What Are The Best Tools To Manage Your Ecommerce Store???

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I am planning the Marketing of an apparel ecommerce store project am working on and I need your expert input on the best software and services to use according to each of our requirements and any others that I may have left out or not considered.

Keyword Research

First of all we will need to do research on the best keywords to target for products, categories, brands and the blog.

Example: Market Samurai

Content Planning

Having a store with more than 10000 products and an ever growing blog with many guest posters and bloggers having access; we will need software to manage, plan, assign and execute keyword and content plans with a team comprising of many members both within the company and outsourced to other companies or to freelancers.

Example: I have ever come across this type of software, but we will need to be able to create sitemaps with keywords and content ideas and assign it to individuals, then edit and upload to source within the platform.

Content Management Hybrid

We plan to have various staff creating and unloading content to the internet from the keyword and or content plans. We would need a system to track the activity and backlinks, as well as to review and edit the content before its published or passed on to link builders.

Analytics

We would then need to track all the 1) backlinks created, for rankings, links, social signals (all tiers) etc. 2) All the main product pages, category pages, brand pages etc from the estore. 3) All blog pages and forum pages

Examples: SEOmoz, Magestic SEO, Link-assistance.com products.

Social Media Tools

This could include management and tracking tools. We would have a few people working exclusively on platforms much as FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube and many more. We would need tools to make the jib easier and help increase our reach. It could also be helpful if there was software that could help manage the promotion of each link created making the process easy to follow.

Examples:
Management - Hootsuite, Buzzbundle, Buzzstream

Site specific software:
Instagram - Olapic.com
Pinterest -
FaceBook -
etc

Forum Management

We also plan to have a forum where people can discuss the topics relating to the niche of the store. The software's must not only help moderate the forum, but also track activity and encourage it. Maybe allowing many different user accounts to post on many topics to stimulate discussions.

Blog Management

We will have an editor, that will have to manage the posting calendar, tracking costs for paid blogger's articles, seeking and managing guest posting both onsite and offsite. The blog will be using WordPress so any plug in will also be acceptable.

Advertising management

We will be using PPV traffic, banner ads, solo ads, social media ads like FaceBook and all other forms of paid advertisement that does not include Paid Search. So we will need software to find opportunities, build and track campaigns; and report returns.

Virtual Assistance Monitoring and Management

As we will be working with a team from many different locations we will need to keep time sheets and track the amount of work done. Elance uses WorkView that takes pictures of the screen at random intervals after a freelancer has sign in and began work. We will also need a service like this to ensure our productivity.

Thanks Guys you have saved me hours of research then trial and error.
#ecommerce #manage #software #store #tools
  • Profile picture of the author frettcarla
    An ecommerce store can be managed well enough with the use of a task management tool that will manage the work with all the employees working for the website, a time tracking tool that will manage the time with respect to the exact web operation of the site, a financial tool. All these are plentifully available in the market but as per my recommendation I would recommend to go with basecamp for task management, expensify for accounts management, replicon for time management.
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  • Profile picture of the author muller1981
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    • Profile picture of the author OnlineStoreHelp
      It would also help to know what platforms you are using right now including shopping cart/cms. I assuming this will be a magento site but you could be using a regular CMS. Based on the limited information...

      Magento to run the shopping cart.
      Drupal to run the blog ~ I know I am speaking heresy on Warrior Forum where wordpress is king but for what you want to do, Drupal has more tools to make it happen.
      Trello - Project Management
      Keywords - Long Tail Pro, Market Samurai..
      Hubspot - if you have the budget, might be something to look into
      Ontraport - another suite that a lot of marketers are using. There is another one I found but can't remember it at this time.
      Social Media - Sprout Social, Social oomph
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      • Profile picture of the author Solid Commerce
        Originally Posted by OnlineStoreHelp View Post

        It would also help to know what platforms you are using right now including shopping cart/cms. I assuming this will be a magento site but you could be using a regular CMS. Based on the limited information...

        Magento to run the shopping cart.
        Drupal to run the blog ~ I know I am speaking heresy on Warrior Forum where wordpress is king but for what you want to do, Drupal has more tools to make it happen.
        Trello - Project Management
        Keywords - Long Tail Pro, Market Samurai..
        Hubspot - if you have the budget, might be something to look into
        Ontraport - another suite that a lot of marketers are using. There is another one I found but can't remember it at this time.
        Social Media - Sprout Social, Social oomph
        This reply is absolutely on the right track. I actually think that a good marketing automation software offering can do almost everything that you have on your list.

        HubSpot and Marketo are two of the industry leaders. They're also two of the most expensive.

        Here's a really thorough list of the other main contenders:

        SilverPop
        DeskGod
        ExactTarget
        Eloqua
        Pardot
        Act-On
        CallidusCloud
        LeadLife
        RightOn Interactive

        Hope this helps!
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