Ecommerce tools simplify and automate tasks needed to start and run an online business. Whether you’re starting from scratch or expanding your brick-and-mortar to the digital scene, these tools will help maximize time and complete your online store sooner.In this article, we’ll list down and explain all the best Ecommerce tools you need for a domain name, Ecommerce platforms, product management, customer support, marketing, and graphic design.
Domain Name Generator
A domain name is the identity or name of your website that serves as the door your customers use to enter your online store.If you already have a physical store, you can simply use your business name. However, sometimes the domain may have already been used by someone else. You will need to play around your business name or use a domain name generator to help you out.
1. GoDaddy
GoDaddy is a domain name registration and web hosting service provider. It is one of the most popular web hosting companies, with over 18 million users.One of their online tools is a domain name generator that lets you choose based on keywords related to your business. After choosing the keywords, they will populate all the possible domain names, availability, and price.Check out GoDaddy’s domain name generator here.
2. Name Mesh
Name Mesh is a smart domain name suggestion tool that lets you find available names depending on keywords, web hosting, and Top Level Domain or TLD (e.g. “.com,” “.net,” “.co,” etc.)What’s unique about this tool is that they sort names based on different factors like Common, New, Short, Extra, Similar, SEO, Fun, and Mix. These factors give you more options and can help you choose which one easily.Find your domain name with Name Mesh here.
3. Lean Domain Search
Lean Domain Search is a website that allows you to search for domain names based on keywords you choose. However, they only check “.com” TLD, because they believe that nontechnical people will have “.com” at the top of their head for websites.After choosing a keyword, they almost instantly populate all possible domains. You can sort them based on popularity, length, or alphabetical order. Once you’ve found the name you want, they let you register directly through WordPress or Bluehost.Try out Lean Domain Search here.
Top Ecommerce Platforms
Ecommerce platforms are Ecommerce tools that let you create and manage your website, manage products, streamline marketing efforts, and conduct sales operations. Choosing a platform is crucial as it can affect the efficiency and profitability of your business.Here are the top three Ecommerce platforms you can choose:
1. Shopify
Shopify is one of the easiest platforms to use, making it great for startups and small businesses. It provides a wide selection of website designs and applications that can help boost your marketing and sales efforts.One disadvantage of using Shopify is that they charge a transaction fee on top of payment gateway fees. That is unless you use Shopify Payments, which isn’t available everywhere.Check out our blog if you want to learn more about how Shopify works and its pricing.
2. Magento
If you’re looking for customizability, Magento is a great Ecommerce platform to use. You can choose the free Open Source for some of the most basic functionalities or Magento Commerce for powerful capabilities.However, the biggest downside of Magento is it’s complicated to use if you don’t know how to code. Plus, they don’t have customer support. Although, you can outsource a Magento developer to help so that you’ll have someone to apply all the features and functionalities you want.
3. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an Ecommerce tool that allows you to turn a WordPress website into an online store. It’s highly customizable, and the best thing about it is it’s free. However, you will have to pay for additional features and themes.Although, like Magento, WooCommerce also requires knowledge about coding or website development. Because it’s also self-hosted, you have to perform maintenance and updates on your own. Luckily, it’s easy to outsource this to a WooCommerce developer.
Product Management Tools
Regardless of the number of products you’re going to sell, product management requires Ecommerce tools that can help streamline your process.Product management tools help you organize your current products, find potential areas for development, forecast inventory, and more. Here are three must-have product management Ecommerce tools:
1. Akeneo PIM
Akeneo boasts a user-friendly and highly customizable system that can quickly measure product data and provide improvement suggestions. On top of that, Akeneo PIM is an open-source software, making it practically free.They also have an annual subscription for their enterprise edition if you want more features and cloud distribution. However, their prices are on a quote basis, so visit their website for more info.Here's a preview of viewing and searching products on Akeneo:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekMTmTPptlc
2. Salsify
Salsify is one of the most feature-rich product management Ecommerce tools you can use. It can simplify processes through fast data imports from multiple data domains paired with a drag-and-drop UI. Learn more about Salsify’s PIM here.As for pricing, Salsify is also on a quote basis that will probably vary based on the size of your business. Check out their pricing page for more information.Here's a preview of Salsify's dashboard:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwolHbdvSps
3. inFlow Inventory
inFlow is a powerful inventory management software that lets you track sales, manage products, review reports, and restock on time. You can install their software on your desktop or use their cloud application. Find out more about inFlow Inventory’s features here.inFlow Inventory has three pricing models: Light ($71/month, up to 100 monthly orders), Standard ($179/month, up to 1000 monthly orders), and Plus ($359/month, up to 5000 monthly orders). See the breakdown of each model on their pricing page.Here's a quick video about navigating inFlow:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgqxPwO1RGQ
Online Customer Support Tools
An Ecommerce business has a broader range of customer support channels compared to traditional customer service methods. There’s email, live chat, voice, omnichannel, and more.If you want to keep your customers satisfied, you have to be on every channel your customers want you to be. With Ecommerce tools for customer support, you can cover multiple channels and customers at once.
1. Zendesk
Zendesk is a support and sales software that features a help desk that can be customized specifically for what you need. It can handle multi-channel communication, including live chat and email. However, their email communications platform can be overwhelming with all the information on the page.They offer three pricing models: Support (from $5 per agent per month), Support Suite (from $89 per agent per month, and Custom-built (for personalized pricing). You can check out their pricing page to know more about the features included in each model.
2. HelpScout
HelpScout is the best Ecommerce tool for customer service when it comes to nurturing existing customers.With their Customer Management feature, you can find, sort, and manage all the customers you’ve identified. They also offer live chat, in-app messaging, and smooth integration with other Ecommerce tools you already have.They have three pricing models, which can be paid annually or monthly:
- Standard - $240 per user billed yearly (which comes down to $20 per user per month), or $25 per user billed monthly.
- Plus - $420 per user billed yearly (which comes down to $35 per user per month), or $40 per user billed monthly.
- Company - personalized pricing for larger support teams
Find out more about the inclusions of each plan on their website. Here's a product demo of HelpScout's help desk:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqifFwyGvoQ
3. SalesForce Essentials
SalesForce Essentials is a powerful customer service Ecommerce tool that features multi-channel support, including email, chat, phone, social, and self-service help. The platform is doesn’t overwhelm you with data and is easy to use. However, they don’t offer custom plans.You get all of their features for $300 billed annually (comes down to $25 per user per month) or $35 per user billed monthly.Check out this quick overview of SalesForce's platform:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxO49kFkl0Q
Ecommerce Marketing Tools
Ecommerce marketing is more extensive than traditional marketing. Therefore, you will need numerous Ecommerce tools to help you handle each marketing strategy. Some of the main marketing methods include email, social media, pay-per-click, SEO, and content marketing.
1. Email Marketing Tools
Email marketing stands as the most budget-friendly and effective marketing strategy for Ecommerce businesses. In choosing an email marketing tool, you need something that can do the following:
- Create a customizable email design
- User-friendly interface with a drag-and-drop editor
- Allows targeted bulk emails
- Capable of segmenting send lists based on actions
- Capable of marketing automation
- Provide reports or subscriber data analytics
a. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the most user-friendly email marketing tools available. Their email editor is pretty straightforward and doesn’t overwhelm you with too many features.They have a free subscription for small subscriber lists, but you will have to switch to a paid version once your list grows more than 2,000 subs. Unfortunately, their paid subscription is a bit pricey compared to other email marketing tools, and their automation capabilities are limited.Their pricing models are: Essentials (starts at $15/month), Standard (starts at $25/month), and Premium (starts at $420/month). Get the breakdown of each subscription on their pricing page.
b. Sender
Sender is one of the best email marketing Ecommerce tools for creating automated campaigns, without breaking the bank. It can easily integrate with Ecommerce platforms so you can streamline your email marketing and transaction process.This Ecommerce tool is free for up to 2,500 subs and 15,000 emails per month. As for their paid subscriptions, you can choose a monthly plan or pay for prepaid credits. The monthly plan charges depending on the number of subs, while prepaid credits charge per email.Their pricing varies greatly, but it ranges from 9€ to 990€ ($10.07 to $1107.99, conversions may vary). You can visit their pricing page for more information.
c. OptinMonster
OptinMonster is a lead generation Ecommerce tool that can be used to grow your email list through advanced targeting and automation. It can personalize your opt-in messaging and design based on a user’s behavior so that you can have higher conversion rates.While it isn’t exactly an email sender tool, it has the lead generation, automation, and targeting capabilities that can’t be found in other email marketing tools.Their pricing models are annual subscriptions: Basic ($108/year), Plus ($228/year), Pro ($348/year), and Growth ($588/year). Find out more about the inclusions of each plan here.
2. Social Media Marketing Tools
Growing your social media requires a lot of repetition and content curation. With social media marketing tools, you can organize, create, and schedule your social media campaigns. On top of that, they allow you to measure the effectiveness of each campaign.Here, we will give you the best Ecommerce tools for data aggregation, social media content creation, and graphic post creation.
a. HootSuite
Hootsuite is a platform that gathers data from over 35 social media networks to easily publish, monitor, and analyze campaigns. One of its best features is its ability to create and manage paid social campaigns to see all data in one place.They have four pricing models, which are: Professional ($19/month), Team ($99/month), Business ($599/month), and Enterprise (custom pricing). Check out their pricing page for more info.Here's a quick tour of the HootSuite dashboard:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVFNmBWAjC4
b. BuzzSumo
Coming up with recurring or trending content can be difficult if you don’t know where to look. BuzzSumo answers this problem by giving you content insights to help you come up with ideas, create timely content, monitor performance, and find relevant influencers.You can get BuzzSumo in four pricing models: Pro ($99/month or $948/year), Plus ($179/month or $1668/year), Large ($299/month or $2868/year), and Enterprise (custom pricing, starts at $499/month). See the breakdown of each plan here.
c. Canva
Some social media campaigns require minimal graphic design skills, and Canva is the best Ecommerce tool for that. It lets you design numerous marketing assets like social posts, flyers, brochures, and a whole lot more. Best of all, you can get a long way with its free subscription.However, if you want more customization, they have two more pricing models: Pro ($12.95/month or $119.4/year) and Enterprise ($360/year, or contact their sales team for custom pricing). Find out more about the features included in each plan here.
3. SEO Tools
Some social media campaigns require minimal graphic design skills, and Canva is the best Ecommerce tool for that. It lets you design numerous marketing assets like social posts, flyers, brochures, and a whole lot more. Best of all, you can get a long way with its free subscription.However, if you want more customization, they have two more pricing models: Pro ($12.95/month or $119.4/year) and Enterprise ($360/year, or contact their sales team for custom pricing). Find out more about the features included in each plan here.
a. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a complete set of SEO tools that let you optimize your website, analyze competitors, research great keywords, explore top-performing content, and track your ranking. On top of that, they have extensive content about SEO on their website and Youtube channel, which is excellent for new businesses.They have four pricing models: Lite ($99/month or $990/year), Standard ($179/month or $1,790/year), Advanced ($399/month or $3990/year), and Agency ($999/month or $9,990/year). Check out their pricing page for more info about inclusions.
b. Google Analytics
In a nutshell, Google Analytics helps you determine what’s wrong and what’s working on your website by providing real-time data. With this tool, you can maximize ad spend, analyze visitor behavior, and optimize pages for better user experience and SEO. Best of all, it’s free.However, if you’re not into analyzing a bunch of numbers, graphs, and other data, Google Analytics can be extremely overwhelming. It prioritizes functionality over user-friendliness, as it immediately shows you an overview of your site data as soon as you open it.
c. Search Console
Search Console is another Google web tool that measures your website traffic and performance. It also lets you disavow or deny bad links, which is essential for healthy link building. Search Console also shows you the keywords each page on your website is ranking for, making it easy to target and optimize.Although, like Google Analytics, Search Console also shows an overwhelming amount of data. It’s also limited to only showing if your page is indexed in Google, but it doesn’t give you recommendations to improve.
Graphic Design Tools
Graphic design is essential to attract visitors and provide excellent customer experience through your Ecommerce website. On top of that, it’s a graphic designer’s responsibility to create a design that will entice your customers to shop.In Ecommerce, graphic design covers all aspects of the business that needs design or photo editing, including email design, landing page design, website design, product photo editing, and more. Here are the top three tools necessary for graphic design.
1. Adobe Photoshop
One of the most popular design tools, Photoshop can handle photo editing, compositing, digital painting, graphic design, and animation. All of these features are necessary for Ecommerce, because almost all of your assets need to have imagery to be effective.If you already have a background in using Photoshop, then you can probably fit designing your website into your schedule. Otherwise, you’re going to need to outsource a graphic designer. Because studying Photoshop from scratch will slow down your entire operations.Adobe Photoshop has three payment models: Annual plan paid monthly ($20.99), annual plan paid yearly ($239.88), and monthly plan ($31.49).
2. Adobe InDesign
Another essential Ecommerce design tool, InDesign lets you create graphics for print and digital media. It’s great for creating typography, ebooks, digital magazines, interactive PDFs, brochures, catalogs, and more.Just like Photoshop, however, it requires you to have an existing skill in graphic design to maximize all its features. Plans and pricing are also the same as Photoshop.If you want to find the best value, you can check out their Creative Cloud Plans and Pricing page for bundles.
3. Shakr
Shakr is a video editing tool that helps you create all types of video assets for your marketing strategies. It boasts a drag-and-drop video editing feature that allows you to create more videos faster, without sacrificing quality.Their prices start at $200, which is their basic plan. However, for more complex plans, you will have to ask for a quote. Visit their pricing page to find out more about Shakr’s features.
Start and Grow Your Ecommerce Business with KDCI
It can be difficult to choose from thousands of Ecommerce tool options. So hopefully, this list helped you find what you need. At the end of the day, the key is to keep your customers in mind when choosing Ecommerce tools, and you’ll always choose the right ones.All of the Ecommerce tools mentioned in this article are only some of what we use here at KDCI Outsourcing. To give you the best quality of service in design, marketing, customer service, and more — we need top-of-the-line Ecommerce tools.If you want to learn more about how we can help you start and grow your Ecommerce business, visit our Ecommerce Outsourcing page. For more questions, click or tap the button below.Contact Us
