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Best Small Business Software & eCommerce Tools for 2024

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Petra Nna .Jan 27, 2024

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It’s 2024!

You may wonder why I am starting this article by stating the obvious. You should think about it for a minute, and wonder why you’re still doing some tasks by yourself, or hiring staff to handle some processes when there are a million and one tools you could use to automate the process. It’s 2024, and if you’re running a small business online or offline, tech and software are the way to go!

Besides, using the right software and tools means something even more important: you get enough time to focus on your business, products and customers!

The Importance of Small Business Software and eCommerce Tools

While there are many tips for starting the year as a business owner, getting the right software for your small business puts you in an easier position. Let’s look at why you need the best small business software and e-commerce tools for your business in 2024.

  1. Your business and processes run more smoothly: You need to be able to manage your orders online and offline more effectively and manage inventory and stock better so that you don’t have to sit, count and update every single day, and you don’t have to sit down every day with a pen and paper just because you want to balance the books.

  2. Growing your business is easier: Keeping up with customer demand is so much easier when you have a host of tools that automate the tiny (annoying) processes that would typically take your time. Plus, it’s so much easier to keep track of every detail, see where there are growth opportunities, and where you may even need to cut costs and invest funds into other parts of your business. That’s how you grow!

  3. You’ll stand out against the competition: Every customer wants a seamless experience when they place an order, whether it’s on social media, your website, or even in your store. Using the right tools will make sure they get this experience, and you don’t even need to be there to hold their hand.

In an interview with the CEO of the popular Nigerian shoe brand, Shoepify, the importance of using the right tools for marketing, data, communications and operations was talked about and she told us the results - more customers have found it easier to use the website to shop, thereby reducing the stress of ordering and making order processing faster. That’s the magic of using the right software for your business!

Read the interview here: 7 Years of Business Brilliance: An Exclusive Interview with Savvy CEO of Shoepify, Wunmi Kolawole

Small Business Software & Tools Your Business Needs in 2024

Let’s dive right into the tools you’ll need, and the part of your business they’ll fit perfectly for!

1. E-commerce Website/Storefront

Whether you’re just starting your business or have been in the thick of things for a while now, you need a storefront or website for whatever you’re selling, because customers want to visit your website and shop from it in 2024! But then, you don’t want to sit down and build a business website for your small business when there are tools that you can use to create one in minutes, right? I mean, this is 2024!

So, let’s check out this software.

Small Business Software: Bumpa

Bumpa storefront ecommerce website

Bumpa is an all-in-one business tool with a suite of features that cater to businesses that are starting, rising or fully established. But let’s focus for now, on the website/storefront feature.

With Bumpa, you can create a fully functional website in minutes, upload your products, and start selling. It comes fully equipped with an inventory management system that lets you upload products in different sizes, variations and colors, a functional cart system that lets your customers add multiple products and pay, right on the website, and a CRM system that automatically stores your customers’ information when they fill in their details during checkout.

You can set up a whole online store, in minutes. Even better? You can manage your store on your phone or laptop from anywhere!

Check out the Bumpa app here.

2. Content Creation

What’s the internet these days without great content, right? No one is spared; even small businesses must create relevant, exciting, informational and interesting content to bring customers to their stores and increase brand visibility. Ideating your content is already hard enough, so how about the right tools to make the creation process more seamless, and the final product perfect?

Up next, are the software you’ll need!

Small Business Software (For Images): Canva

canva

Canva is a user-friendly design platform that allows you to create professional-quality images, gifs and even videos. This is a perfect tool for editing and designing product images for your website, social media pages and emails. Gifs? Videos? It’s got you covered.

Canva has a lot of templates which means you don’t have to think of a design from scratch, which saves you time. You can also save your designs and reuse them anytime you want, and this saves you time as you don’t have to start from scratch.

Small Business Software (For Videos): Capcut

capcut

You know those short, interesting videos you constantly see on Instagram reels and TikTok? Those are mostly created by using Capcut!

Capcut is a powerful video editing app that you can use to easily create professional-looking videos. It has editing tools, effects, filters and music that can help you create content to showcase your products, create tutorials and creatively engage your audience.

Related: The 5 Best Video Editing Apps for Small Businesses

3. Inventory Management

You don’t want a situation where your customer pays for an item only for you to have to go back to them to say the item is out of stock, right? That’s the kind of thing that could chase a customer away. An inventory management software is compulsory for 2024!

Small Business Software: Bumpa

Bumpa inventory management dashboard

The inventory management feature on the Bumpa app makes inventory tracking a breeze! Besides being able to add variations and more, you can also see a detailed history of every single product including when it was added, how many have been sold and get notifications when you’re running low on stock!

4. Order Management

Order processing and fulfilment is one of the most important parts of running a business - it involves your customers getting the right order at the right time. This crucial process can make or mar your business, so of course, you’ll need the best software in the game!

Small Business Software: Bumpa

Bumpa order management software

With the Bumpa app, processing, tracking and shipping orders is a seamless flow. The app consolidates all your orders from multiple sales channels - Social media, online selling platforms, Instant messaging platforms, physical store or website. You can also track the status of every order and update it from processing to fulfilled, delivered, etc. Bumpa also caters to helping your customers track their orders by sending them status updates via email at every stage of their order fulfilment process.

Another cool thing with the order management feature on the Bumpa app is that you can share payment links with your customers, generate invoices and receipts for every order and payment, and lastly, recording orders helps you get robust data insights and analytics on sales, products and even customers.

5. Marketing

What’s a business without customers? This is why marketing is so important! Beyond social media marketing, influencer marketing and all the other marketing hacks for getting more customers, content and retention play a great role in your success because you want to also get these customers you’re bringing in to keep coming back!

Small Business Software: Buffer

Buffer

Time management and consistency are two important things you need as a business owner and when it comes to social media posts, Buffer is the perfect tool. With Buffer, you can schedule your posts ahead of time for days and even weeks, giving you more time to focus on other parts of your business while still posting consistently on social media.

Buffer also provides you with analytics like post impressions, reach, users, comments and even your engagement rate via a detailed analytics dashboard.

Small Business Software: Bumpa

Bumpa email and sms campaign feature

Retention is important in any business; it’s cheaper to keep your customers coming back than to keep acquiring new ones. And what’s a great way to retain customers? You got the answer right: email and SMS marketing!

The Bumpa app has an inbuilt campaigns feature that lets you send emails and SMS directly from the app to your customers. You can create a campaign for segmented customers, share information on new products, and offers or even just say hi. It’s email marketing and SMS marketing made simpler!

Related: Top 5 Hacks for Selling on X (Formerly Twitter) in 2024!

6. Communications

With your staff, staff management is key. Being in sync with your staff ensures a smooth flow of operations, making sure that your business functions the way it should, and that your customers get the best experience. To achieve this, communication needs to be seamless.

Small Business Software: WhatsApp

Whatsapp for small businesses

WhatsApp lets you create groups, and because everyone uses the app, it’s easier to communicate faster with your staff there. You can easily create a staff group in a few seconds, add staff members, and be ready to roll. If you’d like to segment staff based on their departments or tasks, you can create multiple groups and add them all to a community, to keep everything organised. The best part is it’s all free!

7. Analytics

Running a business has evolved beyond just flying blind; using data to run your business is super important! Business analytics helps your business grow by helping you understand important information about your business, which in turn helps you make more informed decisions for your business, and invest in your business the right way.

Small Business Software: Bumpa

Bumpa small business data analytics feature

Bumpa provides you with a robust dashboard that covers data from products and sales, to customers and campaign performance. At a glance, you can see vital information like how many products you’ve sold in a period, your best sales channels, your highest purchased products, average spend per customer, shipping spend, discounts given, new and returning customers and so much more!

Small Business Software: Google Analytics

google analytics for small businesses

Google Analytics is a perfect tool for website analytics; you can see how customers engage with your website from the pages they’re visiting the most, to where they’re dropping off. This can also help you create retention campaigns to bring them back.

Conclusion

Using the right small business software can make a whole world of change to your business, especially in the parts of operations, processes and user experience for your customers. So make sure to take a look at this list, and get the software that matters to you the most.

Cheers to running your business in easier ways this year!


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