Starting an e-commerce business is not an easy task. You have to get everything right or you’ll end up with a lot of products you can’t sell and a lot of money wasted running advertising. However, there are some tools you’ll need to enable you to Supercharge Your Ecommerce Business and scale with minimum effort.
It’s a delicate business that requires lots of planning and getting offline things in place even before starting to run advertising. In short, running advertising is the last part of the business.
That said, here are 6 tools that would not only help you start your e-commerce business successfully, but would also help you scale up.
1 – Email Marketing Solutions
Email marketing is the simplest, most cost-effective way of making money as an e-commerce business.
Your email subscribers already know, like, and trust you and simply recommending a product to them is 10X more likely to bring sales than running any sort of advertising.
By adding email marketing to your E-commerce business, you’re creating a passive income source that never runs dry.
While nurturing and growing an email list takes a lot of work, the rewards are massive and long-lasting. However, before starting to grow your own email list, it’s very important you choose an email platform that will serve you for the long term.
When it comes to email marketing, Sendinblue is one of the best in the business.
2 – e-Commerce Advertising Platform
Like every business, you must advertise to get clients, consumers, and referrals. Choosing a platform that’s easy to use and manage is a priority before starting your e-commerce business.
While Google ads have the largest reach so far, Facebook & and the new kid in the block, TikTok is increasingly challenging the dominance of google ads. However as a beginner to E-commerce, Facebook remains the best platform to start with, this is because it’s cheaper, easier to use, understand, and has a reach of over a billion active users.
To learn more about advertising your e-comm business on Facebook, simply click here.
3 – Payment gateway
While E-commerce agencies in most American and European countries use automated payment gateways, with larger companies and Konga and Jumia doing the same in Nigeria, as a starter, using automated payment gateway systems will not work.
Nigerians rarely trust anyone easily and prefer to pay on demand. If you’re not a household name like Jumia, Alibaba, Jiji, Konga, and the likes, creating an automated payment gateway will very likely reduce your sales.
The solution is to adopt a pay-on-delivery approach and create a system where your customers can make payments when the goods arrive. This of course has its own problems (link here), yet it creates a goldmine of opportunities to make real money.
Learn more about starting a profitable E-commerce business here.
4 – Delivery Agent
While briefly covered in the last point, getting the right delivery agent is important. In Nigeria, there are several delivery companies, some of them are very costly and others are very unreliable. Not to talk of the fact that some customers can change their minds at moment’s notice without any alert.
Therefore, getting a reliable and cheap delivery agent is really important when starting your e-commerce business. If you ship to faraway places, you should ensure you have a reliable person to receive the products and deliver them in due time to the customer.
Your delivery agent must always be in contact with the customer to ensure the customer is available and reachable when the product arrives.
You can learn more about getting a reliable delivery agent and how to handle customer problems in this course.
5 – Analytics Tools
When using Facebook or any other E-commerce advertising platform, there is a myriad of KPIs that may be confusing to you as a first-timer. This is why we recommend understanding facebook’s analytics.
Some data to pay attention to include ;
• Average order value – the average amount a customer spends with you.
• Average Conversion Rate – the percentage of visitors who buy from you when they visit your website or e-commerce store.
Knowing these KPIs will give you an early indication of you are making profits or losses and also give you indications as to what particular aspect of your business needs to be fixed.
While Facebook comes with its own, there are a few other tools you can use that can make the process easier for you and help you find leaks in your E-commerce amour.
Here is a list of e-commerce analytics tools that could benefit you. Check them out.
6 – CRM Software
Customer Relationship Management is one very important part of e-commerce. Getting a means to automate all or part of your CRM could be saving you a lot of time and gain more customers.
Since most Nigerians with smartphones now use WhatsApp as a default means of daily conversation and communication, it’s imperative that you get CRM software that integrates seamlessly with WhatsApp.
Most successful e-commerce businesses use WhatsApp to communicate with customers and there are so many CRM software built around WhatsApp. Some of them include WhatsAuto, WhatsApp Autoresponder, Callbell, leadSales, and others.
However, for a beginner, I recommend you just start with WhatsApp Autoresponder which can be downloaded on the Google Play store and you can easily set it up. It charges a small monthly fee but saves you so much time answering basic and repeated questions from clients.
You can learn more about CRM software here.
Summary
This post has exposed you to some really amazing tools you should have handy to skyrocket your e-commerce business. However when starting an e-commerce business in Nigeria, it’s best to learn from people who have succeeded in the industry as you know, business in Nigeria can be really challenging.
One of the best people to learn more about having a successful e-commerce business in Nigeria is Jonathan Melody, a top E-commerce guru who has made tens of millions selling varying products online. Here is one of his best recommend courses.