Power Moves: Essential Tools Every E-commerce Female Founder Needs To Know About
E-commerce businesses are a popular choice for many female founders, as they offer great work-life balance, flexibility, and access to a larger consumer market. With that in mind, we've come up with some of the best tools you need to know about to make sure your ecommerce business thrives. Read on to find out what they are.
The right ecommerce platform
The first tool you will need for e-commerce success is the right e-commerce platform. It makes sense to prioritize ease of use here, as this will make your entire experience a lot easier and faster when building your site and uploading products. Of course, it's sensible to also look for a platform that supports scalable growth, which allows you to grow your business without lots of different migrations.
If you are going to be selling on the global market, you'll also want to find a platform that offers International e-commerce, as well as just selling in your own country. Last of all, be sure to look for an equal nurse platform that has mobile optimisation built in. Remember, most customers are searching and buying on mobile devices like phones and tablets these days instead of PCs, and that means you'll want your e-commerce website to look and act its best when they do.
Website tools for conversion
Since your website is the foundation of your entire e-commerce business, you will need to ensure it is equipped with the right tools to maximise conversions. One of the simplest tools you can use for this is a high-converting website theme. These themes have been designed by experts specifically to convert visitors into buyers, and can make a significant difference to your e-commerce success.
Adding customer review apps which display trust through social proof is another smart idea when it comes to website tools. After all, when customers can see others are pleased with your product and service, it gives them the reassurance they need to purchase with you.
Branding and design tools
It's crucial to remember that a strong brand instils instant confidence and credibility in site visitors. To that end, making sure you have high-quality professional brand visuals is crucial. however with the many modern tools at your disposal, you don't necessarily need to work with an expert creative to do this. Instead, you can use tools such as Canva and Adobe Express to create all the visual assets that you need to represent your Brand from logos to consistent visual templates for social media, and even colour schemes.
Content creation tools
Content creation tools will also help you maximise the success of your e-commerce site. Indeed, content serves a range of important purposes from marketing to SEO, to providing customers with the info they need to buy a product.
The good news is you can use content creation tools to help make your content more effective. AI sites like ChatGPT and Jasper can help you create the perfect written content, especially when you provide guidelines such as writing about the benefits rather than the future. Cap Cut and In Shot are great tools for video editing. You can even publish your own audio content, such as a podcast, with tools like Audacity and Descript.
Sing about using content creation tools is that it allows you to batch create your content every month, boosting efficiency and ensuring you have new material to publish to hand. You can even repurpose this content across different platforms, maximising your reach with minimal effort.
Order fulfilment services
One of the most essential tools that you can use when running an e-commerce business are those that allows you to deliver your products to customers in a timely and efficient manner. What we're talking about here are e-commerce order fulfilment tools that allow you to partner with a reliable logistics expert, ensuring fast and accurate order shipping.
The critical benefits of these types of tools are that they allow you to set very clear delivery expectations for your customers, and this will minimise issues like complaints and requests for refunds, making for happier customers and wider profit margins.
Customer experience tools
When you boil down the success of any retail endeavour, including ecommerce, its customer experience is at its heart. What we mean here is that the better the experience of the customer, the more likely they are to buy once, become a repeat buyer, leave a positive review, and act as an ambassador to your brand.
Of course, this means doing everything you can to boost the experience of your customer, which will contribute to your success. With that in mind, consider adding live chat tools to your e-commerce website, as they can help answer customer questions and provide them with the reassurance they need.
Additionally, investing in tools that reward customer loyalty, such as rewards or points schemes, can be very valuable. This is because it will encourage customers to come back and shop with you rather than choosing your competitors.
Tools that help you stay on top of the trends
Last of all, when it comes to success in e-commerce, it's vital that you stay on top of the trends in the field, so your site does not get left behind. Indeed, by watching trends to see how consumer behaviour shifts, you can become more agile and adapt to customer needs more effectively.
There are plenty of tools that you can use to stay ahead of trends in the ecommerce sphere. For Example, Trend Hunter is great for getting curated reports across lifestyle, tech and retail that can give you a good idea of not only what products are selling, but what themes customers are responding well to at the moment.
TikTok Creative Centre is another great tool that you can use to mind products and hashtags that are doing well in the social media shopping sphere. A major market for many female-led ecommerce businesses.
Lastly, don't forget that Google Trends is a relatively simple but effective way to check what kinds of things people are actively searching for online. It's particularly helpful to identify seasonal trends that can be used to affect your e-commerce store.