Online shopping has been growing for the last several years, but with the drastic changes to daily life and new regulations on in-store shopping in 2020, ecommerce has accelerated even more. Using the right ecommerce tools is key for running an effective online store. During the last several months, we’ve seen that brands with solid ecommerce capabilities were able to pivot more easily than businesses that relied heavily on in-person shopping. Ecommerce is going to continue to gain popularity as more customers appreciate the convenience of online shopping, so it’s more important than ever to have a strong online store that provides the best user experience possible for your customers. Whether you’re starting from scratch, optimizing an outdated ecommerce store, scaling your existing offering, or driving growth, the right ecommerce tools can make a huge difference. Using these top ecommerce tools in 2020, you can provide social proof for online shoppers to encourage purchases, generate and recover more revenue, and create a better online shopping experience for all your customers.

Ecommerce Website Management

Online shopping has become so popular in large part because it’s more convenient for many people than shopping in-store. Now, it can be the only option for shopping. A well set up ecommerce website makes it so that customers can quickly discover and buy just what they need. But, if your ecommerce site is confusing, outdated, or hard to use, you’re not only frustrating potential customers, you’re losing revenue. Creating a fully optimized, user-friendly online store is key to driving conversions. When it comes to creating a high-quality online shopping experience, there are many different ecommerce tools in the marketplace. But, not all of them can provide you with an all-in-one ecommerce solution for shopping cart software and creating websites with custom branding. Shopify can. Shopify makes it simple to build and run your ecommerce site, with an easy-to-use platform that guides you through everything from design to SEO. The platform also supports a wide variety of ecommerce functions like third-party marketplaces, selling on social media, and even in-person sales with their own point of sale (POS) software. If you don’t have an ecommerce website or your current solution is not user-friendly, Shopify can help you get full control over your website so you can create a better online shopping experience for your customers, regardless of the size of your business. Shopify has been rapidly onboarding new merchants to help them stay in business by selling online.

Shoppable Instagram

Social media is a great tool for connecting and engaging with customers, but until recently, it wasn’t always easy to drive conversions on even the most popular social platforms. As technology has improved, converting social media profiles into shoppable experiences has become a reality. Now, it’s easier than ever to create a streamlined process for customers to move from discovering your brand or product on Instagram for the first time to making a purchase. Shoppable Instagram is a powerful tool that helps brands convert followers into customers. With shoppable images on your feed, you can connect the products in your Instagram posts to your ecommerce store so app users can shop without ever exiting the platform. Adding a direct link to your profile helps customers move from inspiration on the platform to explore your full site and product catalog. Make your brand’s Instagram page actionable by giving your followers an easy way to discover and shop the products they love!

Customer Generated Ratings & Reviews

When shopping online, social proof is more important than ever. Since customers can’t see or touch the products themselves, they may need some additional information and encouragement before they make a purchase. Customer reviews are a form of user-generated content and a powerful source of social proof for ecommerce efforts. With the right ecommerce tools, you can generate authentic customer reviews from past customers to add great user-generated content to the products on your site. With the help of TurnTo and Pixlee, Tarte Cosmetics captures customers' attention and loyalty by displaying a hybrid of photo, video, text, and star reviews on product pages to give the customer everything they need to go forward with an online purchase. A platform like TurnTo can help you collect and curate reviews from your customers so you can boost conversions, drive more traffic to your site, and more. You can collect more product ratings and reviews with personalized emails, moderate reviews as you receive them, and easily track performance with customizable reporting. TurnTo makes it easy to get both text and visual reviews from customers, streamlining the collection of user-generated content that you can feature on product pages. With a suite of ecommerce review tools, you can capture authentic feedback from customers to provide a better shopping experience for everyone.

Shopping Cart Abandonment Emails

Email marketing continues to be an awesome ecommerce tool for marketers. It’s 40 times more effective at acquiring customers than both Facebook and Twitter combined. There’s also a huge revenue opportunity for brands in the form of an abandoned cart — where approximately $4 trillion worth of merchandise is sitting. While some shoppers may abandon their carts because they’re surprised by shipping costs or because of a bad mobile shopping experience, the majority of online shoppers leave items in their cart because they’re not ready to buy or were just browsing. With automated emails for abandoned carts, brands can reclaim the revenue that’s sitting in customers’ carts. Abandoned cart emails give you a chance to educate customers and inspire them to make a purchase with personalized content, customer testimonials, and more. With an ecommerce tool like Pixlee, you can connect your online store to trigger abandoned cart emails and recover more revenue. You can also combine your collection of UGC with your automated emails. Adding user-generated content to abandoned cart emails can lead to 6x higher transaction rates. With more customers turning to online shopping, a fully functional and streamlined ecommerce experience is key to healthy online sales. If you have the right ecommerce tools, you can create high-quality ecommerce stores featuring your product catalog and authentic product reviews from customers. Turn your social media into a sales engine with shoppable Instagram, so followers can discover new products and shop without ever leaving the app. Don’t miss out on potential revenue by ignoring abandoned carts. Instead, help customers make a decision with personalized cart abandonment emails that answer their questions and provide inspiration from user-generated content. With Pixlee and partners Shopify and TurnTo, you can get access to these ecommerce tools and many more. Reach your ecommerce goals and drive more revenue with the top ecommerce tools in 2020.