When we crowned the Brightpearl Lightning 50 – an ultimate lineup of the UK’s fastest-growing e-commerce brands – we asked them: what are the tech tools you’d say were indispensable in fuelling your astonishing growth?
Read on to discover their answers in our exclusive list: the Top 10 Tech Tools for Epic E-Commerce Growth.
(While we’re on the topic – we’re now taking entries for this year’s Lightning 50! Scroll through to the end to find out how to apply…)
- Shopify and Shopify Plus
Lauded for its thorough insights and industry-leading connectivity, Shopify is a subscription-based commerce platform that lets you start, grow and manage a business, providing everything you could need to make it a success. Shopify Plus is the next step, for medium to large enterprises reaching high levels of growth.
- Facebook and Instagram
These massive household names have vast potential beyond mere social posting, and are now considered invaluable tools for business. Many L50 brands said they use Facebook and Instagram for marketing, customer support and generating traffic through paid ads, as well as using Instagram’s recent capacity as a lucrative extra sales channel.
- Brightpearl
Top brands know that the bigger your business gets, the more crucial it becomes that your operations are built on an infrastructure that grows as you do. Brightpearl’s flexible, hyper scalable and future-proofed retail operating system is purpose-built for retail businesses, offering easy Plug & Play integrations, a powerful Automation Engine and a second-to-none Inventory Planner – all with a speedy, expert-led implementation that has a 97% success rate.
- Google Ads, Analytics & Workspace
With over 70% of the search market share and capturing almost 85% of mobile traffic, Google is undoubtedly the most popular search engine — but Google does much more than simply help brands get found online. Google Ads, Analytics and Workspace (which includes Docs, Calendar, Gmail and Chat) were also listed as essential tech for top retail brands.
- Inventory Planner Premium
Having the means to accurately forecast sales is key to boosting your bottom line. Inventory Planner Premium (Brightpearl’s Inventory Planner) helps retailers to make well-informed sales predictions, as well as create purchase orders, optimize stock for multiple warehouses and customize reports for better business intelligence.
- Marketplaces (including Amazon, Etsy and eBay)
E-commerce retailers will be well versed in these leading online marketplaces, where all products on offer are linked to a range of different sellers. Amazon is the giant of marketplaces, alongside eBay – while for brands that sell distinctive, independent products, Etsy was named a popular option.
- Collaboration tools (including Slack and Trello)
Most of our Lightning 50 brands cited their exceptional staff as central to their success, so it makes sense that collaborative workplace platforms were named as indispensable tech tools. Slack was hailed as the team communication tool of choice, as well as Trello, which organizes work projects into collaborative, interactive boards.
- Trustpilot
Leading customer review platform and sponsor of the Lightning 50, Trustpilot has acres of potential when it comes to fuelling business growth. The tool gives brands the means to promote their best feedback, engage with customers and analyze their reviews in order to improve.
- Pimberly
Pimberly is a leading Product Information Management (PIM) system that helps brands collect, enrich and store product data in a single location – an invaluable asset for brands that are rapidly expanding their product range.
10. Klaviyo
Email marketing is a great method for accurately targeting customers – and the most popular tool for this as named by the Lightning 50 was Klaviyo. Klaviyo offers SMS and email marketing automation software along with reporting, visualization and analysis.
