Recommended Tools & Providers
The following are tools and providers that we use or have vetted personally. They are tried and tested and work for our business. Please do your own due diligence to see if they are a good fit for your business 🙂Â
Website Platforms
If you’re looking to set up an eCommerce store we highly recommend Shopify to all our clients and course participants. It’s the platform we use for our own eCommerce stores.Â
We love it as it’s easy to use and manage your own products and inventory. You can also use it for your brick & mortar store and adjust stock in real time as you sell it either in-store or online.Â
We use WordPress when we’re not building an eCommerce site. For instance, this website is built on WordPress. You can build an eCommerce store using WordPress by using WooCommerce to run the eCommerce side. The learning curve for WordPress is a bit longer, however, the upside is it can be easier to customise things with WordPress (if you know what you’re doing or have a good developer). If you do go down the WordPress road we can highly recommend the Divi theme – it allows you to build the pages on the front end with a simple drag and drop builder (it’s how we built this!)
Domains
GoDaddy is the world’s largest domain registrar. We use them to register our domain names which we then host on either Shopify or WPengine (depending on if it’s eCommerce or not).
It is always a good idea to have your domain and your website hosted by 2 different companies – so you don’t have all your eggs in one basket. GoDaddy don’t charge to point your domain to Shopify which is a great bonus!
Use code GDD99com to get a .com domain for just $5
Photography
When I met Jade from @smallbusinessgrowthclub it was love at first sight! I loved her photos and how she can capture a brand’s essence and help them put their best foot forward online. That’s why I just had to get her for you!
Together with Jade we’ve put together some packages to help you bring your brand to life online.
Jade offers everything you need for seasonal social media content and creative video ads that will have your audience stop scrolling and pay attention.
Branding & Imagery
Creative market is like a digital candy store for entrepreneurs. It is full of amazing things like photos, fonts, graphics, templates, icons and event website themes all designed by other clever entrepreneurs who use the platform to sell through.
When you sign up for a free account you can access 6 free downloads each week. The items for sale are all very well priced and most come as templates you can edit. (Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop required for some.)
Unsplash is an awesome resource for free stock images. You can use them to compliment your product and brand photos for social media content.Â
All images are royalty free and can be used as you wish.
Email Marketing
After trying many, Klaviyo is our favourite email marketing software for eCommerce. A great replacement for Mailchimp since they stopped interacting with Shopify. Klaviyo integrates well and has all the features you need and a free plan for under 250 contacts and just $20/month for up to 500 contacts. They have abandoned cart emails set up out of the box and a built-in customisable website popup feature.
Google Advertising
If you’re looking for someone to run your Google Ads Ryan Thwaites from Lantern Room knows his stuff.
I was thrilled the first time I recommended Ryan and he took over a Google Ad campaign and more than halved their cost per click.
Check him out if you’re looking for a done for you service.
Know a tool or service provider that should be on our list? Let us know
