out how many times your email is opened, clicked, and resulted in a sale. Campaign Monitor integrates with your store, landing pages, websites, and advertising programs.
Pricing: Campaign Monitor bases their pricing on how many contacts you have. With one contact, plans start at $9/month and price increases as you grow. For high volume (over 50,000 contacts), contact customer support for deals and pricing.
15. Zapier
It would be great if there was a robot that could do all the menial tasks that take up so much of our time. Unfortunately, science has not made that robot readily available to those of us who still have laundry that needs to be folded. But Zapier has the next best thing – automation of all your tedious work tasks across your platforms.
Zapier basically vets your leads for you by allowing you to set up “trigger” notifications – meaning if the potential customer trips one of your “triggers” you can engage and lead them in the right direction of your store.
Pricing: Everyone loves free stuff. Zapier offers a free program for a single user who requires basic automation. Additional tiers range from $20/month to $800/month.
16. Bloomreach
One of the biggest issues sellers face when trying to attract clicks to their web store is displaying irrelevant content. For the best experience for both you and the customer, consider Bloomreach. You need a program that delivers top tier user experience to generate visibility and engagement through quality content.
Essentially, Bloomreach is an engagement program designed to improve the customer experience throughout your social media, SMS, and email campaigns through evaluation of your content and customer reactions. Bloomreach can assist with search engine optimization, personalization of your content and help you find the right leads.
Pricing: As far as pricing of most of our recommendations go, Bloomreach does rank as the most expensive. Bloomreach is completely customizable depending on your number of customers and potential clients. Generally speaking, plans start at $4000/month.