Dashboard Archives

Ecommerce merchants have been absolutely spoiled for choice since Canadian shop-builder Shopify began revolutionizing independent online sales. Their “shop in a can” approach for the not-so-tech-savvy seller has proved remarkably successful, but the amount of help can be almost overwhelming. The gargantuan Shopify app catalogue can sometimes feel like asking for a coffee and being offered 400 choices differing mostly in shades of brown.

At the end of the day however, Shopify is a community of sellers and experts who know the difference a shade of grey can make to the success of an online shop. How intrusive is an app to the flow of your platform? How much added friction is too much before you lose a buyer with all your bells and whistles? Are you trading cash for flash?

As we launch eRated on Shopify, we wanted to offer our two cents on five cool apps that offer support in five key areas every Shopify shop-owner needs to be conscious of: Shipping, SEO, CRM, social media and marketing. Many shop-owners don’t have 24/7 availability, but these apps make it look as though you never sleep.

For Shipping, get heavy using Shippo

They’re integrated with eighteen different carriers from FedEx in North America to Parcelforce in Europe, which is a phenomenal selection menu ensuring you get the best price every time you ship. Whilst being integrated with Canada Post, they don’t appear to offer through Royal Mail just yet - which we’re sure must be keeping Her Majesty up at night. With one click you can also sort your labels. At the lower end you can pay as you ship and for high volume shops they offer rev-share opportunities.

Get on Top with SEO Meta Manager

Most potential buyers are not searching for your shop on Shopify, they probably don’t even know what Shopify is. Odds are their first stop (and last stop) is Google, which is why search engine optimization is so important - get on the top of search results and you’re already halfway there to getting a sale. SEO Meta Manager has almost 400 Shopify reviews and is operating in over 4000 shops. They are cheap (only $50 one-time fee) and they work, tailoring your product labels and descriptions to generate more visitors (and more sales) to your shop.

Get to know your buyers with Nimble

Competitively priced at $15.00 per month, Nimble is one of the most trusted CRM tools available on Shopify. Nurturing customers is even more important online than it is for brick and mortar store as shoppers are fickle with so many options available. With an easy to use platform, Nimble lets you source new customers through social media, compiles calendars, email conversations and social signals ideal for SMEs.

Let Fiverr Fire up your Photos

You can take the time to learn photoshop and its many incarnations, or you can post your photos to Fiverr and let the creatives do the rest. Our friends at Fiverr are one of the world’s favourite freelancer hubs and for just a few dollars you can amp up your photos in your Shopify store with a little help from your Fiverr friends. Many shop-owners will list sharp, crisp product photos as literally the most important feature of their platform and what generates conversions more than anything else. Particularly for early shop-owners juggling so many new products, outsourcing to Fiverr freelancers is a great way to get ahead.

Social in one Place thanks to Sumall

This New York-based company is making a splash in ecommerce for independent shops and SMEs. Sumall manages data, especially social data, all in one place. Along with their sleek dashboard, they also provide excellent weekly metrics and analytics reports so you can stop fumbling around in the dark. They find out what email subject lines convert best, timing, hashtag performance, ideal post length and help you find the places with the most interested readers (and turn them into customers).

eRated is launching in Shopify and we’re offering 20% discounts and free trials for helping us to spread the word!

Is juggling a skill or a pastime? For freelancers, SMEs, and boutique online sellers, it often ends up being more the former than the latter. Why is that? Because most of us are the CEO, CFO, COO, and the guy that cleans the washroom – all rolled up into one. Most of us won’t end up having a boardroom behind us – it will likely end up being a handful of staff (at best), a supportive network, friends, and probably your kids fixing the tech problems. And that’s just fine.

However, where can we get help to keep all the balls in the air? That’s why new, multi-platform maps offer incredible value to today’s independent entrepreneurs. We may not be able to afford staff, let alone high-priced researchers, but we can set aside enough to get the support we need to gain insights, gather trends, and get more out of what we put into our online strategy.

Whether you call them dashboards, multi-channel maps, or just a bird’s-eye-view to your operations, there are many ways you can streamline your operations through using a multi-platform data aggregator providing insights, trends, and a more comprehensive understanding of your business flow. So what’s out there?

Blogging Metrics: What are your most popular posts? Do people prefer your top ten lists or your morning rants? Where does your traffic come from and who’s sharing your material. Having a better idea of your blog trends will allow you to target your message to your most receptive audience and focus your attention on the most responsive channels. Cultivate a relationship with your biggest fans and get them working for you!

Social Media: This is the most obvious and probably the most necessary one. Unlike other distribution channels, you simply can’t afford to only exist in one social media world. Having a perspective on the universe of social media channels is essential to cross-pollinating through your own channels and through other’s. Are people clicking through to your site? Are you building the right type of audience in the right places? Is your content interesting to more than just you?

Ecommerce: The days of eBay and Amazon being the only ecommerce platforms sellers are operating in are long over. There are now over 1000 marketplaces with over 100 million sellers operating within them – and 90% are selling across platforms. Get an ecommerce platform to track your sales through all verticals; find out which platform is best suited to your products; keep track of and manage your reputation to increase sales; and compare yourself against other sellers.

SEO: You don’t need to be a crafty wordsmith to get more people to view your content or make purchases, but you do need to know what people are looking for, how they’re searching, and what trends you can feed into to advance your landing page in search engines. Speaking of landing pages, is your blog where people find you, or is it through a partner’s site? An SEO dashboard can provide a real-time solution to let you keep track.

Email Insights: Do you know which subject lines are most successful for you? Are you sending from the right username? How often are you ending up in trash and non-primary inboxes? If you don’t know the answer to these questions, you probably need a dashboard to manage the content going to your lists.

Most of struggle with two balls in the air, so why are we trying to keep dozens going at one time? SumAll and eRated are just two solutions available to help freelancers, SMEs, and online sellers keep track of their performance and get the most out of online efforts.

Read more: http://blog.sumall.com/journal/universe-performance-dashboards-let-us-juggling.html#ixzz3ZY8b7f2m