The driving force that sets the expansion of e-commerce in motion is the consumers’ spending habits online, which was brought about primarily by the coronavirus pandemic in today’s time. Indeed, the pandemic has shut down the traditional businesses’ operations, which shifted the customers’ attention away from physical stores and towards digital shopping. People are now more comfortable buying essentials virtually, including getting food through food deliveries. As a result, there is a drastic decline in profit for department stores and a rapid increase in e-commerce. On the other hand, the pandemic has opened new opportunities, better tools and platforms to market services professionally, and excellent customer service for e-commerce businesses.
Here are six of the best free e-commerce tools that can level up your store and increase your sales without spending a dime:
Google Trends
Over three billion searches are done on Google every day, and that is equivalent to 40,000 searches per second, making Google an essential digital tool that has become a big part of our lives. The data collected by Google through search query information that identifies the trends allows users to access user data for marketing and research purposes.
Google Trends helps users curate ideas from the collective searches that people make in Google Search, Google Shopping, YouTube, and Google News. It can also be the benchmark to review the success of a company’s SEO strategy. Aside from the fact that it allows users to know popular topics and queries, it can also enable users to understand how short or weak a specific search term is in a certain period. Google can do this by providing a trend graph of the topic, giving users accurate results to study.
SEMRush
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a process that an e-commerce business can use to improve its ranking in an online search. To put it simply, SEO dictates where a website falls in search results when someone searches for a product. As your page rank peaks, your accessibility widens along with it, which means people can find you with just a few clicks. A high rank in an online search implies a rise in brand awareness and increased website traffic.
SEO can be a lengthy and laborious process, and an e-commerce business owner needs to understand how it works to use it primarily as a marketing strategy. SEMRush is one of the many platforms that can help you with how you can fine-tune your SEO. Through SEMRush, you can identify the trends that occur within your niche. This platform guarantees that you can improve and optimize your e-commerce website better.
Canva
If your e-commerce website looks great visually, it will be easier to invite potential customers to buy from you and your shop. Graphic design plays a vital role in an e-commerce marketing strategy. Canva is the perfect graphic design platform that you can use for free, which offers tons of templates, from creating logos to social media posts and even video presentations. E-commerce businesses prefer Canva because of the features that can make your website look professional and appealing. And above everything else, it’s free and user friendly, so you don’t have to worry if you’re not a design expert.
Mobile-Friendly Test
Building a mobile-friendly online store is crucial, knowing that more than half of e-commerce sales will be coming from mobile devices in the year 2021. Mobile-Friendly Test by Google is one tool you can use for mobile optimization. Just enter your URL and then click “test URL.” It will analyze your website whether or not its mobile-friendly.
QR Code Generator
E-commerce owners use QR codes for multiple reasons, which includes promotional items. This code is incorporated to directly link customers to the online store or give coupon codes to entice shoppers to buy online. It can also be used to track product IDs and inventory. QR codes create a magnetic pull to your e-commerce brand, making it more credible and reliable.
PageSpeed Insights
Aside from having an excellent quality of either a brand or a service, one factor that influences excellent customer experience is site speed. E-commerce shoppers have very little patience for a weak e-commerce site. Waiting for pages to load is what customers dislike most about browsing the internet using mobile phones. PageSpeed Insights from Google is one of the best and free e-commerce tools for testing site speed and identifying areas that require improvement.
PageSpeed Insights provides a score ranging from 0–100, the number which indicates how fast the site is for both desktop and mobile. The hierarchy of speed is as follows: 0-49 is considered inferior, 50–89 is fair, and 90–100 is considered outstanding. Speed is vital in an e-commerce business, and PageSpeed Insights is a very recommended tool that could help iron out and fix disruptive glitches that ruin customer shopping experience.
There is no question about the potential of e-commerce in the market scenario today. Together with technology and innovation, purchasing, and customer service for e-commerce business has improved dramatically. This is why choosing tools to market your brand is a critical decision to make. Whether you are trying to have your website load faster, create professional designs, or improve SEO, the right tools and resources are readily available to optimize e-commerce sites. Using e-commerce tools develops your brand and ensure an excellent customer experience.
