It is a great time for being a businessman. While previously people were constrained to conventional forms of conducting business, now, E-commerce has paved the way for a newer and more profitable way of doing business.
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Moreover, retail E-commerce is growing as well. In 2017, the global Ecommerce sales went up to 2.3 trillion USD! It is being predicted that by 2021, revenues generated would go up to 4.88 trillion. Of the overall retail market, 17.5% is e-commerce’s share.
Are you thinking of starting an online business as well? Well, it won’t be that easy. Since online stores are easier to set up, the ocean is much redder than you would expect it to be. In layman terms, you will be faced with fierce competition from small and big e-commerce stores alike.
This doesn’t mean you can’t grow your online business. There are various tools out there that might help you along the way. Here are some of the best ones.
The first step to having a successful online business is making sure that your website has a high ranking on search engines. While you might think that only content optimization is needed for a better SERP, the truth is that there is much more to SEO than content. Instead, your website speed matters a lot. Think about it, in today’s fast-paced world, who has the time to deal with a website that refuses to load. Let’s assume; I want to sell my car. I look for businesses who would be interested in buying it. You offer such a service. I click on your website, but it fails to load in time. You are bound to lose my business.
To boost your business, you might want to include Compressor.io into the list of tools you use. This tool is excellent for compressing the size of image files without affecting their quality. Since images are an essential part of the e-commerce experience, you can’t survive without them. However, if they are too big, they will slow down your website. By using compressor.io, you can have your cake and eat it too. Your image files’ sizes will be reduced. This, in turn, will enhance your website speed and hence boost your ranking. And a high search engine ranking is the first step toward sales conversion.
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Let’s say you invest heavily on your website. You are finally managing to get quite a lot of traffic. Your site, and hence business, is doing reasonably well for itself. However, hackers decide to target your website. Now, if you haven’t invested in a tool that delivers security to your website, your business is always at risk of being harmed by malicious viruses and cunning hackers.
One great protection software is offered by Avast. This tool comes in both premium and free packages. While both will deliver protection to your website, the variety of the features provided to you will differ. The free version will give necessary protection while the premium package will allow you to benefit from options like data shredding, proactive control, and firewall. Even if you don’t feel that you have the budget to invest in a premium package yet, rest assured that the free option also is good enough for blocking malware and hackers.
Various tools help in building the SEO strategy of your website. A great one is Google Keyword Planner. This tool is of immense help during the keyword research phase of your SEO strategy building. It provides you with information about the mean frequency of searches for each given keyword. This helps in ranking keywords by popularity and relatedness to your niche. This, in turn, helps businesses in deciding which keywords to add to their content for a high SERP.
One way to boost your online business is to know what you are up against at all times. Being good is not enough in E-commerce. You must out-do your competitors to claim the share of wallet of your customer. This is why competitor research and tracking are fundamental.
SimilarWeb is a tool that helps in keeping tabs on the strategies of your competition. You can learn about the traffic they receive on their website, how is this given traffic generated, which communication channels work best for them, and what social media site are the most active on. By understanding the strengths and weaknesses in their strategy and online presence, you can work on improving your own.
Email marketing is quite crucial to the success of online businesses today. This is because this communication channel is the most effective form of reaching customers who have abandoned their carts as well as those who previously availed your services. Additionally, it is an excellent touchpoint for after sale services.
This is why it is crucial to use a quality email marketing tool to boost your brand image and profits. This is where MailChimp comes in. This platform is very popular in the market for its quality services and affordable prices. It offers tier pricing based on your need. For instance, if you have less than 2000 subscribers and send less than 12000 emails every month, you can avail the free package.
Additionally, the tools deliver a sign-up form that helps in gaining subscribers from all over the web. Various aesthetically pleasing and uniquely designed templates are also offered for personalized messages. If you invest in premium plans, you will even get reporting about various analytics.
Conclusion
These are just five of the various tools you can benefit from. Running an online business is undoubtedly easier than conventional forms of companies. However, it is not a piece of cake. The hurdles might be different, but they do exist. Introduce these five tools to your business to combat the obstacles that come along your way.
Grow your online business. Be the next retail giant.
Author Bio
Audrey Throne is a mother of a 3-year old and a professional blogger by choice. Throne is passionate about lifestyle, business, automotive, technology and management and blogs frequently on these topics.
Find her on Twitter: @audrey_throne.
