The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

DAM E-commerce Digitalisation

8 Essential tools for e-commerce in 2021

Acquia DAM (Widen)

|

Open Mic article

This content is produced by a publishing partner of Open Mic.

Open Mic is the self-publishing platform for the marketing industry, allowing members to publish news, opinion and insights on thedrum.com.

Find out more

June 15, 2023 | 7 min read

Retail sales continue to shift from the high street to online stores, with 36

Retail sales continue to shift from the high street to online stores, with 36.1% of retail sales in Great Britain occurring online in February 2021. With this shift, one of the biggest challenges online retailers now face is how to make up for a direct physical experience with a product.

Enhancing the online customer experience takes more than quality digital content and accurate product data on a website. To capitalise on this growth, you’ll need an integrated stack of e-commerce solutions to help present an engaging, ideal experience across every in-person and digital channel.

These eight essential e-commerce tools — from inventory management to email marketing software — will help you provide an omnichannel customer experience that converts in 2021.

1. E-commerce website platform

Ideally, your website platform makes it easy for you to build and design webpages — from your homepage to your product detail pages. On top of that, it’s beneficial to choose a tool that gives you simple and customisable publishing capabilities for all of your content and promotions.

Whether you’re starting your first online shop on Shopify or managing an enterprise scale site with a platform like Magento Commerce, you’ll benefit from an e-commerce website building tool. Website platforms like Wordpress can also work for e-commerce, but you’ll save time and money by starting with a platform designed specifically for selling products online.

2. Digital asset management software

Your ability to sell products through your website depends heavily on quality digital content — from product images and videos to logos and other brand assets. Digital asset management (DAM) software gives you a central repository to store, manage, and publish all of your content.

Solutions like Acquia DAM (Widen) make all of your digital content easily accessible for internal and external customers. With a DAM platform, your teams can easily find content by keyword, convert file formats, and publish to multiple channels and stores. You can also quickly share digital assets with agencies, distributors, retailers, and other collaborators.

3. Product information management software

Product information — like product attributes and marketing copy — deserve a central source of truth. With product information management (PIM) software, you can manage the whole product information lifecycle in one place. Make sure to integrate your DAM and PIM solutions to streamline your e-commerce operations by helping you get your products online faster.

Salsify and Akeneo are two reliable PIM tools. And Acquia's PIM solution is designed to work in tandem with our enterprise DAM solution to help you prepare accurate, compelling product listings for global e-commerce channels.

4. Email marketing tool

No matter the size of your audience, you’ll need an email marketing tool that provides email automation, advanced segmentation, and priority support. Look for existing integrations with your other e-commerce tools so that you don’t have to use developer resources to build them.

Mailchimp is a reliable favourite with a robust spectrum of features — including a customer journey builder. HubSpot and ActiveCampaign give you proven options for any scale and a wide range of integration possibilities with the rest of your e-commerce stack.

5. Project management tool

Managing projects in spreadsheets only work on a small scale, and it’s messy. You’re going to need to use a project management tool to set up custom workflows, visualise tasks, and track progress against company roadmaps and objectives.

JIRA, ServiceNow, and Asana all offer enterprise project management options. Once you make sure a tool meets your main requirements, don’t spend too much time worrying over all the little details. Getting your teams to adopt a project management tool and use it regularly is the secret to whether or not it works.

6. Inventory tracking tools

It can be a challenge to grow your sales volume and manage your inventory levels at the same time. Inventory management software can help and there are two common types: an all-in-one enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform or a dedicated inventory and warehouse management system.

Oracle ERP Cloud, Microsoft Dynamics, and SAP Business One are all trusted ERPs.

7. Customer service tools

If you’re going to sell products online you need a solid customer service tool. Look for a solution that provides a knowledge base for FAQs and gives you the ability to respond via text, mobile, phone, email, live chat, and social media.

Zendesk delivers a customer service solution for every step of the journey and is used by Uber and Shopify. You can even integrate Zendesk with Facebook Messenger. Hubspot Service Hub and Salesforce Service Cloud are two other reliable and powerful customer service tools.

8. Rewards and referral program for e-commerce

You can build customer loyalty with rewards or a referral program. Think Amazon Prime, but on a scale that makes sense for your business. You may not be able to offer streaming video, but could you offer a quicker shipping method for a monthly membership fee?

If you want to build customer loyalty with consistent offers or membership programs, choose a rewards-focused tool to make it happen. Jumper.ai, Dealyze, and Open Loyalty all offer ways to create an omnichannel loyalty experience for your customers.

Integrate your e-commerce tools to optimise sales

When you’re choosing e-commerce software, make sure to start by getting clear on your requirements. Then map all of your tools and see where their capabilities intersect. With those integration points identified, you’ll be able to make smarter choices and prioritise tools that work together as a stack.

The more integrated your technology stack, the more powerful each of your individual tools becomes. One of the most important integrations in e-commerce is bringing your product content and product information together.

Get in touch and see how Acquia's combined DAM and PIM solution can support your e-commerce efforts and help you get your products online for sale faster.

By Nate Holmes, product marketing manager, Acquia

DAM E-commerce Digitalisation

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +