eCommerce platforms — 11 platforms to help get your eCommerce website started

Choosing your eCommerce platform builder is one of the most important steps and will set you up going forward.
  1. Bigcommerce — This is the platform to start with if you are planning to grow big! Plans start at $29.95/month.
  2. Shopify — Shopify is simple to set up and get going. They have a Point of Sale system too.
  3. Volusion — The all-in-one solution for building an online store
  4. Weebly — A cheap way to build a beautiful website and online shop. They even have a free plan. You don’t have any excuse not to start.
  5. Woocommerce — Opensource eCommmerce platform. Because it is opensource there are a lot of plugins however you have to look after security and hosting.
  6. Squarespace — A fully hosted, completely managed environment for creating and maintaining a beautiful website, blog, or portfolio.
  7. TicTail — Start a beautiful online store for free!
  8. LemonStand — The team are building an eCommerce platform to help you scale.
  9. Selz — Selz is great if you’ve got just a couple of items that you want to embed into your existing site, and you can also set up a complete online store. There are no monthly fees, so you only pay a transaction fee when you make a sale.
  10. CrateJoy — Looking to start a subscription model store? CrateJoy is a platform for exactly this!
  11. SymphonyCommerce — Commerce as a service. If you are a little bit larger and what everything looked after for you, Symphony is the way to go.

Sales & Marketing — Jumpstart Your Ecommerce Marketing Strategy

After setting up your online store with all the products, you need to sell and market it to your customers.
  1. Yopto — install this now! It is the easiest way to get reviews on your website and drive sales due to the rise in social shopping.
  2. Now in Store — An automatic catalogue builder for your products. They even have a Shopify app
  3. CrazyEgg — A heatmap to actually see where your customers are on your website
  4. Olark — Live chat to talk to your customers
  5. Polyvore — Polyvore focuses on fashion and homewares, allowing consumers to create collages and collections of the items they love. These collections can be made up of product from online stores including yours. All product photos link back to your online store. This is a great way to drive traffic.
  6. Houzz — Houzz is a great marketplace to sell on if you want to target homeowners and people who are actively engaged in home decorating, interior design, renovation and remodeling projects. Sell online here
  7. Wanelo — A social platform for shopping. It will also your store be discovered by more shoppers.

Public Relations — Spread the word with PR

PR can be a great way to get your name out there
  1. PressFriendly — A tool to build and manage your media campaigns

Search Engine Optimization — Create an SEO Checklist

Some people say SEO is dying however we think it is important to get the organic traffic you want. If you are not doing it, your competitor is.
  1. Moz — Marketing analytics software for search, links, social, and brand. Moz will provide you with SEO reports when you need them.

Social Media — 2 Awesome Social Media Tools

You know that social media is a must so use these tools to free up your time.
  1. Buffer — Schedule and track your social media posts across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+
  2. Schedugram — start scheduling your Instagram posts so you can focus back on your business

Advertising — 4 eCommerce Advertising Solutions

Social media algorithms are changing so advertising will be a necessity. Use these platforms to roll out and manage campaigns across platforms, as well as retargeting.
  1. Boostable — Enter your store URL and Boostable will generate Facebook ads for you. Definitely worth a try!
  2. Adroll — A simple and easy-to-use retargeting platform. You can publish ads across Facebook and web (Google).
  3. Perfect Audience — One solution for all your retargeting needs, including Facebook, web and Twitter. Check out the video tutorials here.
  4. AdEspresso — Facebook ads made simple! Put in all your images, titles and descriptions and they will automatically do the AB testing for you.

Shipping — 3 eCommerce Shipping Solutions

Unless you have a digital product, your shipping options are very important. Shipping price and times can make or break a sale.
  1. Shippo — Helps merchants and marketplaces save time and money on shipping
  2. Shyp — No matter if you are an individual or a business, Shyp will send a Shyp Hero to collect, package and send your item within 20 minutes. A-may-zing! (Currently available in San Francisco, NYC and Miami)
  3. Shipwire — eCommerce order fulfilment service and product distribution for business. They have warehouses in the US, Canada, UK, and Hong Kong.

Customer Service — 3 eCommerce Customer Service Solutions

As you grow, you won’t be able to handle all your customer enquiries. Make sure you have the right customer support tools in place.
  1. Zendesk — It is the easiest and fastest way to great customer service.
  2. HelpScout — Customer service software without customers seeing the ticketing system. Sounds pretty cool to me!
  3. Influx — This is customer service as a service. If you get a lot of the same questions, Influx could be very useful for your business.

Email Marketing — Execute the Perfect Email Marketing Strategy

Email marketing is a must. You get direct contact to your customers so work your email marketing lists and keep promoting your products.
  1. Mailchimp — No coding required to get up email campaigns and newsletter. They have nice templates too.
  2. Vero — Send behavioural emails to get your customers coming back. Vero have one of the best email marketing blogs too.
  3. SumoMe — Easily collect email addresses with SumoMe’s pop up box. It connects directly to Mailchimp and other email marketing platforms.
  4. Drip — Email marketing automation that is simple to use.

Management — Manager Your eCommerce Operations

  1. Shopseen — Manage all your listings in one place. Shopseen works withSquare, Shopify, Etsy, Bigcommerce, eBay, and Storenvy.
  2. Divvy — Simply your content processes with Divvy. No more emails and spreadsheets.
  3. OrderCircle — Manage your wholesale orders

Productivity — Best Business Productivity Tools

  1. Trello — Keep track of everything in simple to do lists.
  2. Asana — Asana allows you to put conversions and to do lists with team members, all in the one place.
  3. Google Drive — You can’t go past Google Docs. It is really easy to keep a live spreadsheet up to date between team members.

Photo editing and Graphic Design Tools

  1. Canva — Free easy-to-use design tool and it’s all online. They include examples, templates and stock images so you can do all your graphics in one spot and don’t even need any background knowledge of design however I always suggest keeping it to two font styles in one design.
  2. Snapseed — An app to edit your photos on the go. I used this a lot before Instagram introduced their editing tools.
  3. Pixc — Product image editing on demand and background removal services so you can increase your sales and focus on the things you love.

Best Stock Photos Sites

  1. Stocksy — Definitely one of the best stock photography websites out there. All images are beautiful, unique and natural. They are well priced too if you are going to use them on your landing page or in marketing material.
  2. PhotoDune — Lots of images at affordable prices. They also runGraphicRiver if you need icons and graphics.
  3. Unsplash — Free stock images, mainly focused on landscapes however they can work well for marketing material if it suits your brand


Digital Printing Solutions

  1. Moo — Use Moo for high quality yet affordable business cards, letterheads and flyers. I suggest using their mini Moo cards as swing tags for your items if you are starting out.

A/B Testing Tools

  1. Optimizely — A/B test your website and ultimately increase your conversions with their easy to use testing tools
  2. Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) — Similar to Optimizely however a little cheaper.

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