Ecommerce Tools can make all the difference in the world of selling products online. If you use the right tools, you will be able to put yourself on the map of the most important online stores in your field.
Of course, it will still take time, effort and thought, but it will become much easier, which is why we wrote this article.
In it, we not only provide you with the best e-commerce tools, but also introduce you to a set of solutions that you will need during your e-commerce journey.
In this article, we will provide you with 13 tools that will help you make your work and various tasks professional, easy and simple, starting with tools for creating your online store, passing through payment and shipping tools, and ending with marketing tools.
The most important e-commerce tools
1. WordPress
One of the most important e-commerce tools in general is WordPress, which is simply a software tool that enables you to create and manage your website or store without the need to have any technical background.
WordPress is a content management system, and it is the most widely used ever, and many famous online stores around the world are based on it, because it is very easy and smooth to use, even for beginners.
WordPress primarily provides you with the ability to create a website, but by using the WooCommerce plugin you will be able to turn this site into an online store in a matter of minutes.
It is worth noting that using WordPress is completely free and you will not have to pay any amount to use it itself, but at the same time it is an open source program, so it is possible for you to pay a third party to obtain some things such as templates with certain shapes, for example.
Of course, to create a WordPress store, you will need to purchase hosting and a domain name, and you may need to purchase a paid WordPress theme.
However, if you want a more comprehensive and easy tool to create your online store, the following tool will be an excellent choice for you.
2. Shopify
Shopify is a platform that provides you with an integrated tool to create your online store. By subscribing to it, you can get everything you need to create your online store.
Shopify is one of the best and most important e-commerce platforms currently available. If you are going to use only one e-commerce tool to start your business, then it is definitely the best choice, as it provides you with almost all the aspects you need.
As for the Shopify subscription, it gives you three completely free days without even having to enter your credit card, and after that you will pay one dollar for the first month, and then you will pay according to the plan you choose, which starts from 24 dollars per month for the annual subscription.
3. PayPal
Payment gateways are one of the essential elements that any online store needs, as they are the means that enable you to transfer payments from buyers’ accounts to your business account.
One of the best payment gateways ever is PayPal, which is the most famous platform in this field, and one of the best e-commerce tools in general, due to the fact that it enjoys a high degree of security and is present in more than 200 countries around the world.
Its advantages do not stop there, but it is also easy to activate and use on most online store creation options, including WordPress and Shopify, mentioned above.
As for pricing, it does not impose any subscription of any kind. Rather, all you will pay are some fees for each transaction you perform, which vary depending on the country, the size of the financial transaction, and some other secondary factors.
4. Ahrefs
Marketing your online store is one of the most important tasks you must do in order for it to succeed and achieve sales and profits through it, and there are many ways and paths through which you can market your store.
Of course, improving your online store’s search engine optimization is at the top of your marketing strategy, and this is where the Ahrefs tool comes in.
Ahrefs is one of the most important e-commerce tools for marketing your store, as it has a huge database of more than 400 billion indexed pages and 11 billion keywords.
It will also help you improve all aspects of SEO, from internal and external SEO, backlinks, competitor analysis, and other processes that will contribute to raising the efficiency of the site and increasing purchases.
Its subscription starts at $99 per month for the monthly plan, and $83 per month for the annual plan, which is equivalent to approximately two free months compared to the monthly plan.
5. HubSpot
For large stores, managing information about current and potential customers is a very important process to get the most out of their customer base, and this process is done through customer relationship management systems.
One of the most popular e-commerce tools in this field is HubSpot, which allows you to track and manage interactions, simplify and employ data, and enhance your business workflow in general.
On the other hand, it is a very powerful marketing tool that enables you to automate a wide range of marketing tasks, and it is highly flexible in configuration to suit your needs only by integrating with other applications via the application programming interface or API.
Pricing for this e-commerce tool is a bit complicated as it varies greatly depending on exactly what you want, but it does offer a free plan for most of the services it offers and the lowest paid plans usually start at $20.
6. ChatGPT
Nowadays, artificial intelligence tools are indispensable in any field, as they can save us a lot of time, money and effort in performing many tasks.
ChatGPT is one of the most popular artificial intelligence tools ever, and it is widely used in e-commerce due to the many tasks it can perform with high accuracy and in a very short time.
It can help you with dozens of tasks, such as: writing your product descriptions, translating texts, and other writing tasks, in addition to customer service, marketing, content creation, and improving the user experience.
As for the program’s pricing, it provides you with a copy of GPT-3.5 completely free of charge, and if you want to upgrade to the GPT-4 version, its price is 699.99 Egyptian pounds.
7. Aramex
One of the most important services that you will not be able to do online and will need a person or company to do it on your behalf is shipping and delivering the product. This intermediary must be reliable, committed to deadlines, and of course, treat customers well.
One of the best shipping companies, especially in the Arab world, is Aramex. In addition to providing a distinguished service, it also gives you the ability to track goods, the ability to return the product, and other advantages.
It is also easy to connect to many e-commerce platforms, and has very excellent technical support, so you will most likely not face any problem dealing with it, especially on the technical side.
As for pricing, it is not possible to know the exact price of the service without knowing the product details, shipping country, number of units, etc.
But you can easily enter your product information into the tool’s website calculator and the price will appear instantly.
8. NapoleonCat
There is no marketing plan for an online store that does not include social media as a marketing channel, as social media pages are usually the most important marketing tool ever to increase sales.
NapoleonCat is an e-commerce tool for social media marketing that helps businesses and store owners manage and analyze their pages professionally.
You can use it to improve your social media pages and increase visitor interaction by performing operations such as scheduling posts, responding to comments and messages automatically, in addition to monitoring performance and creating reports.
The tool gives you a 14-day free trial without even entering your credit card details, and then the price of the smallest plan is $32 per month, and $27 per month for the annual plan.
9. Google Analytics
Since you are trading and selling online, there is a lot of data that you need to analyze and monitor to get the best results, and also to be able to make sound decisions in the future.
The most important tool in this field is Google Analytics, which is perhaps the most famous e-commerce tool on the entire list and the most used by marketers and business owners.
This tool provides you with all the analytical tools you need, enabling you to handle your online store data, monitor the performance of your marketing campaigns, improve search engines, understand user behavior in general, and improve your marketing strategies.
The advantage of it is that it is completely free, unlike most similar tools, and therefore it is very useful to learn and master it professionally.
10. Alibaba
One of the first elements of e-commerce that sellers look for, which greatly shapes the features of the product, its pricing, and many related factors, is the supplier, as he is the first step in obtaining the product and starting to sell it.
One of the most important e-commerce tools that provides you with many suppliers for any product you want at very competitive prices is the Alibaba website, as it has a large base of factories that can manufacture and specialize your product according to what you want.
In addition to the possibility of obtaining samples from these factories, the site also provides shipping companies that can bring the product to you at very good prices, and it also enables you to do drop shipping and focus on marketing the product only.
11. Mailchimp
Email is one of the most important marketing channels ever, so it is essential to use it intelligently to get the best possible results from it, which is what this tool enables you to do.
It provides you with the ability to create email marketing campaigns, send them to customers, track their results, and all related information and details.
All of this is done through multiple creative tools that it provides you with, and you can also link the tool with the largest e-commerce platforms such as Shopify and Woocommerce.
The tool offers you a completely free plan, but it is very limited as it only provides 1000 emails per month and does not include features like customer journey automation and campaign management.
Therefore, it is recommended to get the paid version, the price of which varies depending on the number of emails you want per month, but the lowest plan ever starts at $6.5 per month for an annual subscription.
12. Slack
There will come a point in your career where you will no longer be able to manage your tasks and communicate with your employees in traditional ways, so you will need to use a tool for communication and collaboration between you and your team.
One of the most prominent names for e-commerce tools in this regard is Slack, which will be especially useful if your business requires communication between employees to carry out specific projects.
It also contributes greatly to raising the quality of work and improving cooperation between workers. In addition, it is very secure in terms of data, and has excellent technical support, so you will not face any technical problem while using it.
The tool offers a completely free plan, but one of its most prominent drawbacks is that it does not allow group communication, but rather one-to-one, and paid plans start at $7.25 per month for the monthly plan, and $8.75 per month for the annual plan.
13. Canva
Whatever your online store’s specialty and the products you sell on it, you need a tool that makes those products look attractive to visitors, encourages them to complete the purchase process, and makes you appear more professional in general.
This is the specialty of Canva, it is a design tool that enables you to do any design you want through a huge number of modern ready-made templates and various creative tools in a very short time and with high quality.
All this without the need to have any background in design. All you will do is choose a specific template, change the colors and fonts, and place the elements according to the type of design, and your design is ready.
You can also do most of the designs you want without having to pay a single cent, but if you want to subscribe, the monthly subscription price is 119.99 Egyptian pounds or the equivalent in your country’s currency.
How to Choose the Right Ecommerce Tools for Your Store
After spending a long time researching and comparing e-commerce tools, there are 3 basic criteria that I advise you to consider when choosing the right tool for you, which are:
1. Cost
Let’s not lie, cost is one of the most important factors especially if you are still starting your online store, so you will have to research the total cost of using the tool.
I say total cost here, because there are many e-commerce tools that have hidden costs and expenses.
Anyway, you don’t have to worry because there are actually relatively cheap tools that perform much better than the expensive ones, especially the AI ones.
2. Your customer base and store size
This factor is very important, because there are tools that are suitable for a smaller audience and perform better in those use cases, and on the other hand there are tools that are suitable for stores that have tens or hundreds of thousands of customers, so keep this in mind.
Look carefully at the features offered by each tool to be able to conclude whether it is suitable for you at your current stage or not.
3. Need
Only use the tools you need. You may find a simple tool that suits your needs and is affordable, but there is another tool with dozens of other features that you do not need, but at a higher price.
It often happens that website owners buy these expensive tools in the hope of using these features later.
What often happens in these cases is that they don’t use those features because they don’t need them, and thus they waste a lot of money for nothing.
Conclusion
There are a huge number of e-commerce tools on the internet, each of which specializes in a variety of tasks, which makes it difficult for e-commerce store owners to find the ones that are truly effective.
That’s why we’ve tried to help them and you in this article by narrowing down your choice of the best different e-commerce tools that you might need in your business.
