6 e-commerce tools that no serious store should be without

How you approach the management of your online store can mean the difference in strong sales or the lack thereof. Fortunately, technology has evolved to the point where newer solutions help take the burden off store operators. These following six e-commerce tools may not be ones you have heard of all that often, but can prove to be extremely useful in the long run.

Know what your customers think with Honestly

Your customer is on the front lines, at the very tip of your conversion funnel. So knowing what they think is critical in you making changes that cater to your target demographic and that can often result in profit windfalls. Along the way, a tool called Honestly can help. It lets you ask questions to your customers so you can gain viable, actionable feedback.

In addition to that, Honestly gives you the ability to respond to that feedback. You can send the customer a personalize message, for example, and you can even send special offers or promotional codes to them, which are great ways of earning the business back of a dissatisfied customer.

Self-learning FAQs with OMQ

Most retailers have an FAQ section of their website. But when was the last time that you accessed one of these portals and realized that it was self-learning, evolving and efficient? With OMQ, that's a real possibility. It not only learns as it goes, but it also delivers real-time answers to the customer.

Each time a question is asked and answered, OMQ stores that answer in its database. It uses the information that it gathers to create answers to new questions that customers may have. While it's certainly not a replacement for a human, by any means, it's a great way to appeal to your customers by using technology to reduce human resource costs.

Provide hands-on support with Firefly

For support providers, one of the most difficult uphill battles that they face is the challenge of trying to describe a troubleshooting scenario as opposed to controlling it. But with Firefly, that all changes. Whether your customer is struggling to find a product they want to buy, or even if they have a software support issue, you can take over their screen in real-time and provide the solution.

Think of Firefly like an integrated screen-sharing plugin that can do wonders for customer service. It's a real conversion funnel feeder that gives your online business the potential to preserve the sale before its lost by offering the best customer service and support.

Become a social media overlord with Justuno

Social commerce and social media referrals represent a large part of the annual e-commerce haul in the U.S. But lots of online retailers struggle to manage their social channels, and some lack presence altogether. With a solution like Justuno, you can set your social campaigns to auto-pilot.

This unique tool allows you to target certain customers based upon their shopping habits, personal preferences and behavior. It helps you run all your social campaigns, and delivers robust analytics that track your return on investment for social ad spending, too.

Integrated e-commerce CRM with ReadyCloud

A relatively newer tool, ReadyCloud is a CRM software solution that's made just for e-commerce that offers a lot of functionality. After setting it up, you can add all of the sales channels that you are currently using (Shopify, Squarespace, PrestaShop, etc.). Next, ReadyCloud instantly imports all of your order data, giving you the ability to create detailed customer profiles with notes, with the ability to track the entire lifecycle of the customer and their orders.

This software also features a nifty calendar feature that's color-coded, and also has shipping software and returns software integrations, too. Lastly, the analytics deliver seasonal trends, return reasons and more, so you can make improvements that result in a better return on investment.

Manage subscriptions with Think Subscription

Reoccurring orders are a large revenue maker for lots of online businesses. But managing them can quickly turn into a logistics. Think Subscription helps alleviate these concerns, and provide a robust subscription management platform that can manage both digital and physical subscriptions.

Using this tool, you can easily manage all forms of subscriptions, including product bundling. With handy features like renewal and recapture, you have the opportunity to go after lost sales, too. It's a great tool to have handy if your goal is to convert customers to revenue-generating subscription models, which have become increasingly popular in recent years.