Fortunately, for the tech savvy, there are a lot of ecommerce store management tools you can add to your arsenal and you’ll see your productivity and business grow.
Take a look at these 15 tools that help power everything from the back end of the business to products, marketing, and customer loyalty.
Inventory Management Tools
Oberlo, the ultimate tool for Dropshipping and store automation that works specifically with Shopify stores. Oberlo allows for easy import of products from suppliers into your store. Find the products that your customers will love, customised to your heart’s desire, with automatic inventory and price updates, and pricing automation. Everything is
Everything is drop shipped to customers for you, and you can keep track of which shipments are where at any given time. With a free forever plan, it’s perfect for people who are just starting out and can’t afford to scale just yet.
TradeGecko lets you manage all your products in a single location, pulling from multiple platforms including Magento, Amazon, Shopify, and WooCommerce. It provides a quick and easy way to draft quotes for customers and build purchase orders. It integrates with Xero to make your accounting easier, too. Pricing starts at $99/month when billed monthly, and $79/month when billed annually.
Cin7 is an inventory management system that integrates with many apps you’re already using to sync your inventory across multiple marketplaces. Not only can you manage your inventory, you can handle point of sale, warehouse management, B2B eCommerce, forecasting and reporting, third party logistics, and direct EDI. Pricing starts are $249/month, so it is expensive for many small operations.
Project Management Tools
Trello is a free project management tool that helps teams collaborate and manage tasks. You can create boards to facilitate any work flow, and then add tasks to cards, which can be moved freely from board to board. You can add members to cards if members of the board don’t need to be aware of every single card. There is a premium version that starts at $9.99/month/user when paid annually.
Basecamp is a similar tool with a few more bells and whistles. It allows you to collaborate with your team on any number of projects. In Basecamp, you can create Gantt-style charts and track project costs, eliminating the need for additional tools. Users can receive updates via email.
Pricing is $100/month flat rate for businesses, regardless of the number of users. It’s free for students and teachers, and 50% off for non-profit organizations.
Podio is a highly customizable and flexible project management tool. Though it lacks a time-tracking tool and image markup tools, it can be adjusted to apply to nearly any workflow, and can be used for more than project management.
The free account is somewhat limited, but gives access to all the modules from human resources to project management, making it work for nearly any business. Prices start at $9/user/month, but are discounted for annual plans.
Marketing Automation Tools
Customer.io is a tool for businesses that are just getting started with marketing automation. The platform is built to trigger emails based on events, rather than page views. It can be customised if you’ve got a developer who’s willing to put in the work. There’s a free plan, but pricing starts at $75/month.
Constant Contact is best known for their email marketing services. It’s a good choice for small business owners who want to get started with email marketing quickly and easily, but don’t anticipate the need to expand into additional functionality later. If you’re looking to expand into more marketing automation beyond email, it’s best to turn to another tool. Pricing starts at $15/month.
UserFox is a relatively new player who works mostly with tech companies. If you’re already using AdRoll, the products should be tightly integrated since the company just purchased this product. It provides marketing automation for the full user lifecycle, with pricing starting at $49/month.
Customer Relationship Management Tools
Insightly CRM provides a way to manage everything from projects and contacts. It integrates with a number of apps you’re already using, such as email and email marketing platforms, invoicing, project management, and more so you can handle most of your business from a central hub. There’s a free forever plan for up to two users. Pricing starts at $15/month/user when billed monthly, and $12/month/user when billed annually.
Zoho CRM provides sales automation, lead scoring options, multi-channel support, performance analytics, and more. After a 15-day trial, prices start at $15/month/user when billed monthly, and $12/month/user when billed annually. The standard plan allows for up to 100,000 records, so you can scale as your business grows.
HubSpot CRM is best suited to merchants who are doing high-volume multi-channel ecommerce. It provides email metrics, deal metrics, call metrics, sales pipeline, and more. The email features are what the platform is known for, as you can track clicks and opens, save templates, and schedule your follow up messaging to nurture prospects. The CRM is free forever, but if you want to add marketing software, you’ll pay at least $200/month depending on plan.
Customer Loyalty Tools
ReferralCandy is an easy to use referral program for your business. Your customers get a personal link they can use to refer their friends and family to your business. Rewards are automatically handled for you. It integrates with many major ecommerce platforms like Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce. Plans start at $25/month after a free trial.
Woobox is a platform that allows you to do sweepstakes, coupons, quizzes, photo and video contests so you can promote your business and earn customer loyalty at the same time. Pricing starts at $30/month for up to 50,000 fans and unlimited participants. Plans include access to 19 apps so you can handle a variety of promotional offers for your customers.
Smile.io lets you create your own points-based loyalty program. Customers can earn points for everything from social shares to purchases and customer referrals. When they’ve earned enough points, they can exchange for rewards. You’ll get lots of data to support business growth, such as revenue created and the number of new memberships. Pricing starts at $59/month for up to 2,000 members.
E-Commerce is Here to Stay
As more people turn to online shopping to handle the majority of their needs, it makes sense for merchants to invest in tools that will make their job easier. When you have tools to handle inventory and customer management for you, you can spend more of your time focused on customer acquisition and support, keeping your business moving in the right direction.
