The goal of every e-commerce site is to maximize its profits. This goal can be achieved by following the best practices of sustaining an online shop under these factors:
- Lead generation and nurturing – Find qualified leads to be converted into clients and keep them in your sales cycle
- Transaction and product management – Stay on top of products and inventory in your online store, as well as generate reports on performance of site based on items sold and tasks completed by your employees
- Web Analytics – Measure site performance based on controlled variables within your site so you can generate insights to be used for optimizing conversion
- Social media listening and marketing – Track brand mentions and find leads on social media to help improve brand awareness and establish a stream of leads from this channel
- Customer service – Quickly respond to questions from leads and clients to help them solve problems that are preventing them from purchasing from your site.
By establishing a system that allows you to commit on all these factors, you can expect to improve not only sales of your e-commerce site but also build a sustainable business and source of income for you and your employees for the foreseeable future.
If you have an e-commerce site and have yet to establish a strategy and campaigns to help simplify complicated processes that should lead to increased sales and brand awareness, then you should try out the sales tools below to achieve your intended goal.
#1. Velocify
One of the building blocks of a successful eCommerce site is its ability to generate and nurture leads. While there are lots of ways on how an online retail store can gather and collect leads to bring down their sales funnel, the different processes involved in each can get quite burdensome for you and your team.
To simply optimize your lead generation and conversion strategy, you can turn to Velocify. The purpose of this tool is to take the process of manually searching for online leads away from you. Velocify will capture your leads from over 100 sources in real time. This way, you can focus on replying back to them and turning them into your customers!
The tool will also help your sales team automate routine activities such as setting tasks and sending emails and voice messages, among others, so they can focus on more pressing tasks at hand. Velocify also features robust sales workflows with beautiful UI so they can launch campaigns and distribute lead opportunities with a click of a button.
#2. Vend
Another factor that determines the success of an eCommerce site is the ease of making and monitoring transactions with your site. If it only takes users a couple of clicks to buy your products and services, then expect more users to come over and buy from your site. At the same time, you would want to have a centralized POS system so you can track all transactions made on your site or other payment sources you may have.
If you want a tool that will help you cover the bases mentioned above, then Vend is for you. The responsive and beautiful UI of the tool makes selling your items online a breeze. It does not hurt that Vend also accepts any payment, from credit cards to mobile payments.
You can also manage and organize your inventory from a single location. You can group products according to size, color, gender, and others. Since Vend is a cloud-based platform, your team from different branches can view the changes you have made in your inventory to keep everybody updated.
The best thing about Vend is that it understands the demands of the retail industry. This is why the tool has integrated a very powerful reporting feature so you can gain insights on how your e-commerce site is performing at an aggregate level, tracking not only your items but also your customers and employees.
Set tasks that your team must complete within a period and view their progress from Vend. Tweak delegated tasks based on the report to maximize productivity and sales.
#3. Truconversion
To track and measure your website performance as well as gain insights from your audience and customers, you need multiple sales tools for each metric. The process can get overwhelming and time-consuming especially if you want to drill down big data of your eCommerce site. You will have to log in and out of different software to gather data and compile them for interpretation so you can tweak your campaigns and strategies based on your findings.
TruConversion is aware of this complex process, which is why it is offering an all-in-one analytics tool that will allow you to track relevant data in a single place.
While the tool is still in beta stage, TruConversion proves to be a game-changer if it delivers on its initial promise. You can track visitor sessions to see what makes them convert into buyers or bounce away from your site. You can also analyze your conversion funnels so you can see which part of your funnel is causing your customers to leave or stay.
The neat thing about TruConversion is how you can gain valuable insights from your clients who you cannot track using any analytics tools. The Microsurvey feature lets you create slide-in polls or surveys on your site that visitors will answer. The Customer Surveys feature allows you to conduct a comprehensive market research from your existing clients. Both tools enable you to learn what your audience likes and does not like so you can improve on your site for better conversions.
#4. Mention
Social media is a great platform where you can track things being told about your eCommerce site. It is also a place where you can find leads and potential customers for your online shop.
However, the noise generated by social media makes it impossible for you to just manually search for them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others. You will need a tool that will help you automatically find brand mentions and leads so you can focus on engaging with them, if not just turn them into customers.
Mention does exactly these things, if not more. The ability of the tool to track brand mentions from over billions of sources allows you to filter down the results that are most relevant to your online shop. Whether the social media posts are reviews of your sites or questions on how or where to buy the products your are selling, Mention will deliver them to you in real time.
Another useful way that you can generate buzz about your business using this tool is the ability to connect with influencers within your niche. By reaching out to and asking help from people with the most followers or clout within your field, you can increase brand awareness and increase your leverage to engage with other influential people.
Finally, you can track and analyze your social media performance using this tool based on different factors and settings. You can then generate a report and share with your team your performance so you can change your social media approach as you see fit.
#5. Zopim
Customers love it when they feel they are in control. If they lose control, they simply jump ship to another store that will grant them that privilege. Such is the curse of the retail business, which is why you have to make your customers feel special every time so they can buy from your site.
Part of an excellent customer support program is the ability to talk to them and answer their concerns about your shop. Whether it is a simple or a difficult question, you need to engage with them as fast as possible to increase their chances of conversion.
Zopim provides such a solution to your retail site. The tool lets you connect with customers and offer a personalized service to increase your responsiveness. For example, instead of making the customer wait for an available agent to assist them due to busy lines, Zopim’s Chat Routing feature spreads chat inquiries to active agents. This process allows clients to learn the answer to their question, agents to receive an equal amount of work, and managers to handle a reasonable quantity of volume.
By focusing on responsiveness, you can boost your startup online shop by providing a seamless customer service experience.
Conclusion
By banking your eCommerce site on these incredibly useful tools, you can count on growth and success of your business down the line. These tools will help you expedite growth by allowing you to focus on maximizing your eCommerce site performance while the tools do the dirty work.
Images: ” Author’s Own”
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