Our 3 Favorite Tools for Selling Products Online

These three tools help us maximize our online sales.

We utilize a lot of different tools to run our online business.

And, I admit, I’m a bit of a tool-junkie. I love testing out the latest thing, integrating different solutions just to see how they work, and understanding the impact a tool might make on a business.

There are, however, a few tools that provide significant value to our business.

For the purposes of this post, I tried to focus on tools that I think have the most impact on our bottom line. Obviously, I’d need a few additional tools than what I listed below to actually run my business.

Three of Our Favorite Digital Marketing Tools

I approached this post as if I were answering the question, “If you were stranded on a desert island and could only use three tools in your online business, what would they be?”

Kit… or Flodesk

Kit is an email marketing platform for online creators. We’ve been with Kit for a few years now, and since then they’ve rolled out with all sorts of new features like visual automations and a brand new form builder.

We’re able to set up email automations that run in the background of our business that nurture subscribers, market our products, and give those on the list access to special offers. Kit also allows me to tag and segment subscribers so I can send relevant content in the future, which helps keep subscribers engaged.

What sets Kit apart from other similar solutions is that it provides a lot of advanced features without being overly complicated.

Kit gets added points because almost every other tool that I use has a tight integration with it due to its popularity.

An alternative to Kit has recently caught our attention: Flodesk. Flodesk is an email marketing platform that has comparable features to Kit, but its email editor really sets it apart. Whereas Kit’s email editor is designed to send ‘plain-text’ emails, Flodesk’s editor makes it a breeze to send stunning, on-brand emails.

We haven’t switched to Flodesk… yet. One reason is that we’re locked into an annual plan with Kit. The other is that we’re waiting on a few integrations we need Flodesk to have before jumping ship. There’s a solid chance that we’ll have made the switch by later this year.

ThriveCart

ThriveCart is our cart solution of choice, and I share it with whomever will listen. I’ve convinced quite a few people to switch to ThriveCart from a different solution… and I’ve heard about ZERO regrets.

We stumbled upon it while looking for an alternative to SamCart, which was a bit pricey considering some of the negative reviews I had heard from peers.

We snatched up a lifetime offer of ThriveCart (which at the time of writing this is still available), and it’s been one of the best investments we’ve made in our business. This is especially true considering comparable solutions cost around $100/month. So $500 one-time is a steal and has saved me about $2000+ over the course of almost three years.

ThriveCart provides a lot of advanced functionality ‘under the hood,’ too. We can create all sorts of pricing options, set-up bump offers, upsells, and downsells, trigger different actions based on purchases, and add third party tracking or tools (such as intelligent pop-ups) to our check-outs.

There are also a lot of extra bonuses such as being able to run affiliate promotions and JV promotions.

I don’t have to reach out to support often but when I do, I get a response within 24-hours that often answers my question or solves whatever problem I’m experiencing.

I’m always a bit skeptical about ‘lifetime’ deals, but ThriveCart continues to roll out with impressive updates what seems like every quarter. If you’re selling products online and need a cart solution, I highly recommend checking out ThriveCart before the ‘lifetime’ deal goes away.

Deadline Funnels

We used to ‘cheap-out’ and add timers to sales pages that were free or inexpensive. I didn’t think there would be much of a difference between that and what Deadline Funnels, a more expensive option, would provide.

I was wrong.

Deadline Funnels provides an intelligent solution to providing urgency in a funnel. We’re able to trigger unique, personalized deadlines based on different actions from landing on a webpage to opting in for an email sequence.

This gives us an opportunity to make time-sensitive offers to people based on where they are in the customer journey versus having to take a ‘one-size fits all’ approach with our audience.

This is another tool that provides some seriously powerful features, but isn’t super complicated to set-up.

I usually get a response from their support team within minutes of asking a question, and they have a built-out help center that provides lots of tutorials.

Deadline Funnels is the tool when it comes to providing intelligent urgency to a funnel.

Bonus Tool – Convertbox

Yeah, I know—I said there was only three tools. But since originally publishing this post, we’ve been relying more and more on another tool…

ConvertBox is an intelligent pop-up tool that makes it easy to generate leads, segment visitors, and show messages at specific, appropriate times.

For instance, we could…

• Show a specific pop-up to people coming from Facebook (or another specific referral source).
• Split test messages to see what resonates with people.
• Create an ‘exit-intent’ offer that pops-up before people abandon a cart.

Those use cases only scratch the surface of the what Convertbox is able to do, and in the last six-months they have rolled out even more features. Even though website builders like Elementor have pop-up building tools, we still find ourselves frequently relying on Convertbox to get the job done. And if you’re using like a platform like Showit, Convertbox is a stellar upgrade when compared to what’s included natively on the Showit platform.

Like ThriveCart, we scooped it as part of a lifetime deal. At the time of updating this post, a lifetime deal is still available.

What are your 3 favorite tools?

As I mentioned earlier, I’m a bit of tool-junkie. I’m always on the lookout for new tools that we can try in our business.

So if you had to choose your favorite three or four tools, what would they be?

Check out our Tools & Resources page to see a more complete list of the tools we’ve used in our business. Want your own Tools & Resources page? Check out the Tools & Resources page template.

Let us know in the comments.