3 Must-Have Ecommerce Tools for New Online Retailers

Care to make a guess on how many ecommerce businesses currently exist in the U.S.?

Would you believe me if I said 1.3 million? Yep — according to research conducted by PipeCandy, a provider of predictive sales prospecting software, there are approximately 1.3 million ecommerce companies in the U.S. alone.

As ecommerce sales become an increasingly larger percentage of total retail sales, there will undoubtedly be a steady stream of new retailers entering the online space. So if you’re planning to be a part of that group, you better have what you need to take off right out of the gate.

Here are the three ecommerce tools you’ll need to have mastered before you launch your online store.

SEMrush

What Is It?

An online tool that helps retailers improve their search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, and social media presence. SEMrush gives ecommerce companies valuable insight into what their competitors are doing. It allows brands to see which keywords and channels are driving traffic and identify opportunities to better attract shoppers.

Why Do I Need It?

You don’t want to be flying blind — especially in the first few weeks of your go-live date. And you sure as heck want customers to be able to find your website. SEMrush gives you the power to start building your online ubiquity as soon as you launch. Since you can see where your competition is investing their advertising dollars, you’ll have a better idea of which channels are best for reaching your target audience.

Moz

What Is It?

A SaaS solution that provides marketing data analytics and specializes in helping brands enhance their SEO efforts. In addition to offering various ecommerce tools, Moz has a community of over one million digital marketers who can provide expert advice about upgrading a brand’s digital presence.

Why Do I Need It?

Although there is some overlap between SEMrush and Moz’s features, Moz has more powerful SEO tools. With Moz, you can run a website audit and crawl analysis that will show you:

• Duplicate content and page titles
• Metadata issues
• 404 errors
• Broken links

The cool thing is that Moz’ site crawl test can be used on staging sites, so your store doesn’t even need to be live in order to take advantage of the tool. The caveat is that your staging site can’t be password-protected.

Building site authority and proving the authenticity of your store to Google both take time. But if you use Moz’ solutions before launch, you can proactively resolve site issues instead of discovering them after your go-live date.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software

What Is It?

A solution that collects and organizes customer data from multiple channels, including a retailer’s website, email communications, marketing campaigns, and social media accounts. CRM software allows merchants to collect detailed information about a customer’s purchase history and shopping preferences.

Why Do I Need It?

If you have a CRM system in place before you launch your ecommerce company, you can amass valuable data from day one. And having this data empowers you to better connect with your audience. You can more easily personalize the customer experience with product recommendations and promotions based on past purchases.

You’ll need to have the CRM system in place for a while before you have actionable data. But if you have it installed before your store even goes live, you’ll have information on every customer and every interaction, starting from the beginning.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to prepare for every possible disaster. Inevitably you’ll encounter a problem you didn’t even think was a remote possibility. But the companies who plan ahead and have these ecommerce tools installed and ready to go will be in much better shape when that perfect storm does hit.