There’s no beating around the bush – eCommerce can be a hard slog. Coming up with your business idea is almost the easy part once you factor in things like international shipping and currency management, email marketing automation and conversion rate optimisation just to name a few.
Thankfully, the astronomical growth that eCommerce is experiencing has also led to some pretty significant leaps in the technology and tools available for business owners that will make life just that little bit easier.
We take a look at some of the most powerful tools you can add to your eCommerce strategy, whether you’re a small business or an enterprise operation.
Klaviyo
When it comes to email marketing for eCommerce brands, Klaviyo has to be one of the best.
Sure, you can build slick emails and customise the design to your brand. But the real power of Klaviyo is in its back end.
Its direct integrations with eCommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce and BigCommerce means you can easily segment your database by purchase activity and reward your top customers.
Easily insert user attributes into your emails with its personalisation feature, pull in product catalogue information and images and run A/B tests to inform your future campaigns.
Connect with Facebook to leverage your database for social advertising or link to Typeform to further profile your customers with Klaviyo’s extensive list of third-party integrations.
Lastly, Klaviyo’s pre-built flows means you don’t have to be an email marketing whiz to get a lot out of the platform. Set up sequences for new subscribers, abandoned carts, product reviews, upselling and re-engagement with its templates – you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how little time it’ll take for you to set up extensive automated flows that can have a big impact on your eCommerce strategy.
Dotdigital
Another email marketing platform worth checking out is Dotdigital (formerly Dotmailer).
While Klaviyo is a match made in heaven for Shopify retailers, Dotdigital is really well integrated with Magento. It’s probably more of a mid-tier to enterprise solution as opposed to Klaviyo which better suits small businesses.
Beyond all the usual suspects when it comes to email marketing features, Dotdigital also has a pretty solid eCommerce strategy offering for features like SMS, social ads, live chat and push notifications.
Preezie
Australian SaaS business Preezie was born from a desire to bridge the gap between bricks-and-mortar conversion rates (anywhere up to 40%) and eCommerce conversion rate (usually between 2-3%, and that’s being generous).
Preezie describes themselves as a “retail experience platform” which is one of the more vague descriptions out there, but they essentially aim to guide your users to conversion through bringing the sales assistance element of shopping in-person to the online experience.
Especially for brands with a large inventory, it can be hard for potential customers to make a decision on a product – let alone even finding the right product in the first place.
Preezie works by quizzing users on their preferences (things like what they’re looking for and what their budget is) before directing them to products that meet their preferences.
Simple, but powerful – Preezie reports that their customers see a 300-400% uplift in conversion rate after implementing their software.
We all know that reducing the number of clicks to checkout can have a huge impact on your conversion rates. Enter Fast – the tool that aims to bring that number of clicks to just one.
Co-founded by Australian tech entrepreneur Domm Holland, Fast lets users bypass the login stage (after initial sign up to the platform) and leverage pre-saved details to checkout in a single click.
This functionality means you can place a Fast checkout button just about anywhere on the internet – your emails, ads, blogs, even third-party sites – and users can still take advantage of the one-click checkout without having to navigate back to your website to do so.
Next on the horizon for Fast is BNPL support along with a post-purchase upsell product – so it’s a great time to get on the Fast bandwagon as part of your eCommerce strategy.
With the eCommerce landscape pretty competitive as it is, many brands are venturing beyond their own websites to sell on high profile marketplace sites like eBay, Amazon and Catch.
Considering that up to 99.9% of the global eCommerce market sits beyond Australian borders, opening up your business to be discovered by an international audience seems like a no brainer – but the logistics of selling on so many different sites to so many different countries can create more headaches than it solves.
That’s where ChannelEngine comes in – directly integrating your existing online store with major marketplaces to offer a streamlined approach to expansion.
Fulfill orders from your own backend, control stock levels and make price updates from one place.
Airwallex
If any part of your business operation involves another country – whether you sell internationally or just source your materials from overseas – you’ll know that managing global payments can be a huge pain.
That’s exactly how Airwallex was born – a borderless payment solution that offers real-time international transfers with a fraction of the fees that traditional banks or payment platforms would normally charge on top.
Summary
While we’ve covered off some of the more powerful tools here, this is really just scratching the surface when it comes to creating the optimal eCommerce strategy and tech stack for your business. It can be hard to keep track of all the different offerings on the market, let alone decide which one’s right for where you’re at with your business – that’s where The Natives can help.
Get in touch with us to organise a catch up over coffee (or a Zoom – we’re embracing it now) to chat about how we can build a bespoke eCommerce solution to take your business to the next level.