THE ESSENTIAL ECOMMERCE MARKETING TOOLS YOU CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT!
There are numerous ecommerce marketing tools to choose from today. There are store platforms, conversion optimization testing platforms, specialized analytics tools, as well as marketing and remarketing tools.
So how do you know which to choose?
Unfortunately, we can’t review every tool on the market. However, we have compiled a list of our essential ecommerce marketing tools to help you get started.
Ecommerce Marketing Tools We Use
Google Analytics
Data Analytics Tool
There are several more advanced analytics platforms with tons of bells and whistles that add value, but if you don’t have anything else, use this. In fact, even if you do have a more advanced platform, it’s good to at least have a basic install of Google Analytics. It’s free, so what do you have to lose?
The basic install is simple: You just add their snippet to the header of your site. Voilà.
This provides a good baseline for analytics, but most people don’t know how to use this data to make the decisions that grow their business.
Beyond installing basic Google Analytics, make sure you know what data is important for your business and how to track it.
When you can use data to make decisions that drive your business forward, that’s when it becomes really valuable. For this, you likely need a more advanced Google Analytics install or a secondary analytics platform.
Check out more on analytics platforms in these blogs:
The Truth About Google Analytics
How to Make Better Marketing Decisions Using Data Analytics
Optimizely
Split Testing Platform
Optimizely is our testing and optimization platform of choice. We describe conversion rate optimization (CRO) as insurance for your marketing dollars.
Through optimization testing, you improve your site performance and conversion rate systematically, improving the results from each and every marketing campaign.
You’re leaving money on the table if you’re not doing optimization testing.
Check out our full series on Conversion Rate Optimization to learn more.
Hotjar
Analytics Tool: Heatmapping
Hotjar heatmaps your site pages to indicate where users are focused and clicking most. We also use it for screen recordings so you can watch users surf your site.
This may seem like overkill, and by no means should you spend all day watching users explore your site. However, it’s incredibly useful when you have a problem on your site or want to analyze a specific page’s effectiveness. Just don’t get too carried away.
Get Site Control
Site Popup and Feedback Tool
Get Site Control is an easy-to-use tool that allows you to add widgets to your site for popups, surveys, and email sign-ups. It can even be used for live chat and social sharing.
It’s easy to execute and has conditional logic, so you can choose which widgets to show to different customer segments.
We often use this to reinforce a message or promotion across the site or get feedback from visitors when we have a specific question.
Yotpo
Customer Review Aggregator
Yotpo allows you to aggregate and verify customer reviews. Yotpo makes it easy to get reviews from your customers, moderate them, and display them on your site in a clean way.
It’s fairly expensive, but it enables you to see your ROI in terms of reviews through each channel.
Social proof sells better than anything else. If visitors to your site can clearly see that others are satisfied with your service, they are much more likely to purchase from you. Make sure you’re including reviews on your site.
Conversio (Formerly Receiptful)
Customized Transactional Emails
Is there anything worse than making a purchase online — one you’re truly excited about — and then receiving a text-based confirmation for your purchase?
Ok, there are an endless number of things that are worse than this, but receipt emails that lack character kill the post-purchase excitement.
This is where Conversio comes in. It allows you to create beautiful and interactive customer receipts and emails. You can prompt your users to share about their purchases to earn rewards, do clever abandon-cart follow-ups, and run powerful post-sale promotions to maintain engagement.
Shopify
Ecommerce Platform
Shopify is our ecommerce platform of choice. It’s easy to get set up, has a clean shopping and checkout experience, and is very powerful for an out-of-the-box solution.
If you’re just getting started, it has a wide array of high-quality templates to choose from and is highly customizable in terms of design and functionality.
Active Campaign
Email Marketing
There are a lot of really good email marketing platforms out there, but for large email lists, we like to use Active Campaign.
It’s good for customer management, has powerful list segmentation, is good with automation, and is fairly inexpensive.
Click Funnels
Sales Funnel Management Tool
Click Funnels identifies and optimizes different sales funnels through your website, depending on the type of company you run.
Whether you have a product-focused ecommerce store, a digital service, or a physical service, Click Funnels refines your sales funnel to make your site more effective.
Instapage
Custom Landing Page Builder
Instapage is a tool that allows you to quickly and easily create custom landing pages for your individual marketing campaigns.
We also like Unbounce and Leadpages, but Instapage has more flexibility and power. You can choose themes from ThemeForest or custom design and code your own pages.
SharpSpring (Formerly Perfect Audience)
Retargeting Tool
With SharpSpring, you can deliver targeted ads to potential customers who’ve visited your site based on the items they viewed.
Beyond generic retargeting ads, this allows you to dynamically customize ads based on each individual potential customer. It does the work for you.
Intercom
Customer Service and Live Chat
This is our customer service platform of choice. You can use this tool for live chat if you’re available to respond.
If you’re not online, it seamlessly transitions to email communication. It also has quite a few acquisition features to help convert visitors who chat with you into customers.
What to Know Before You Go
Not All Platforms Are Created Equal
Some of the ecommerce marketing tools we’ve listed are specific to a particular ecommerce platform. Shopify is one of those tools.
We prefer to use Shopify, and it works for our needs. However, there are certainly other solutions for other ecommerce platforms, so don’t be discouraged if you use a different one.
Use It or Lose It
While these ecommerce marketing tools are widely used and make life easier, they aren’t magic. Don’t expect these tools to do all the work for you.
If you have a hammer, nails, and a stack of wood at home, will a picnic table magically appear in your backyard? Of course not! You have to know how to use those tools in order to reap their benefits.
The same applies to marketing tools. If you create accounts and then set these tools aside, the only thing you’ll gain is the inevitable dust that collects on them.
Is Your Business Living Without These Ecommerce Marketing Tools?
With so many ecommerce marketing tools to choose from, it can be overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be. At Metacake, we’ve done the research for you.
If you feel like you’re swimming in a sea of options, reach out! Our specialists are here to help.
