Ecommerce tools can make all the difference in the world of selling products online. If you use the right tools, you'll be able to position yourself among the most important online stores in your field.
Of course, it will still require time, effort, and thought, but it will become much easier, which is why we wrote this article.
Not only do we provide you with the best e-commerce tools, but we also introduce you to a range of solutions you'll need throughout your e-commerce journey.
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In this article, we'll introduce you to 13 tools that will help you make your work and various tasks professional, easy, and simple, starting with tools for creating your online store, moving on to 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. It's simply a software tool that enables you to create and manage your website or store without any technical background.
WordPress is a content management system (CMS) and is the most widely used. Many popular online stores around the world are based on it, due to its ease and simplicity of use, even for beginners.
WordPress primarily provides you with the ability to create a website, but by using the WooCommerce plugin, you can transform your site into an online store in just minutes.
It's worth noting that WordPress is completely free to use, and you won't have to pay anything to use it itself. However, it's open source software, so you may have to pay a third party to get certain features, such as templates with specific styles.
Of course, to create a WordPress store, you'll need to purchase hosting and a domain name, and you may need to purchase a paid WordPress theme.
If you want a more comprehensive and easy-to-use tool for creating your online store, the following tool is an excellent choice.
2. Shopify
Shopify is a platform that provides you with a comprehensive tool for creating your online store. By subscribing, you can get everything you need to create your online store.
Shopify is one of the best and most important e-commerce platforms available today. If you're looking to use just one e-commerce tool to start your business, it's definitely the perfect choice, as it provides almost everything you need.
As for the Shopify subscription, it gives you three days completely free without even entering your credit card. After that, you'll pay $1 for the first month, after which you'll pay according to the plan you choose, which starts at $24 per month for an annual subscription.
3. PayPal
Payment gateways are one of the essential elements any online store needs. They enable you to transfer payments from buyer accounts to your business account.
One of the best payment gateways is PayPal. It's the most popular platform in this field and one of the best e-commerce tools in general, due to its high degree of security and availability in more than 200 countries around the world.
Its advantages don't stop there; it's also easy to activate and use on most online store creation options, including WordPress and Shopify, mentioned above.
As for pricing, it doesn't require any subscription of any kind. All you pay is a fee for each transaction, which varies depending on the country, the size of the transaction, and some other factors.
4. Ahrefs
Marketing your online store is one of the most important tasks you need to accomplish in order for it to succeed and generate sales and profits. There are many ways and paths you can use to market your store.
Of course, search engine optimization for your online store is at the forefront of marketing methods, and this is where Ahrefs comes in.
Ahrefs is one of the most important e-commerce tools for marketing your store. It has a massive database of over 400 billion indexed pages and 11 billion keywords.
It can also help you improve all aspects of SEO, including on-page and off-page SEO, backlinks, competitor analysis, and other processes that will contribute to improving site efficiency and increasing purchases.
Subscriptions start 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 crucial to maximizing their customer base. This process is accomplished through customer relationship management (CRM) systems.
One of the most popular e-commerce tools in this field is HubSpot. It allows you to track and manage interactions, simplify and leverage data, and enhance your overall business process.
It's also a powerful marketing tool that allows you to automate a wide range of marketing tasks. It's highly flexible and can be customized to suit your needs simply by integrating with other applications via an API.
Pricing for this e-commerce tool is somewhat complex, as it varies greatly depending on what you want. However, it offers a free plan for most services, and the lowest paid plans often start at $20.
6. ChatGPT
At the moment, artificial intelligence tools are indispensable in any field, as they can save us a lot of time, money, and effort in performing many tasks.
ChatGPT is one of the most popular AI tools ever, and it is widely used in e-commerce due to the numerous tasks it can perform with high accuracy and in a very short time.
It can assist you with dozens of tasks, such as writing product descriptions, translating texts, and other writing tasks, in addition to customer service, marketing, content creation, and improving user experience.
As for the program's pricing, it offers a completely free GPT-3.5 version, and if you want to upgrade to GPT-4, the price is 20$.
7. Aramex
One of the most important services you can't perform online, and you'll need a person or company to handle it on your behalf, is shipping and delivering your product. This intermediary must be reliable, punctual, and of course, treat customers well.
One of the best shipping companies, especially in the Arab world, is Aramex. In addition to providing excellent service, it also gives you the ability to track your shipments, return your product, and other features.
It's also easy to connect to many e-commerce platforms and has excellent technical support, so you'll likely not encounter any problems dealing with it, especially on the technical side.
Regarding pricing, it's impossible to know the exact price of the service without knowing the product details, shipping country, number of units, and more.
However, you can easily enter your product information into the tool's website calculator, and the price will appear immediately.
8. NapoleonCat
There is no marketing plan for an online store that doesn't include social media as a marketing channel. Social media pages are usually the most important marketing tool for increasing sales.
NapoleonCat is an e-commerce tool for social media marketing. It helps businesses and store owners manage and analyze their pages professionally.
You can use it to optimize your social media pages and increase visitor engagement by performing tasks such as scheduling posts, automatically responding to comments and messages, as well as monitoring performance and generating reports.
This tool offers a 14-day free trial without even entering your credit card information. The lowest plan is $32 per month, and the annual plan is $27 per month.
9. Google Analytics
Because you're trading and selling online, there's a lot of data you need to analyze and monitor to get the best results and make informed decisions in the future.
The most important tool in this field is Google Analytics, which is perhaps the most popular e-commerce tool on the entire list and the most widely used by marketers and business owners.
This tool provides you with all the analytical tools you need, enabling you to manage your online store's data, monitor the performance of your marketing campaigns, optimize search engines, understand overall user behavior, and improve your marketing strategies.
The advantage of this tool is that it's completely free, unlike most similar tools. Therefore, it's very useful to learn and master it professionally.
10. Alibaba
One of the first elements of e-commerce that sellers look for, and which greatly determines the product's features, pricing, and many other related factors, is the supplier. This supplier is the first step in acquiring and selling the product.
One of the most important e-commerce tools that provides you with numerous suppliers for any product you want at very competitive prices is Alibaba. It has a large base of factories that can manufacture and customize your product according to your needs.
In addition to the ability to obtain samples from these factories, the site also provides shipping companies that can bring the product to you at very good prices. It also enables you to dropship and focus on marketing the product alone.
11. Mailchimp
Email is one of the most important marketing channels, so it's essential to use it intelligently to achieve the best possible results. This tool enables you to do just that.
It allows you to create email marketing campaigns, send them to customers, track their results, and track all the relevant information and details.
All of this is possible through a variety of creative tools. You can also integrate the tool with major e-commerce platforms like Shopify and Woocommerce.
The tool offers a completely free plan, but it's very limited, offering only 1,000 emails per month and excluding features like customer journey automation and campaign management.
Therefore, it's recommended to get the paid version, which varies in price depending on the number of emails you want per month. However, the lowest-cost plan starts at $6.50 per month for an annual subscription.
12. Slack
You'll reach a point in your business where you can't manage your tasks and communicate with your colleagues using traditional methods. Therefore, you'll need to use a dedicated tool for communication and collaboration between you and your team.
One of the most prominent e-commerce tools in this regard is Slack, which will be especially useful if your business requires communication between staff members to complete specific projects.
It also significantly contributes to improving work quality and collaboration between employees. It's also highly secure when it comes to data security and offers excellent technical support, so you won't encounter any technical issues while using it.
The tool offers a completely free plan, but one of its major drawbacks is that it doesn't allow for group communication, rather it's all one-to-one communication. 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, you need a tool that makes those products attractive to visitors, encouraging them to complete the purchase process and making them appear more professional overall.
This is where Canva's specialty lies. It's a design tool that enables you to create any design you want using a huge number of modern, ready-made templates and various creative tools, very quickly and with high quality.
All this without the need to have any design background. All you have to do is choose a specific template, change the colors and fonts, and place the elements according to the design type, and your design is ready.
You can also create most of the designs you want without having to pay a single cent, but if you want to subscribe, the monthly subscription price is $12.99 per month.
How to Choose the Right Ecommerce Tools for Your Store
After spending a long time researching and comparing ecommerce tools, there are three key criteria I recommend you consider when choosing the right tool for you:
1. Cost
Let's not lie, cost is one of the most important factors, especially if you're just starting out with your online store. Therefore, you'll need to research the total cost of using the tool.
I say "total cost" here because many ecommerce tools have hidden costs and expenses.
In any case, you shouldn't worry, as there are actually relatively inexpensive tools that perform much better than expensive ones, especially AI tools.
2. Your Customer Base and Store Size
This factor is extremely important, as some tools are tailored to a smaller audience and perform better in those use cases. On the other hand, there are tools that are suitable for stores with tens or hundreds of thousands of customers, so keep this in mind.
Consider carefully the features each tool offers to determine whether it's right for you at your current stage.
3. Need
Only use the tools you need. You may find a simple tool that suits your needs and is reasonably priced, but another tool has dozens of features you don't need, but at a higher price.
It often happens that website owners purchase these expensive tools hoping to use those features later.
What often happens in these cases is that they don't use those features because they don't need them, thus wasting a lot of money.
Conclusion
There are a huge number of e-commerce tools on the internet, each specializing in a variety of tasks, which makes it difficult for online store owners to find truly effective tools.
That's why we've tried to help them and you in this article by narrowing down your selection of the best e-commerce tools you may need for your business.