What Are eCommerce Marketplace Tools?
Marketplace tools for eCommerce are software applications or platforms designed to help businesses sell their products or services online. These tools provide a variety of features and functions to simplify the process of setting up an online store, managing product listings, processing payments, and tracking orders.
Some of the best eCommerce tools include:
- Online store builders: These tools allow businesses to create and customize their online stores, often with drag-and-drop interfaces and templates to simplify the process.
- Shopping cart software: This tool allows customers to add items to their online shopping carts and proceed to checkout.
- Payment gateways: These payment hub tools enable businesses to securely process payments online, including credit card payments, digital wallets, and bank transfers.
- Inventory management software: This tool helps businesses track their inventory levels and restock products as needed.
- Order fulfillment tools: These tools assist with packing and shipping orders, tracking shipments, and handling returns and refunds.
- Analytics tools: These tools provide businesses with insights into their online sales, including traffic sources, customer behavior, and sales trends.
Why Are eCommerce Tools Important?
An eCommerce tool is important because it allows a business to sell its products or services online and reach a wider audience.
- Reach more customers: An eCommerce tool allows businesses to sell their products or services to customers anywhere in the world, expanding their customer base beyond their physical location.
- 24/7 availability: Online stores are always open, which means customers can shop at any time, even outside of regular business hours. This can lead to increased sales and revenue.
- Streamlined operations: An eCommerce tool can automate many of the processes involved in online sales, such as order processing, inventory management, and shipping. This saves businesses time and resources, allowing them to focus on other areas of their operations.
- Improved customer experience: An eCommerce tool can make it easy for customers to browse products, make purchases, and track their orders. This can result in increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Data insights: An eCommerce tool can provide businesses with data and analytics on their online sales, customer behavior, and website traffic. This information can be used to optimize marketing strategies and improve the customer experience.
What Are the Most Important eCommerce Tools?
Whether you are interested in starting from the ground up with a new marketplace platform or are integrating tools into your current one, it's important to make sure you are using some form of the marketplace tools listed below.
Choose a Platform for Your eCommerce Website
The advancement of technology has revolutionized the way businesses operate and compete in the market. The emergence of eCommerce store platforms has enabled businesses to provide their customers with an efficient and convenient way to purchase goods and services.
Marketplace eCommerce platforms offer a wide range of features that make it easy for businesses to manage their online stores, such as product listings, payment processing, order management, customer service, tools for marketing, and more. In addition, these platforms also provide businesses with analytics that help them measure the performance of their online stores.
Here are some of the most popular platforms for eCommerce stores, in no particular order.
Adobe Commerce
Adobe Commerce is a comprehensive platform that enables businesses to create, manage and deploy their own eCommerce stores. It is designed to provide an all-in-one solution for digital commerce, from product discovery to checkout.
This platform is the successor to Magento, which was acquired by Adobe in 2018. It provides users with powerful tools and features such as advanced product management, order tracking, analytics, and reporting capabilities. It also offers a wide range of integrations with third-party applications such as payment gateways, shipping solutions, and marketing platforms.
With its open-source architecture, it can be easily tailored to meet the unique needs of each business. It includes several security measures such as encryption and authentication protocols to ensure the safety of customer data. Adobe Commerce also provides users with access to a global network of developers who can help them customize their stores according to their specific requirements.
Shopify
Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms available today. It is a cloud-based platform that allows users to create and manage their own online stores. It offers a range of features, including payment processing, inventory and supply chain management, and analytics tools.
Shopify also provides customers with access to a wide variety of themes and apps to customize the look and feel of their store. This makes it easy for entrepreneurs to create an attractive and professional eCommerce store.
The platform is user-friendly and intuitive, making it easy for beginners to set up an online store in minutes. Shopify's powerful back-end system allows merchants to easily manage orders, track sales, and measure performance.
Shopify also offers a range of tools such as SEO optimization and email automation that help businesses drive more traffic to their store and increase conversion rates.
CEF
CEF, aka Clarity eCommerce Framework, is designed to help businesses of all sizes launch and manage their own online marketplaces, providing a comprehensive set of tools and features to streamline the entire process.
One of the key benefits of the CEF eCommerce marketplace platform is its flexibility. The platform is highly customizable, allowing businesses to tailor their marketplaces to their specific needs and branding. It also supports a wide range of product types, from physical goods to digital products and services. This makes it a versatile option for businesses in a variety of industries.
Another key feature of the CEF eCommerce marketplace platform is its robust set of management tools. Businesses can use the platform to manage their inventory, process orders, handle payments, and more. The platform also includes advanced analytics and reporting tools, allowing businesses to track key metrics like sales and conversion rates in real time.
BigCommerce
Building an eCommerce website requires careful consideration of the platform's capabilities. BigCommerce is one of the leading ecommerce store platforms that offers a comprehensive suite of tools to create and manage a successful online shop.
With BigCommerce, businesses can easily launch a website without needing to know complicated coding or web design. The platform makes it easy to customize the look and feel of their website, as well as provides powerful features such as product management, shopping carts, customer accounts, secure payment processing, and more.
BigCommerce also provides powerful marketing tools to help businesses reach more customers and expand their online presence. With integrated SEO optimization tools and automated email and SMS marketing campaigns, businesses can quickly start promoting their products on search engines and social media sites.
BigCommerce also provides analytics to track customer behavior and sales performance so that businesses can make informed decisions about how best to reach their target audience.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a platform designed to provide store owners with a comprehensive solution for their online store. It is the most popular platform in the world, powering over 28% of all online stores.
WooCommerce allows store owners to quickly and easily set up their own online store, manage inventory, process payments, and track analytics.
One of the main benefits of using WooCommerce is its seamless integration with WordPress. WordPress is the leading content management system (CMS) on the web and by utilizing it together with WooCommerce, store owners can build a powerful website that will be easy to maintain and update.
Another great feature of WooCommerce is its robust inventory and supply chain management capabilities. Store owners can easily add products, manage stock levels, create product variations, and more. In addition, they can also customize how their customers interact with their products by creating special discounts or offering free shipping options.
Wix
With Wix, users can design professional-looking websites without any coding skills. The platform offers simple drag-and-drop features for creating custom product pages.
This platform also provides users with an array of marketing platform automation tools to help them optimize their businesses and increase sales. This includes features such as email campaigns, SMS marketing, SEO optimization, and integration with social media campaigns.
Wix enables users to customize the look and feel of their websites by selecting from over 500 professionally designed templates. This allows businesses to create unique online stores that reflect their brand identity and values. Wix also offers advanced analytics tools which allow users to track sales performance and customer engagement metrics in real-time.
Wix is constantly rolling out new features such as AI-powered product recommendations, which help you personalize your customers' shopping experiences and maximize conversions.
Shift4Shop
The Shift4Shop platform offers a comprehensive suite of features, allowing merchants to easily customize their store's look and feel as well as quickly add products, set up payment processing options, and manage order fulfillment. Shift4Shop has integrated marketing eCommerce tools to help merchants grow their businesses and attract more customers.
The core features of the Shift4Shop platform are designed to make it easy for merchants to create an attractive and user-friendly online shopping experience. Merchants can easily customize the look and feel of their store by selecting from hundreds of themes or designing their own custom themes. They can quickly add products by importing product data from CSV files or manually entering product information into the platform's intuitive interface.
Payment processing options include support for major credit cards and popular payment gateways such as PayPal and strip. Merchants also have access to a suite of order management tools that allow them to track orders in real-time, print shipping labels, manage returns, and more.
Select Your eCommerce Marketing Tools
In the current market, an eCommerce business must use various tools for marketing to succeed. Without them, the business will not be able to reach its potential audience or generate necessary revenue.
To remain competitive, businesses must understand the different types of tools and their full potential. By learning how to strategically utilize these tools, businesses can create effective campaigns that reach their target audience.
SEO And Website Health: Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a powerful marketing eCommerce tool that can help business owners optimize their websites for search engine results. It is a comprehensive website builder with features like keyword research, link building, and content analysis.
This tool provides in-depth insights into competitor strategies, website health, and marketplace optimization techniques. Ahrefs can be used to monitor organic traffic growth and track the effectiveness of specific keywords. It also offers a user-friendly interface that makes it easy for users to get started quickly.
With Ahrefs, businesses can quickly identify areas of improvement on their websites and make changes accordingly. This helps them to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). Businesses can also gauge how well they are performing compared to competitors with a competitive analysis feature.
The dashboard provided by Ahrefs gives an overview of website performance over time and shows which SEO tactics have been successful in bringing more visitors to the site. The tool also provides detailed data on search volumes for specific keywords so that businesses can choose the most effective ones for their campaigns.
Social Media Automation: Buffer
Automation tools like Buffer make it easier to manage social media content marketing campaigns across multiple platforms. This involves scheduling posts, creating content calendars, and analyzing user engagement stats. Buffer allows users to automate tasks across various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
Buffer also provides users with the ability to track user engagement through analytics. This feature enables users to gain insights into what kind of content works best for their audience on each platform. This data can then be used to inform future social media strategies and campaigns.
Another key feature of Buffer is its integration with other popular marketing automation tools such as Hootsuite and Mailchimp. This makes it easier for users to manage multiple campaigns at once without having to switch between different platforms or tools. With this integration comes the ability to schedule posts in advance so that they are automatically published at the right time and shared with the right audience.
Product Feed Management: DataFeedWatch
Product feed management is an important element of eCommerce marketing. DataFeedWatch is a software solution that assists with the process. It enables users to create tailored product feeds for various channels, such as Google Shopping, Amazon, eBay, and price comparison sites.
DataFeedWatch has a range of features to assist in this endeavor. It allows users to easily create, adjust and update product feeds for different channels. Users can also link their store's inventory to their account so that the product information on each platform is up-to-date and accurate. DataFeedWatch also provides automated rules to ensure product data meets the requirements of each channel without manual input from the user.
DataFeedWatch offers comprehensive reporting capabilities that enable users to monitor their performance across multiple channels and optimize campaigns based on this data. This includes metrics such as impressions, clicks, conversions, and average order value which can be used to analyze campaigns’ effectiveness and make adjustments accordingly.
Marketing Automation: Omnisend
Omnisend is specifically designed for eCommerce businesses to manage and optimize their marketing campaigns in a more effective and efficient way. It provides users with a suite of features that enable them to create personalized messages, automate email campaigns, and track customer engagement.
Omnisend allows businesses to segment their customers based on various attributes such as age, gender, location, purchase history, and more. This allows businesses to target their messaging to specific demographics or segments within their customer base.
The platform includes features such as A/B testing which enables businesses to test different versions of emails or other campaigns to determine which performs better with customers.
The platform also has integrated analytics capabilities that allow businesses to monitor customer behavior and engagement across all channels. This helps businesses identify areas where they can improve their campaigns and develop insights into what works best for their particular audience.
Referral And Affiliate Marketing: ReferralCandy
ReferralCandy is an example of a powerful referral marketing tool designed to help businesses maximize customer acquisition and retention. It enables eCommerce businesses to easily set up a referral program that incentivizes customers to refer their friends, family, and colleagues.
ReferralCandy offers customizable rewards for both the referrer and referee. Examples include discounts, store credits, free shipping, or even cash rewards. Additionally, the platform allows users to customize the look of each referral page with logos, colors, fonts, and images. It also provides detailed analytics so users can track how many referrals have been made, who referred them, and what reward was given.
ReferralCandy also allows eCommerce businesses to take advantage of affiliate marketing opportunities. By partnering with other companies or influencers related to the business’s niche, businesses can create an extensive network of affiliates who will promote the business’s products or services in exchange for commissions or other incentives.
Optimize the Selling Process
It's necessary for an eCommerce store to achieve a balance between cost-effectiveness and quality of service. By utilizing digital marketing strategies with the help of the tools below, businesses can reach potential customers without incurring large upfront costs.
Optimization Of Product Copy: Optimizely
ECommerce stores strive to optimize the selling process in order to maximize profits. One of the best ways to do this is by optimizing product copy. Optimizely is a software platform that allows businesses to effectively test and personalize their campaigns and content marketing activities. It enables users to measure results with Google Analytics and make changes quickly in order to provide customers with the most relevant content.
Optimizely can be used for A/B testing, which is an effective way of finding out what works best for customers. This involves creating two versions of a page or advertisement and then measuring which one performs better in terms of engagement, conversions, sales, etc. By comparing different versions of a page or advertisement, businesses can identify which one has the most impact on their target audience.
In addition, Optimizely offers features such as dynamic content optimization, which allows businesses to customize landing pages based on user behavior. This means that customers will be presented with content that is tailored specifically for them based on their past activities on the eCommerce website.
Personalization and Recommendation: Nosto
The use of personalization and recommendation in an eCommerce store has been proven to be a successful tool for optimizing the selling process. One way to accomplish this is through the software platform, Nosto. This platform provides an automated solution to personalize product recommendations for customers, by analyzing their behaviors and preferences.
Nosto offers a range of personalized content options, such as product recommendations, promotions, and newsletters. These tailored experiences are designed to increase customer engagement, as well as boost conversion rates.
The software’s AI-powered algorithms are able to track customer data in order to tailor specific product recommendations that best match the user’s needs and interests. This type of personalization helps build relationships with customers and encourages them to return to the store more frequently.
Customer Service: Gorgias
The customer service tool Gorgias is an effective eCommerce solution for optimizing the selling process. This type of customer relationship management offers a comprehensive set of features that enable businesses to improve customer relationships, enhance marketing automation, and streamline their operations.
With Gorgias, businesses can quickly build relationships with customers and provide personalized support. The tool includes a powerful CRM system that allows businesses to track customer data and activities in real-time. Gorgias also offers marketing automation capabilities that enable businesses to create targeted campaigns and send automated messages to customers.
The platform also offers tools for tracking order statuses, shipping updates, and other important information about each order. This helps businesses stay on top of their orders and ensure the timely delivery of products or services.
Checkout: Carthook
Optimizing the selling process in an eCommerce store is essential for success. Checkout can be one of the most difficult parts of this process for customers to navigate. Shopping cart software such as CartHook provides a streamlined checkout process that encourages customers to complete their orders.
CartHook is designed to simplify checkout by detecting and correcting errors before customers have to enter payment information. This prevents customers from having to re-enter data and reduces the time it takes for them to complete their purchases. CartHook also offers features such as one-click upsells, which allow customers to easily add items to their orders without having to go through the checkout process again.
CartHook also allows merchants to customize their checkout page with different themes and colors, giving them more control over how their store looks and feels. This helps create a more personalized shopping experience, which can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Generating Reviews: Yotpo
Generating reviews is important for any ecommerce store as it helps to build trust and credibility with potential customers. One tool that can be used to generate reviews is Yotpo, which provides an automated way for stores to collect customer reviews.
Yotpo works by sending automated emails to customers after they make a purchase. These emails prompt customers to leave feedback or reviews about their experience with the product or store. The platform also has the ability to display these customer reviews on the store’s eCommerce website, helping to create a sense of trust among potential customers who are considering making a purchase.
Yotpo also provides analytics and insights into customer feedback. This helps stores understand their customers’ experiences in more detail and allows them to identify areas where they can improve their service or products. This data can then be used as part of campaigns for marketing, providing key insights into customer behavior and preferences which can help inform marketing decisions.
Enhance Shipping and Inventory
Knowing that you have the item in stock and getting it to your customer is vitally important; without them, you don't have a store. Let's take a look at a couple of options for optimizing these parts of a business.
Inventory Management: Veeqo
Veeqo offers inventory management tools that can help streamline the process of tracking and managing stock levels on any platform. The Veeqo software also allows you to manage multiple locations and warehouses, as well as keep track of orders across different channels, including web, retail stores, and marketplaces.
The tool can help automate processes such as order fulfillment and shipping notifications. This ensures that products are delivered quickly and accurately to customers, resulting in a higher level of customer satisfaction.
Veeqo's product management tools are easy to use and integrate seamlessly with many popular platforms, such as Shopify, WordPress, Magento, OpenCart, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce. With one-click integration for these platforms, it is easy to set up automatic inventory updates so that stock levels remain accurate at all times.
Veeqo offers a range of features that make it possible to customize the way inventory is managed on each platform. For example, users can set specific rules for when products should be replenished or discontinued based on their sales performance.
Shipping: Shipstation
ShipStation provides features such as automatic order importing from multiple sources, custom order routing rules, and automated returns handling. It enables merchants to create custom shipping labels, manage international orders and automate tracking updates. With ShipStation, companies can track their shipments in real-time and access powerful analytics to gain insights into their operations.
ShipStation also offers warehouse management solutions to help businesses manage their inventory efficiently. It allows them to set up locations and track stock levels across multiple warehouses with ease. Its product management tools enable users to update prices and product information in bulk or individually. This feature helps businesses keep their online store up-to-date while avoiding manual errors on a product level.
ShipStation also integrates with popular eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, and Amazon Seller Central. This integration simplifies the setup process for merchants by automatically syncing orders from major eCommerce platforms into one central dashboard for easy access and fulfillment. Merchants can also customize how each platform is managed within the platform based on individual business needs.
Make the Most of Analytics Tools
Analytics tools are powerful tools that allow companies to analyze customer behavior and identify areas for improvement in their online stores. By leveraging these insights, businesses can optimize their e-commerce platforms and increase conversions. Analytics tools can help businesses understand customer preferences and anticipate customer needs, allowing them to provide a better overall experience for shoppers.
Through an analysis of current trends, best practices, and strategies, readers will gain a better understanding of how they can make the most of analytics tools on an e-commerce platform.
Marketing Data: Supermetrics
Supermetrics provides insights into customer behavior and enables companies to create effective marketing campaigns. With Supermetrics, marketers are able to make the most of Google Analytics, one of the leading digital marketing platforms.
By combining this with other marketing data such as social media performance, Google Ads, and email campaigns, Supermetrics helps marketers gain a better understanding of their customers’ needs and preferences. This allows them to develop more targeted marketing strategies and improve overall marketing campaign performance.
Supermetrics also offers advanced reporting capabilities that help marketers gain deeper insights into the effectiveness of their campaigns. In addition to providing detailed reports on the eCommerce website performance, it also provides insights into customer segmentation and customer lifetime value (CLV). This helps marketers focus their resources on the most successful campaigns while reducing spend on those that don’t deliver results.
Customer Journey: Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics is a powerful analytics platform that can help eCommerce businesses gain insight into their customers’ journeys. Kissmetrics provides valuable data on user behavior, including page views, time on site, and purchase history. This data can be used to identify areas of improvement in the customer experience and create targeted campaigns to increase sales and engagement.
Kissmetrics also offers segmentation capabilities that allow businesses to tailor their campaigns for specific customers or groups. With this information, businesses can create more personalized experiences for their customers.
Kissmetrics allows users to track events through the platform's real-time reporting feature. This feature helps businesses stay on top of changes in user behavior, allowing them to adjust their marketing efforts accordingly. It provides powerful insights into user engagement with AB testing and cohort analysis.
These features allow businesses to better understand how users interact with their website or app and make informed decisions about how to optimize their product or service offerings for maximum impact.
Site Metrics: Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a powerful analytics tool for eCommerce platforms. It provides a comprehensive analysis of site visitors and their behavior. This data can be used to make informed decisions about how to optimize the website and improve customer engagement.
This analysis software offers a wide range of metrics that help businesses understand how customers interact with their site, including page views, bounce rate, time on page, average session duration, and more. With this data, businesses can identify areas of improvement in order to attract more customers and increase conversions.
Analytics also allows marketers to segment audiences based on demographics or behaviors so they can customize content and campaigns accordingly.
The platform provides insights into user acquisition channels such as organic search results or paid campaigns. This helps marketers determine which strategies are most effective in driving traffic to the website and how well they are converting users into customers. It then allows them to track the effectiveness of different marketing tactics over time in order to focus resources on what works best for their business goals.
Advanced Data Analysis: Zoho Analytics
Zoho Analytics is an advanced analytics tool that can be used to make the most of a platform. It is designed to provide users with insights into their customers’ behavior and purchasing habits as well as track performance metrics.
Zoho Analytics provides users with a comprehensive set of features, such as data discovery, data visualization, and predictive analytics. With its data discovery capabilities, users can gain insights into customer behavior by analyzing sales trends, customer segmentation, and product performance.
The data visualization feature enables users to create visually appealing infographics that help them understand key business metrics. Lastly, the predictive analytics tool allows users to identify future trends and opportunities based on past data.
The platform also offers a suite of reporting and automation features that enable users to easily generate custom reports or automate tasks such as email notifications. Zoho Analytics also provides an easy-to-use platform for creating custom dashboards where users can view their key performance indicators in one place.
Reporting: Whatagraph
Whatagraph is a reporting tool that provides users with the ability to better understand their customers’ actual user behavior.
This tool offers a range of features that make it easy to visualize data and gain insights into customer behavior. Using machine learning, Whatagraph can automatically detect patterns in customer behavior and generate predictive reports. This allows businesses to identify opportunities for improvement on their online platform.
Whatagraph also provides powerful analyzing tools, such as cohort analysis and funnel visualization, to help businesses better understand user behavior. Cohort analysis enables users to compare different groups of customers over time, while funnel visualization helps them identify areas of improvement in their marketing efforts.
Whatagraph also provides advanced reporting capabilities, including integration with other platforms like Google's Analytics, so that businesses can gain deeper insights into their customers’ actions on the eCommerce platform.
Visual Insights: Hotjar
Hotjar is an analytics tool that provides visual insights into user activity on an eCommerce platform. It offers a range of features, including heatmaps, recordings, funnels, and polls. Heatmaps are visual representations of where visitors click and how they interact with individual web pages during their visit.
Recordings show exactly what users do on the platform and can help identify areas for improvement. Funnels track users’ progress through the checkout process and allow you to measure customer journey data in order to optimize the customer experience. Polls give customers the opportunity to provide feedback about their experience on the platform and provide valuable insights into how to improve it.
The benefits of using Hotjar on a platform include improved customer engagement, better customer service, increased conversions, and improved website usability. By enabling businesses to see how customers interact with their website, Hotjar helps them make informed decisions about improving the user experience.
Businesses can use Hotjar to understand what works well and what needs improvement in order to create a better overall user experience. This can lead to higher conversion rates as customers are more likely to complete purchases if they have a positive experience while browsing the website.