The following is a guest post by Marcus Suther. Markus lives and breathes writing. He’s passionate writing topics about marketing, sports, and travel.
If you own an eCommerce shop, the future can look pretty awesome for you.
After all, it’s expected that by 2021, there will be nearly $4.5 trillion in online sales, with mobile commerce alone reaching the $319 billion mark.
Not to mention, building a global brand is still a new concept, more people than ever are shopping online, and collecting data to make better business decisions is easier than ever.
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That said, since eCommerce success is on the rise, and it’s so easy to launch an online shop, that means there’s a lot of competition out there all vying for your customers’ business.
That’s why you should check out this roundup of essential tools designed to help you grow your eCommerce business so you can keep up with even the toughest of competitors out there.
1. Google PageSpeed Insights
You probably know by now that any website, eCommerce or not, is likely to be abandoned by site visitors if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds or less.
But what you might not know is how to monitor the speed of your website to ensure you’re doing everything you can to optimize it for speed and performance.
There are several online tools available for testing the loading time of your website, including Pingdom, GTmetrix, and the one we want to highlight: Google PageSpeed Insights.
The great thing about Google PageSpeed Insights is that it tests the speed of both your desktop and mobile websites.
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Plus, Google will make improvement suggestions so you can tap into other ways to increase your site’s speed and improve the user experience.
2. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a neat tool that integrates with nearly every eCommerce platform on the market.
It’s used to discover how customers get to your online store, information about who they are, and what they do once they arrive at your site.
Using this data, you can make improvements to your site, give people more of what they like, and learn about your target audience so you can cater to their needs to generate more revenue.
(Image Source – my account)
With web analytics, you can even get a handle on your content marketing strategies by finding out which content is the most popular among your target audience.
To use this tool, all you have to do is add a small snippet of code to the webpages you want to track.
Want an even easier solution? Check out MonsterInsights Pro and get all the eCommerce data you need right in your WordPress dashboard.
3. CoSchedule
Although your products and services are what bring in the money, there’s no denying that killer content is what brings in the customers.
Having a solid content marketing plan is one of the best ways to get ahead of the competition in an oversaturated industry.
After all, people want to feel like you have something of value to offer them before they part ways with their hard-earned money.
If you need help organizing your content calendar and want to build a social media presence, check out CoSchedule.
(Image Source – my account)
Here are some of this tool’s best features:
- Schedule blog posts and monitor their status using color coding
- Assign different tasks to members of your team
- Automate social media messages to post once content is live
- Manage your email marketing campaign within the CoSchedule dashboard (and don’t forget to use one of many eCommerce shop email signature templates on your emails to promote your shop)
- View detailed analytics about how your campaigns are going on all social networks
- Sync your content calendar with other tools such as WordPress, Evernote, Google Docs, and more
And this is just the beginning.
CoSchedule offers online shop owners a comprehensive way to manage some of the most important aspects of running an eCommerce shop so that it grows and generates more money.
4. Facebook Ads
Using social media to drive traffic to your eCommerce shop, or do business right there on the social media page, is a great way to expand your reach and grow your business.
Facebook Ads offers you an easy way to target the right people with your ads, grab their attention, and encourage them to take action.
In fact, according to Facebook, nearly 2 billion people use Facebook each month and 1 of every 5 minutes people in the US spend on their mobile devices is on Facebook or Instagram.
That’s a lot of people you can target and entice to shop at your online store.
With Facebook Ads, all you have to do is set your budget, choose your audience, and create a stunning Facebook Ad that shows people what sets you apart from the competition.
And when you’re done, access detailed analytics about your campaigns to make sure you’re getting the results you want for the money you spend.
(Image Source – my account)
If you need some inspiration for how to create an actionable Facebook ad, you can always look into using the FadFeed Chrome extension that will fill your Facebook feed with nothing but ads.
This way you can see what others are doing and draw from their designs to create your own highly converting Facebook Ads.
5. Mobile Friendly Test
Just as you should monitor your site’s speed and performance, you should also track how mobile-friendly your eCommerce shop is too.
After all, mobile traffic accounts for 51.2% of all internet traffic these days (October 2018).
To see whether your online store displays well on mobile devices with small screens, you can use one of two very effective online tools.
The first is Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Just enter your shop’s URL and see whether Google feels your site is mobile-friendly or not.
If it is, you’ll get a success message and a view of what your site looks like on a mobile phone.
If you want a more interactive solution, check out the lesser-known Responsive Checker to see how mobile-friendly your eCommerce site is.
The great thing about this tool is you can change devices to see what your site looks like on different mobile devices such as phones and tablets.
But the real kicker is, you can also use the scroll to see how your site displays for those actually on your website.
Plus, you can click on your navigation menu and see other webpages on your site too!
This ensures everyone has a great user experience when visiting your site on-the-go because if you notice any problems, you can make adjustments as needed.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to running a successful eCommerce site, launching the store is not the hard part. The hard part is finding a way to convince people that you have what no one else does.
Take advantage of the tools available for online shop owners like yourself to build a recognizable brand, drive traffic to your shop, and get people to make more purchases.
After all, those that invest time and effort where it’s needed are the ones that will be able to grow their business and succeed.
You just have to know where to put that time and effort and what tools to use that will help you get there.
