Although it is necessary to study and acquire important skills before starting a business, opening an online store doesn't take much. With recent facilities, in fact, starting e-commerce is a process that can be done in less than a day. However, just having an online store is not going to guarantee your success. It takes effort and the adoption of techniques that will make the business grow.
In this article, we list 8 essential tools to open a successful online store and improve the results of your pages. Its features range from online service, allowing close contact with the customer to solve problems and speed up the purchase process, to services that will allow your business to stand out, leaving the competition behind and retaining customers.
8 tools to open your online store
1. Chat Online
Among the tools to open a virtual store, online chat gains an interesting highlight. It's a quick and intuitive way for customers to seek support. The lack of this tool can be critical and its presence is required in a successful online store. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the use of this feature grew by almost 400% and about 65% of e-commerce customers say they would buy from stores that have online chat again.
2. Checkout transparent
A successful online store must show transparency to the customer from beginning to end of a purchase. And, let's face it, it sucks when, at the end of a purchase, you are directed to another page where it is necessary to fill in data that is already available in the e-commerce account. When opening an online store, it is important to remember that the shopping experience greatly impacts customer loyalty. Big companies like Amazon and Mercado Livre have made the checkout process faster and easier, with just 3 clicks to complete!
3. Blog
It can be said that the blog is not strictly a tool, however, having one adds a lot of value to your e-commerce and cannot be left out of the list of tools to open a virtual store. From exclusive texts, it is possible to work with SEO strategies and make your e-commerce more visible, attracting potential customers and increasing brand reliability. Undoubtedly, all these benefits are great steps towards a successful online store.
4. CRM System
Managing customers, inventories and operational aspects can be labor-intensive and requires organization. Therefore, the use of a CRM (Customer Relationship Management, in Portuguese) is very important in e-commerce. There are many options on the market, however, you should be aware when choosing and checking if the chosen CRM system has integration with other tools used and with the e-commerce platform where your virtual store is located.
5. Email marketing
A successful online store invests in contact with people. According to studies, email marketing is the most powerful tool for converting customers in e-commerce. Among the tools to open a virtual store, along with online chat, it is responsible for increasing the contact base, bringing in new customers and even retaining them, if used creatively.
6. Recovery of abandoned carts
According to a survey by Forrester Research, the average cart abandonment rate is around 43%. To face this problem, there are several techniques that can help your e-commerce sales:
- The use of email marketing, as mentioned above;
- Remarketing: the display of abandoned products in online advertisements;
- Use of software such as Cart Stack or Shop back;
- Push notifications: clickable messages that are generated by the software and contain alerts about offers and information from a store;
- Save shopping cart even for customers who are not logged in.
When opening the virtual store, the customer expects to have resources that help during the purchase process. Therefore, it is important to prevent the customer from getting frustrated and abandoning the cart due to a lack of sales strategy. This is an important point that should be well considered among the tools to open a successful online store.
7. Google Analytics
Google Analytics has become a necessity as a tool to open a successful online store. From this feature, you can analyze and evaluate all activities within your website. In addition, it provides information about which products are most viewed, sold, or returned, the biggest questions encountered by customers, cart abandonment rate, and much other statistical information that can help with decision making.
8. Complete e-commerce platform
These are the main tools for opening an online store. A lot of information? Well, starting an online business requires, as I said, a lot of study and preparation. It is necessary to have all these tools within easy reach, otherwise, the work can become very complex.