10 Tools Ecommerce Marketers Can Try For Free

Hard times tend to bring out the best in people. And the people serving the ecommerce industry are no exception.

To help online stores stay afloat during the COVID-19 lockdown, some ecommerce support businesses are offering their products for free. From a live chat software to an $800 SEO course, these free resources are too valuable to pass up. Take advantage of all 10 while they’re available, and you’ll be in a better position to reach and connect with potential customers.

Optimizing your store for search can feel like solving a riddle. Sure, there are resources on SEO and paid AdWords campaigns, but the rules of Google’s search engine aren’t explicit. Sometimes you might wonder: Am I even targeting the right keywords?

SpyFu points you in the right direction. The keyword research tool shows how organic and paid search terms have ranked for competitors in the past, so you know which phrases are worth targeting. And right now, SpyFu is offering their Premium membership free for two months.

Start using SpyFu by entering a domain address to see that site’s keyword performance for the past 13 years—their paid keywords, organic search terms, number of clicks, and more. Instead of manually entering addresses, users can also create a list of sites that they want SpyFu to track automatically.

To learn more about how SpyFu works, dive into these introductory resources:

Managing your brand’s social media accounts can be an administrative nightmare. If you don’t use a social management platform, you have to log on to each account to create and publish posts. And if you want to pull performance insights, you have to export results from each platform and compile the data yourself.

Minimize the tedious work by using social media management tool Hootsuite. It lets you complete all of these social media tasks for up to 10 social accounts across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube. And right now, Hootsuite is offering its Professional plan for free to small businesses in affected industries until July 1.

To learn more about the tool’s features, check out this free introductory course from Hootsuite Academy.

How do I claim this offer? Follow these instructions to set up an account. If you want instant access, you’ll need to submit your credit card information (though you won’t be billed or required to set up auto-renewal). If you aren’t able to submit credit card information, fill out the application on the page to request access.

Chat boxes in online stores may have been novel a few years ago, but now they’re a driving factor for orders. According to Forrester Research, people are 2.8 times more likely to make a purchase if they use an online store’s chat feature.

But for small businesses, hiring staff to monitor live chat tools 24/7 often isn’t feasible, especially right now. An AI-driven chat platform, Freshchat lets you reach customers across multiple messaging platforms—WhatsApp, Messenger, and more. And for the next six months, the tool will be free for businesses with fewer than 50 employees.

Use Freshchat to set up chatbots that automatically collect necessary information from shoppers who are online when you’re not. Then your team can follow up.

How do the bots know what to say? You design the conversations based on commonly asked questions. The bot can also start a conversation with a shopper based on conditions you set. Say a shopper visits a page about your latest sale. Your bot could be prompted to send the site visitor a chat message to remind them about the promotion.

It all may sound intimidating if you’ve never set up a chatbot before. Don’t worry! Freshchat is designed for all types of users. And to make it easy to get started, they have a free Freshchat Admin Fundamentals course to guide you along the way.

How do I claim this offer? Click “Create Your Account” on this page, and you’ll be directed to a lower section of the page where you can click to start your free six-month trial.

When a shopper reaches your online store, you don’t have much time to make an impression. According to Salesforce, the average shopping visit lasts just four minutes. To keep people engaged, it helps to mimic the personalized experience of a brick-and-mortar shop—showing repeat customers items they might like, welcoming new shoppers with a discount, and so on.

Push notifications are a powerful way to create those individualized interactions. Based on store visitors’ actions, you send them messages about ways to improve their shopping experience. Create these messages for your site with the web push notification software Aimtell, which is free for the next six months.

Aimtell lets you set up personalized push notifications based on shopper behavior. Did a site visitor recently view a product in your store? Build a notification to show them a discount code for that item on their next visit. Or, you could set a notification to appear for shoppers with abandoned carts that reminds them of the items they left.

To help you track your push campaigns, Aimtell automatically creates reports on your notifications’ conversion rates. Based on this data, you can evaluate which notifications are resonating with shoppers (and which aren’t) to guide the creation of your next campaign.

If you have any questions while you’re learning, join the Moz Q&A Forum to talk with other learners. You will need Moz Pro to access the forum, but you can always sign up for a free 30-day trial to get temporary access.

And if you want to keep learning about SEO after May 31, check out Moz’ YouTube channel. With years’ worth of whiteboard videos, it’s one of the best free resources for educational SEO content.

How do I claim this offer? Click “Purchase” on any of the course pages and use the promo code “wegotthis.”

Other popular class topics include SEO, storytelling for marketers, and copywriting. Each class typically takes about 1.5 hours to complete.

To retain what you learn in these courses, consider contributing to the “Discussion” section of the class page. There, you can ask the instructor and other students questions or share observations about what you’re learning.

How do I claim this offer? Sign up for two free months by creating an account on this page.

To encourage people to stay at home, the SEO tool Ahrefs announced on Twitter that their five-hour Blogging for Business course would now be free. The tweet received 64 comments (mostly people saying thanks), 521 retweets, and 1.3K likes.

It’s no wonder people got excited: The course is usually $799, and content marketers rave about it.
SEO expert Brian Dean of Backlinko shares positive feedback about Ahref’s Blogging for Business course. [Source]

Ahref’s course teaches many SEO tactics, like Moz’s classes, but it also offers broader content marketing lessons. The class begins with an explanation of why growing a blog is worthwhile for businesses. Later on, students learn how to form content ideas based on keyword research, along with promotion strategies.

To get the most value out of Blogging for Business, you’ll need a keyword research tool. If you’re willing to pay, Ahref’s tool is one of the best on the market (and the course is designed around using it). If you don’t want to pay, you can always apply the course’s lessons to one of these free keyword research tools.

How do I claim this offer? Click “Start” on this page.

For the last six years, the Content Marketing Conference (CMC) has been hosted in Boston in the spring. The 2020 conference was canceled due to COVID-19. However, the event organizers still found a way to give back to their community—by turning CMC 2020 into a free digital experience, as well as making past conference resources available.

After signing up for a CMC Academy account, you’ll have free access to the first day of the conference, April 21. Check out the agenda and register for as many sessions as you want. If you’re not sure whether you can make an event, no worries! Just click the star icon next to the session, and CMC will save the event in your “My Interests” column on the “Agenda” page.

To top it all off, CMC is making several extra resources available: books, podcasts, templates, content plans, and more. The amount of free stuff they’re giving away is ridiculous (in a good way), so be sure to take advantage of the offer by signing up for CMC Academy.

How do I claim this offer? Click “Register Now” on this page, and you’ll be prompted to enter your name, company name, and email address.

If you feel like your store would be a good fit here, we would love for you to submit your business here. And don’t forget to use the directory for your own shopping! The “Food & Beverage” and “Health & Beauty” categories are especially useful right now for stocking up on necessities.

How do I use this resource? Click this link to submit your store to the directory.