E-commerce tools
10 best tools for swedish e-commerce
March 20, 2023
With the rising expectations of modern-day consumers, the online consumption ecosystem becomes increasingly competitive and challenging for new business owners. Based on research, nearly 72% of Swedish consumers resort to e-commerce as their preferred mode of purchasing goods, and with the industry growing by over 4.6% annually, prioritising systems and tools is essential for all businesses to ensure maximum efficiency, effectiveness, and growth.
Initially, the prospect of establishing an online presence on an unfamiliar platform, generating content, promoting it, managing internal communications, overseeing operations, logistics and finance can seem daunting. Which brings us to wonder, how can one simplify all the above processes and build an online empire that is fluid, efficient and current?
It's a valid question that can determine and drive success or failure of any e-commerce business. Before equipping businesses with these tools to automate processes and set systems in motion, it is essential to identify and streamline the general requirements for any e-commerce business so that they are optimally utilised to stimulate overall functionality and unlock maximum potential for the business.
Let’s begin with the foundational blocks, i.e., Setting Up
To start off with, brands need to identify which platform suits the e-commerce business model to build and host products / services. With nearly 32.5% of Swedish customers making their purchase decision based on simple checkout experiences, brands must ensure that the platform enables consumers to have a seamless experience from landing to browsing to checkout and to after sales.
Acquaint yourself with the e-commerce phenomena, Shopify
Shopify is an indispensable tool for any e-commerce business looking to thrive in today's competitive market. With a content management system (CMS) setup to support both small and large operations, Shopify boasts access to a powerful set of inbuilt tools, including a website builder where products/services can be implemented with ease through their storefront customisation and design.
With an 11.8% increase in value of online consumer goods purchased in Sweden, Shopify also supports over 100 payment gateways. In fact, based on research 40.4% consumers in the Swedish market make their purchases through a mobile device and Shopify stores are designed for mobile commerce with a built-in mobile shopping cart that allows customers to easily browse and make purchases using their mobile devices.
The starting plans range from 24$ / month for basic set ups and go all the way up to 299$ / month for slightly advanced ones.
Next in line is, BigCommerce
From inspiring robust features to smart business scaling capabilities, the wide range of features offered by BigCommerce makes it the ultimate solution for businesses looking to scale their operations. Features offered include web hosting and extensive customisation capabilities, SEO analytics tools and inventory management for cross-channel sales through their scalable catalogue.
Prices start at $29.95 per month.
Now, let’s dive into your digital presence i.e., Marketing.
Once the platform has been identified, the goal is to get potential consumers on the website, and ideally stay and shop from. This is where marketing tools comes to your rescue and enable efficient targeting and outreach to relevant audiences. Getting insights on engagement and Click Through Rate (CTR) also gives businesses the power to optimise their marketing strategies. In parallel, these tools analyse and collate marketing spends in a structured manner.
Meet Mailchimp
One of the first few to have arrived and only improved with time, Mailchimp, turns emails into revenue and helps businesses establish their online presence. Email newsletters offer direct access to customers and a dedicated space to share updates, promotions, and other important information.
With 23% of Swedish consumers discovering brands through emails and newsletters, this powerful platform enables businesses to create multichannel campaigns that utilise email, landing pages, and digital ads. Mailchimp seamlessly integrates with Shopify data, including customer, product, and purchase information, to the platform.
Pricing starts at $13 per month for the marketing platform, with plans for websites and commerce starting from only $10.
Welcome social media planning, automation and optimisation with Hootsuite
With 29.7% Swedish consumers discovering brands via Social Media, e-commerce businesses must leverage tools like Hootsuite to ensure consistent visibility across social platforms.
With a 360-degree approach, this tool champions assistance to boost social reach, and provides Insights for brand strategy. Their social listening feature also enables audience tracking, analysis and engagement, which guarantees that businesses have all the right marketing support for marketing across every social channel. With prices starting at $149 per month Hootsuite works as the ultimate social media management tool to streamline content creation and sharing.
Advancing further, let’s talk big data, i.e., Analytics
Data is the biggest asset for any e-commerce platform. Metrics such as Conversion Rate (CVR), Cart Abandonment Rate, Bounce Rate empowers brands with a rich understanding of consumer behaviour on their platforms and allows confident decision-makers to improvise and adapt strategies to cater to the trends and enrich the customer experience eventually aiming to increase CVR and optimise marketing funnel performance.
Say hello to Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a simple and easy-to-use tool that provides real-time data on returning visitors and traffic sources, allowing business owners to track how visitors engage with their products.
In order to make informed decisions about marketing, content, and product strategies, e-commerce business owners need access to advanced analytics to track traffic across multiple stages of the sales funnel. This means analysing where traffic is coming from and how these users convert, recognise drop-off points, and identify the hottest engagement points that visitors interact with for longer periods.
With Google's machine learning capabilities, this tool can help businesses gather accurate data to help make smarter decisions, making it an essential tool for any e-commerce platform that wants to achieve scalable growth and success.
Building a safer, secure checkout i.e., Payment Gateways
With over 98% of Swedish consumers making digital payments in 2022, the ease of payment process determines success factors for an e-commerce business such as cart abandonment rate and CVR.
Enter, Klarna
Over 13.9% Swedish consumers are driven to purchase by instalment free payment options, and it is essentials for modern day e-commerce businesses to present ways to integrate these solutions in their payment gateway to ensure higher conversion rates.
Klarna is an innovative payment platform that offers businesses the opportunity to attract, convert, and retain customers with flexible payment options. Data suggests e-commerce partners with Klarna boast up to a 30% increase in conversion rates and a staggering 45% increase in average order value.
Next up, would be Operations, Logistics And Fulfilment
Research shows that over 65% Swedish consumers are likely to make a purchase when offered free delivery, 29.1% expect next-day delivery and 32% would like the option of easy return policies. This is where tools play a crucial role to secure fluid day-to-day operations and logistics while managing customer requests, expectations and satisfaction come in.
Empower your business with Veeqo
Veeqo offers a comprehensive one-stop-shop for all order fulfilment and inventory management needs, providing real-time tracking updates with order management. It seamlessly integrates with leading platforms like Shopify, allowing businesses to manage orders from all sales channels in one place. In addition to syncing inventory and streamlining operations Veeqo also helps ship orders and process returns.
Veeqo prides itself on its mission to help sellers stay ahead of the game and it offers its services to e-commerce operators for free.
Elevate and go beyond with Zoho Inventory
Integrated well within Shopify, or any other major platform, Zoho Inventory is the ultimate inventory management tool for e-commerce businesses. It provides a complete solution for tracking orders, managing inventory, and monitoring fulfilment giving businesses complete control over their inventory.
The biggest USP of Zoho barring the multiple shipping integrations is the seamless integration with accounting and CRM apps which makes it the only tool e-commerce businesses need to manage financial data.
Pricing starts at free for smaller businesses and goes north of 200$ for larger enterprises.
In comes, your business’s loyalty-determiner, Customer Service
The key aspect to ensure a business is bringing in a high AOV customer, is customer feedback. 34.8% Swedish consumers resort to online reviews and testimonials before making a purchase decision. This is where tools for customer service in collaboration with the operations tools come in handy. It is pivotal for any e-commerce platform to provide equally satisfying after sales service as the sales itself because, more often than not, this key factor determines the Returning Customer Rate and CLTV.
Simplify modern CRM with Zendesk
Zendesk is a powerful platform designed to provide top-notch support for any business looking to provide the best possible support to their customers. Businesses can create streamlined workflows and automate processes to deliver truly personalised and innovative customer experiences.
This customer support platform puts all support tickets in one place, making it easy to embed into any Shopify-powered site, access relevant customer data, and troubleshoot support tickets faster. Prices start at 49$ and go up to 150$.
Foster loyalty using Smile.io
22% Swedish consumers are driven to purchase intent with loyalty points and referral programs. The biggest win for any e-commerce business is when one-time buyers transition into loyal customers. Smile.io is the perfect tool for building and setting up rewards programs like loyalty points, VIP programs, and referral rewards that incentivize existing customers to keep shopping with the business. This tool goes beyond customer retention to ensure customers are engaged and have a stake in growing the business. Plans start at $49 per month.
The modern-day consumer is demanding and for any e-commerce business to thrive, the goal is to streamline processes to reduce Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV).
To summarise, we live, play and work in an era that offers an ocean of tools to businesses, especially for those that ambition to thrive in the digital landscape – with the key segments, touchpoints and tools identified, it is essential for business owners to optimise the use of them in order to stimulate business growth, while catering to the unique nature of their business type…because eventually, when we shape our tools, our tools shape us.
If you want to develop your e-commerce with our HI e-commerce specialist, please, contact us!
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