If you’re an online business owner, perhaps you see the word ‘eCommerce’ everywhere. And we’d not be surprised given the current overwhelming rise in demand for online shopping – from groceries to apparel. However, there’s so much more to eCommerce than just selling and purchasing. From identifying your customers and their needs, analyzing and aligning these with your products or services, and making the overall experience seamless – it can get messy to handle it all by yourself. That’s when you’d need to have eCommerce Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to automate, manage, and streamline your entire pre-sales, post-sales, and customer experiences. In this blog, we’re talking about some of the efficient, quick, and affordable eCommerce CRMs of this day and age that can lift off your online business in no time.
What to Look for in CRM software?
There can be a few different features of a CRM system that can be evaluated as per the following requirements:
User friendliness
The first thing that you’d require the CRM to have is its ease of usage, the clean user interface, as well as if it offers any tech support/training to learn using the CRM easily.
Functionality and Features
The second most important of the criteria have to be its purpose and features to optimize and manage tasks across all channels.
a. Cross-channel tracking
Does the software come with abilities to spot and monitor customer interaction across various channels throughout the conversion process?
b. Reporting and Analytics
All good CRMs come with an inbuilt analytics and reporting system to help you understand what went right or wrong on the elements involved in your online store.
c. Data Visualization
Having data represented in meaningful, visual formats for easy understanding can be vital to business growth. Inquire if the software provides any such means and if you can edit/work with the different data representations in any way.
d. Study user intention
If your CRM can provide you with data insights that can help you know the intention of your users, it can mean profoundly for your business.
Easy integration
The last thing you’d need to have with a CRM intended for your ease of usability is to get stuck up with integrating it into your online store. Therefore, looking out for these can be helpful.
Value for money
A lot depends on this crucial factor and knowing if the CRM has transparent and flexible pricing.
Here are the 5 best eCommerce CRMs of 2021, that are of great use to business owners across all domains:
- HubSpot
They’re among the best-known CRMs in the market, they provide a vast selection of promising features to business owners for making the most of their customer data and insights. It’s easy to create pipelines across different stages of the customer purchase journey from its available templates, even for beginners. It can be easily integrated across WooCommerce, Magento, Shopify, and other platforms. It also consists of the following features:
- Data storage.
- Email marketing.
- Mobile usage access.
- Task management.
- Live Dashboard with everyday updates and tasks in progress.
Pros:
- For small businesses, the free version of HubSpot comprises multiple features that can be helpful.
- The task feature present in the CRM can help you for quick delegation of tasks if you have a team or members.
- The integrations can also accommodate many business needs.
Cons:
- It has a basic reporting tool that doesn’t take data input from other resources.
- It doesn’t offer a lot of flexibility for larger companies and couldn’t adapt to HubSpot’s CRM processes.
- Exporting data isn’t as easy as other CRMs.
Zoho
They provide a dynamic range of SaaS business solutions, which deals in managing human resources, email collaboration, sales, and marketing. The Zoho CRM is a cloud-based solution that drives multichannel customer relationship management based on its intuitive system. It’s easy to track the progress of every customer activity on your website, as well as easily create and customize new automated campaigns. Among its many features include:
- Phone, email, live chat, social media, and other communication channels.
- Quick integration of applications in-built in the system.
- User-friendly CRM with automation of tasks to save time and costs.
- Migration from spreadsheets to CRMs.
- Access to data in realtime.
- Allows for mobile-usage.
Pros:
- Complete end-to-end customer management and engagement.
- Easy allocation of tasks.
- Time and cost-efficient.
- Putting up operational strategies.
- Advanced functionality features.
- Automation of workflow and operations.
Cons:
- The integrations can be complex, and may require outside help.
- The subscription is based on each user, instead of a group of users.
- Usage of Zoho modules may require a prior understanding of your requirements.
- Scheduling calls can be a tedious task to understand the options of several options.
- Getting support from the Zoho team can cost you time.
- Doesn’t support individual email tracking (be it open and close vs mass campaign).
Sticky.io
Previously known as the Limelight CRM, Sticky.io is among the most preferred fullscale eCommerce CRMs out there. It is best described as a flexible, subscription platform useful for scaling your business. From handling billing features to customer support, the Sticky.io CRM helps you to have more management of your daily consumer records. It’s a direct-to-consumer CRM platform that gets easily integrated into your store. Some of its features include:
- Advanced analytics and reporting.
- Billing and invoicing.
- Data Security.
- eCommerce management.
- Multiple payment methods.
- Email marketing.
- Recurring invoicing.
- Refund management.
Pros:
- Apt for small and medium enterprises, as it helps export a vast itinerary of orders via filters.
- Simple, Clean, and fresh CRM UI and software features.
- Track every customer order and interactions.
- Make use of any funnels be it front end, website, or custom as required.
- Value for money.
- Faster turnaround time for support.
Cons:
- Not self intuitive.
- It May require time to learn the product categories, campaign setup.
- May require developer insights to handle the user interface to make the most of the features.
While CRMs have made it easier for home-grown, fast-scaling, and established brands to understand their needs better, it also gives a never-before-insight into analyzing their customers. For business owners like you looking to develop customer-oriented products and thrive, using CRMs can be tricky at first, even more so if you don’t possess any prior dev experience. Therefore, we’d recommend the following resources to get professionals to make the most of your CRM platforms:
You can also choose to hire freelance eCommerce developers with specific skills and experience across the world. Their reviews and past work details can tell you a lot about their strengths and client experiences. Their services may also come in a dynamic range of prices, varying as per the individual specializations and business needs.
One of the popular freelance marketplace for businesses to outsource their eCommerce requirements, Guru.com consists of numerous developers offering a plethora of brand development solutions. The professionals on the platform are known best for multi-tasking between various projects, and their custom, economical pricing.
They’re a global team of eCommerce CRM experts partnered with Sticky.io to deliver high-end consulting services, and further elevate your campaigns for greater results. Their developers come with years of sticky.io experience to bring quality and excellence into integrating your landing pages, come up with custom sticky.io solutions, and more; dedicated entirely to your business needs in affordable packages.