Building an online store from the ground up is hard. Even harder is maintaining a vibrant online store without allowing the growth to stagnate. Most online stores can be built with the free basic tools provided by CMSs like WordPress. For example, WooCommerce is a free and easy-to-use plugin that comes with WordPress to create and manage a shopping cart function. However, the free version of WooCommerce is not sufficient to support a large customer base. Therefore, an online store that is growing in terms of users and traffic stats should invest in better software to manage the site. Read ahead for some of the best digital tools that growing online businesses can benefit from:
Image Compressors
As your online store grows, you will be adding more and more products and images to the site, which will markedly increase the bulk of your site. If your online store is too bulky, it will take forever to load. Slow loading sites are an enemy of online success. Customers will quickly turn away to competing stores if they can’t access yours in under two seconds. Therefore, you will need to take steps to reduce the bulk of your site by using an image compressor. There are a number of excellent free and premium image compressors available for many different platforms. For example, RIOT is a great free image compressor. Smush.it is an online tool that can reduce the size of your images without compromising quality. Shrink O’Matic is a convenient drag-and-drop image compressor for desktops. Other good image compressors include CompressNow, Trimage and PNG Gauntlet.
High-Capacity Shopping Cart Software
As mentioned earlier in this article, as your customer base grows, the demand on your shopping cart software and payment gateways will intensify. Last thing a trending site needs is a crashed cart. So, upgrade your existing cart into a high-capacity version like Magento. Be aware that Magento product management software is not cheap. However, for the hefty price tag, users get an amazing set of features such as mobile compatibility, integration with multiple payment gateways, a massive extension library, ability to support multiple online stores and one step checkout. For detailed information regarding how Magento can benefit your growing online store, refer to the infographic below:
Email Newsletter Apps
When you have tens of thousands of customers, you won’t be able to manually send e-newsletters and promotional material as you did in the beginning. Therefore, get your online store an app like MailChimp, AWeber or BombBomb. These tools can make your e-newsletter campaigns infinitely more efficient. Plus, the monthly charges for these apps are usually below 100 dollars.
Google Webmaster Tools
It’s difficult to spot possible search engine indexing problems with larger sites. Google Webmaster Tools is a cool software that can help you spot possible SEO problems with your online store, such as broken links or unlinked tabs. Don’t confuse Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics. Webmaster Tools helps you understand and diagnose problems with your site, while Analytics shows you traffic and related statistics.
Manage your growing online store by investing in the tools mentioned above. You will be able to prevent technical problems, improve user friendliness of the store, and retain loyal customers.
