The following are some of the foreign trade network marketing tools that I have used or have used at present, introduce and recommend them.
Virtual host (Website Hosting).
SiteGround (https://www.siteground.com): the virtual host recommended by many WordPress developers abroad, and it is also the hosting vendor officially recommended by WordPress. Automatic domain name resolution record, automatic installation of WordPress, free installation of SSL certificate and automatic renewal, Cpanel plus SiteGround user panel, can be said to be very comfortable to use.
For beginners in building foreign trade stations, virtual hosts are the most suitable. It is pre-installed with the system environment, integrated with the control panel, and many operations can be done with the panel. Compared with the VPS, the virtual host is like the Nokia mobile phone more than a decade ago, and the leather is durable and broken. In case there is a problem, send a work order to the customer service in time.
VPS is more complicated, after all, you buy a bare server, the environment is not installed, you need to know some Linux system knowledge to install and configure PHP and database environment.VPS is mainly operated by Linux command, which has a certain learning cost and is easy to make mistakes in operation. On the other hand, because the environment is all self-organized, it is easy to leave great hidden dangers in security. On the other hand, virtual host vendors generally have a relatively complete security strategy, and if there are loopholes, they will fill them in time, and the degree of security is better.
Domain name Registration (Domain Registration).
Namesilo (https://www.liaosam.com): foreign domain name merchants with an extremely high performance-to-price ratio! It supports Alipay, Paypal, Visa and other payment methods, but also free use of domain name privacy protection (domain privacy protection), is very cost-effective. All my domain names are purchased and registered here now, and the service is also very good! The whole process of transferring an old domain name from host ease to namesilo, has been instructed by support email and updated domain name transfer status.
To say a few more words, I personally don’t like any of the products of Godaddy. Just for me personally.
Station building program (website system).
WordPress (https://wordpress.org): whether it’s building a website or building a blog, a world-famous open-source site-building program, you can cope with it. Due to open source, strong expansibility and search engine-friendly design, there are many developers and rich themes and plug-ins, which can easily and quickly build websites. In fact, the early positioning of WordPress is the blog system, but with the continuous development, WP has gradually developed a lot of corporate website themes and some powerful plug-ins, making it an outstanding CMS (content management system). WordPress is very popular in foreign countries, and all kinds of teaching materials and articles are easy to find. It is also one of the mainstream procedures for foreign enterprises to build stations.
WordPress is fast and playable, and if you are used to doing it yourself, you will find it easy to become addicted to WP. Objectively speaking, although WordPress is very powerful, it is becoming more and more bloated. It can be said that at least half of the resources and functions are not needed when the station is built normally. So maybe one day you can’t stand the bloated WP and turn to other programs.
However, due to CDN and cache plug-ins and other ways to improve the speed of user access, there are many good WordPress plug-ins, I believe you will think that WordPress is the most suitable site-building program for a long time. And now there are many good English themes with WooCommerce, such as Avada, Enfold, Betheme. This makes it very convenient for you to build a mall website. Recommended reason: classic and powerful!
Mituo (http://www.mituo.cn): formerly known as Metinfo. If you want to choose a lightweight domestic site-building program to do corporate English website, the first thing that comes to mind is Mituo.In 2005, I began to contact dynamic power easy (an asp.net-based site-building program), and then gradually came into contact with some CMS, such as Dream Weaving defects, Empire, phpcms and many programs after that. I feel that many site-building programs are developing towards “widely applicable”, eager to meet the needs of all website types, but not many that really concentrate their efforts on the development of corporate websites.
Mituo is a good team that I think has been continuously developing and updating corporate websites. Mituo has its own functions and an official manual, which is easy to modify if you have some PHP foundation. I used Mituo’s Jianzhan system to build several stations, made some changes in the code, and it feels good to use it.
Even if you don’t understand the code, some official topics are available for you to choose from, and some basic SEO functions are available, such as customizing title and description per page. It is very suitable for beginners to practice. Recommended reasons: simple + lightweight + easy to use!
Magento (https://magento.com): the old open source e-commerce online mall system, with rich plug-ins and themes, is suitable for creating e-commerce websites. If you want to build a professional enterprise station and support the mall function of Online Order, this is very reliable!
But the biggest problem is: the technical requirements are very high, there is no certain PHP technology.（WordPress Theme）
I recommend that the preferred theme for foreign trade English station construction is Avada and Betheme. There is also a theme called Enfold that is also very suitable for English website construction. All of these themes can be purchased on ThemeForest. Search for the topic name on Themeforest to find it.
It is strongly recommended to buy a genuine themes, do not go to Baidu what Chinese version, free version, many free themes will have some malicious code, so it is recommended to buy the genuine themes, the price is not expensive, about $60.
These themes all have very flexible theme settings and powerful functions, and all belong to the multi-purpose theme, which can meet the needs of many types of websites. In addition, the display effect on the mobile is also very good, and it is also the WP theme of the worldwide sales of TOP 5 on ThemeForest.
WordPress Front-end Visual Site Building tool.
Elementor Pro (https://www.elementor.com/): through a super-powerful visual site-building tool, you can customize your website with a high degree of freedom even if you don’t know the technology or code. All operations are simple visual operations and come with many beautifully designed modules, which can be used directly by dragging and modifying the front page. The editing effect is directly the effect seen by web visitors, and the function is super powerful. It is very suitable for foreign trade builders who build their own stations.
Elementor itself is free to install and use, but the features of the free version and the design function modules that can be imported are limited. Therefore, it is recommended to buy a paid version of Elementor Pro directly. With it, with a simple WP theme, you can build a very good-looking English foreign trade website.
E-commerce + online retail (Ecommerce + Online Retails)).
Shopify (https://www.shopify.com): this is a very popular online store type of site-building tool, recommended for foreign trade B2C people to use. After several years of development, Shopify has become a mature e-commerce platform, with design themes, shopping carts, inventory, payment and marketing tools and other functions. It is also the love of teacher Wang Sheng in rice class.
The popularity of Shopify is inseparable from two factors: 1) easy to use 2) the community is very active compared with the above two programs, many designers and part-time IT staff in the community, if you have to pay for help, it is very simple, and you can get a lot of support.
Btw: an American brand of handmade leather shoes that my friend likes: Aurora Shoes (likes retro style, forest feminine style, and handmade style. One of their “auroral shoes” is expected to be known in the circle.) the website of this American company is made of Shopify. You can visit and feel, if you feel good, you can directly issue an order, oh, support the direct purchase and international express delivery to China.
There is also a website, the sash bag, which is also a special one-shoulder bag from Shopify,.
Opencart (https://www.opencart.com/): this is the first online shopping program I’ve come into contact with. It doesn’t seem so powerful, and Opencart’s site doesn’t look as impressive as other apps, but if you just have the idea of building a B2C site, building your own site with a shopping cart is one of the best choices. It’s actually very powerful, and it has a lot of features, and importantly, it’s all free.
It refers to a lot of Zencart code and is streamlined and optimized, so you don’t have to worry about Zencart after using it. Because it is an open-source program, you can find many extensions and plug-ins. A friend once built an online store for kitchen tools, which is very nice.
Big Commerce (https://www.bigcommerce.com/): this is a very good shopping cart website program that can help you quickly build an online shopping site. There is a very good design theme, and customized settings can also be achieved. And the built-in shopping cart program is also very good, almost all the functions of Shopping cart, suitable for B2C e-commerce use. If you are just looking for a program that can get started quickly, you can try BigCommerce.
WooCommerce (https://www.woothemes.com/woocommerce/): if you like WordPress, and want to extend functions on WordPress to enable online stores, shopping carts, etc., the best choice is WooCommerce. WooCommerce is a set of Online Store Toolkit, that can be used on WordPress. It can be said to be a complete set of e-commerce solutions, which provides a lot of flexibility and is easy to set up. If you can’t do without WordPress and want to achieve B2C marketing, WooCommerce is the best choice.
Statistical analysis of web pages (Web Analytics).
Google Analytics (https://www.google.com/analytics/): the best free web analysis tool, very powerful track function and various professional statistics, can let you know all kinds of data performance of the website at any time, this is a necessary tool for site maintenance and network marketing. If your website is not configured with GA, don’t wait, use it!
Clicky (https://clicky.com/): this is also a powerful tracking tool for fried chicken, with both free and fee-based features. Free is also very good. If you don’t like Google Analytics, try this.
Chartbeat (https://chartbeat.com/): great interface, easy to use, good experience. It is only paid for and is characterized by real-time feedback from real-time. The effect of Tracking is great, and there is no shortage of money to use this instead of GA.
Website acceleration plug-in.
If you are using WordPress to build a site, it is recommended to use WP Rocket (https://wp-rocket.me/)： a paid plug-in, which is powerful and can significantly improve the speed of the site.
Outsourced service (OutSourcing).
There are many kinds of Internet practitioners on Fiverr: Fiverr, whether they are LOGO design, business card design, product packaging design, product English manual production, copywriting, material translation, product or service presentation video production, or virtual assistant. You can easily hire them and pay as much as you need. Spend some money to get others to help you do the work they are good at and save time and energy!
These outsourced services are not as expensive as you think. Depending on the content of different tasks, most of them cost tens to hundreds of dollars, and in many cases, the effect is better than hiring domestic part-time jobs. But there are also those of poor quality that need to take time to clean.
Upwork: is one of the most famous service outsourcing websites in foreign countries. I actually prefer Upwork to Fiverr,.
Reason: Fiverr basically sells packages at different prices according to service content and level, while Upwork is more about you posting tasks and then choosing the right person for the task. Its communication and dialogue function is better than Fiverr, and it is better to use and experience.
In addition, Upwork can be paid by (milestone) in different stages of task completion. For example, I asked a designer to design a LOGO, assuming 200 dollars. Then I can set a $50 first, and then the designer can provide some preliminary design drafts of concepts or stretch for the design, or design a few plans that you like. If you approve a certain plan, OK, you can continue at this time.
Fiverr was first developed as a cheap package that is all 5 USD, so many freelancers and customer levels are still comparing the Low level. The more capable freelancer will choose Upwork. If you want to save money, find someone on Fiverr. If you don’t care too much about the price and just want to find the right person, then Upwork should be more suitable for you.
SEO / Keyword Research
First of all, I recommend the three treasures of English online marketing: SEMrush, SimilarWeb and Ahrefs.
Google Keyword Planner (https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/): he used to be Google keyword tool, and now he has become a Google Adwords advertising keyword planner. The function is as powerful as ever, and it is very convenient to collect multilingual keywords in different markets.
KWfinder (https://kwfinder.com/#): this is a very easy-to-use keyword tool, and it is the cheapest among the paid tools.
A tool in the SEO tool package from Mangools (https://mangools.com/#a5c1a938daf09ff4e186cb355). The whole Mangools package includes KWfinder (keyword research), SERPChecker (https://serpwatcher.com/#) (search results page analysis), SERPWatcher (https://serpwatcher.com/#) (external chain analysis), LinkMiner (https://linkminer.com/#) (ranking tracking) and SiteProfiler (https://siteprofiler.com/#a5c1a938daf09ff4e186cb355) (website analysis).
Keywordtool.io (https://keywordtool.io/): it’s also a good tool for mining long-tailed keywords. But it is not very friendly to the users of the free experience and does not show much information.
LongTail Pro: Longtail Pro as the main long-tail keyword research and analysis tool, really good. And compared with market samurai, its response speed is simply fast. Market samurai takes dozens of seconds to perform a scan, and it only takes a few seconds to complete. Its Pro version is paid on a monthly basis, you can see the experience, this tool for long-tail words can give you a lot of inspiration to find a niche market.
AnswerThePublic (https://answerthepublic.com/): now the common way of SEO is to help users solve problems, starting from the problem because there are a large number of search users searching for answers to all kinds of questions every day. Customizing article titles and content from questions is a common way of content marketing, but it can be difficult and time-consuming to think about what common questions users might search for in a particular area. Answer The Public is a good problem generation tool that can help you solve this problem.
[overall].
SEMrush and Ahrefs are more suitable for studying competitors for a keyword in Google rankings, their site conditions, traffic, keywords and anti-links, as well as analyzing the difficulty of keyword rankings.
Traffic SimirWeb is more inclined to look at traffic types and site traffic data, as well as which pages attract traffic.
Google Adwords Keyword Planner is more suitable for viewing monthly search data for a keyword, the cost of advertising Campain, and potential opportunities for advertising.
While Kwfinder is a comprehensive tool, it also has the function of querying the number of searches for a keyword, and it can also check the competition of competing pages on the search results page.
Long-tailed Keywordtool.io, Longtail Pro and AnswerThePublic are more suitable for long-tailed keyword mining.
Market Samurai: has been on a free trial for many years, and had planned to play it out with the trial version all the time, but in the end, I couldn’t help buying a paid version. Due to not carefully reading the official email (Nima put the $97 discount link at the bottom, the email has to turn over two screens to see it) and went directly to the official website link for $149. no, no, no. I once complained on Weibo.
Many people may not understand why they spend hundreds of yuan on a software tool, which has something to do with the habit that most Chinese people are not used to paying for it. Market Samurai is the keyword SEO tool I have used for the longest time. It is very useful for mining long-tailed keywords and analyzing the difficulty of competition, as well as competitor SEO data.
Screencap tools, video editing tools (Recording & Video Editing)).
FOR Windows platform: Camtasia Studio (https://www.techsmith.com/video-editor.html):
Camtasia Studio produced by Tech Smith is a very professional video recording and editing tool. All kinds of cracked versions on the Internet are not easy to use, so you might as well use the official English version directly. I spent more than a hundred dollars on the official copy, which can be counted as support.
By the way, I bought an officially recommended video production material library (bundled, but you can also choose not to buy it). After downloading it, I felt it was useless and spent dozens of dollars more for nothing.
FOR MAC platform:
Screencap: ScreenFlow. Edit the clip: Final Cut Pro.
Email Marketing (Email Marketing).
AWeber (https://www.aweber.com/): I used AWeber for two years before using MailChip. Although we have switched to Mailchip now, AWeber is still a very good email marketing tool. It can handle managing email address lists, sending emails in bulk to interested customers or subscribers, and setting automatic responses and multiple situational content settings. Looking for professional email marketing tools? I recommend it.
Mailchip (https://mailchimp.com/): for tools, I like the interface as concise as possible. I like the interface of Mailchip, which is clean and simple, with all the functions of AWeber. It has just been used for a while, but so far everything is all right.
However, it is found that all kinds of e-mail marketing tools are not suitable for foreign trade B2B. After sending a few more development letters, the account was suspended.
Both AWeber and MailChip, are generally only suitable for license email marketing. That is, visitors subscribe to your website and fill in your email address to get subscription updates. I feel that this kind of email marketing is more suitable for foreign virtual product or service websites, as well as content stations or niche stations, and it is more suitable to use them for marketing.
InfusionSoft (https://www.infusionsoft.com/): it’s not just email marketing, it’s actually more like a collection of CRM, with a high degree of automation in email marketing,. But CRM is not perfect. You can use it. After all, different people have different needs and feelings.
Website optimization (Website Optimization).
Google Website Optimizer (https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin/webreauth?service=websiteoptimizer&hl=en&continue=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fanalytics%2Fsiteopt%2F%3Fet%3Dreset%26hl%3Den&utm_source=services&utm_medium=redirect&utm_campaign=standalone&flowName=GlifWebSignIn&flowEntry=ServiceLogin): Google’s official website optimization tool. Every website needs a process of transition from traffic to target., Google Website Optimizer is a very good tool for comparison testing. Compare how the conversion rate is affected by different changes in different cases of Aswab B.
Optimizely (https://www.optimizely.com/): a simpler comparison test tool than Google Website Optimization.
Some friends may not understand what A testing, B testing (also known as split testing) is a method of comparing two versions of a webpage against each other to determine which one performs better. is. Take a look at the explanation given on the Optimizely website. By creating An and B version of your page you can validate new design changes, test hypotheses, and improve your website’s conversion rate.
Website speed measurement (Page Speed Test).
Pingdom tools (https://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/): the world-renowned website speed measurement tool website.
Gtmetrix (https://gtmetrix.com/): analyze the reasons for the slow speed of the website and give solutions.
Webpagetest.org (https://www.webpagetest.org/): a detailed analysis of the response time of each request and the speed of the site.
Google Page Insights (https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/): it is also a Google tool to test the overall speed of your site and give scores. You know, if the website is slow, it will affect the ranking in Google. So if we want to do site optimization, make sure that our site loads and respond quickly, and Google Page Insights will tell you what is slowing down your site. It can grade the website performance at two different application levels, Mobile and Desktop, and give suggestions on how to improve based on the test results. Usually the score test, you can get more than 80 is very good, I only got 84 points at most.
Dotcom-tools (https://www.dotcom-tools.com/website-speed-test.aspx): a Free Online Website Performance tool. It feels good to use it for speed testing, and you can see how long it takes to open your website around the world.
Landing page (Landing Pages).
Leadpages (http://leadpages.pxf.io/c/1320561/390538/5673): you can create very nice landing pages, sales pages, option pages… More than 70 + landing pages application styles are definitely enough for you to choose, and it comes with its own conversion rate analysis tool, which is very convenient to monitor the conversion of traffic.
However, this tool is paid for, and there is a discount on the annual payment. The third price is set down at $25, $40 and $199 per month. If necessary, recommend the first two options.
Browser (Browser).
Google Chrome + Firefox Firebox browser is a very perfect combination, both have very strong stability, strong expansion performance. For people in foreign trade, the Google browser’s “search this picture in Google + upload pictures to find similar pictures” function is absolutely a very powerful tool; Firefox Firebug debugging tools, coupled with JS code sniffing, as well as Google Chrome browser powerful censorship elements, web analysis, responsive design view and other functions, are absolutely practical.
Most importantly, all kinds of easy-to-use plug-ins make you feel good to use, such as whois lookup, IP check, CSS viewer, color analysis, mail verify, Grammarly, what font, Mozbar, SEOquake, Keywords Everywhere and so on. I have 20 + plug-ins each on Google and Firefox.
All kinds of small icons on the website (Web Icon Solutions).
FontAwesome (https://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/): this is the icon solutions, that I have been using. There are official English stations and simplified Chinese stations. There are very simple instructions on the website, and the syntax is also very simple.
Let’s take a look at the massive icon icons available.
