12 Tools to Build an E-commerce Brand from Scratch

Every brand starts with a name. While this doesn’t really need any technical skills, it’s still one of the hardest parts of brand creation. You need something catchy and original. Once you get this right, everything else can follow suit. Here are two tools to help you brainstorm for the right brand name:

Design.com AI Business Name Generator

Design.com is an AI-powered online platform with a collection of various tools to help you with your branding needs. One of these tools is the AI Business Name Generator.

So, how to use this business name maker?

• Describe your business idea, and the AI will instantly generate a selection of relevant suggestions.
• Set the length (short, medium, or long) and/or choose your preferred style (modern, professional, creative, or playful).
• Refine your prompt to regenerate results if the first batch of names didn’t pique your interest — do it many times until you find something you like for free!

What makes this tool stand out is that it not only generates name suggestions. It provides logo previews, so you can see right away how the business names will look as an actual brand, making decision-making much easier.

Here’s what the AI Business Name Generator looks like when you ask it to generate suggestions for you. For this example, we’re looking for a name for an online fashion store. The image below shows some of the results. One of them is “Glamour Style Studio” with its first four logo previews.

However, the logo previews are not just for visualization purposes. You can also use any of them for your logo. 

As mentioned, Design.com hosts a range of branding tools, making it a one-stop shop for all your branding needs. It’s even widely known as the best logo maker, according to LegalZoom and Pixbundle. 

The logo previews are generated by pulling relevant designs from its massive library of over 400K logos, all professionally curated and exclusive to Design.com. You can customize them using the platform’s beginner-friendly editing interface. It allows you to change the text, fonts, colors, and layouts using the manual tools or the AI chat editor. 

Once you have finished personalizing your logo, you can download and use it commercially. Design.com provides multiple file formats:

• Raster files (SVG, EPS, PDF)
• High-resolution files (PNG, JPG)
• Animated files (MP4, GIF)
• Transparent and greyscale formats
• Text- and icon-only options

You also have the choice of making other branded assets. Design.com offers over 50 branding tools to help you create everything from business cards to social media posts, websites, invoices, and more. 

Here are some sample assets generated by Design.com using the logos for “Glamour Style Studio.”

Logo:

Business Cards:

Instagram Posts:

Websites:

Invoices:

Another piece of good news is that you don’t have to do all this manually. The platform has a feature that automatically applies your finished logo, along with its brand colors and typography, to other branded assets. This ensures that everything looks consistent with one another.

Pricing: 

• Free Plan - Allows you to generate unlimited design and business name suggestions. Free designs are available for full customization, download (all formats), and commercial use (no watermarks included, except for certain assets like websites)
• Starter ($3/month billed annually) - Gives you full access to all premium design assets and 50+ branding tools (not including Website Builder, Link-in-Bios, and Digital Business Cards).
• Value ($4/month billed annually) - Everything from the Starter + Website Builder.
• Premium ($5/month billed annually) - Everything in from the Value + Link-in-Bios and Digital Business Card tools.

BrandCrowd Business Name Generator

BrandCrowd is another online branding platform that also features its own Business Name Generator. It uses AI to generate business name suggestions based on your keywords or business description. The results are instantaneous — you get a list of business names and refine them by length and tone.

Like with Design.com, BrandCrowd also provides customizable logo previews for every business name suggestion it generates to help you decide which to pick. If none of the business names and logs suit your style, you can keep regenerating new results all for free.

Pricing:

• Free - Generate names repeatedly with no upfront costs.

As shown above, Design.com is more than capable of handling all your visual design needs. Still, no brand-building guide would be complete without mentioning these two platforms that dominated the design world.

Canva

As one of the most popular and widely used design platforms, Canva has proved that it’s possible to make high-quality designs even without advanced design skills. 

Like Design.com, Canva has templates for different social media graphics, presentations, print ads, and more. It also allows you to create a Brand Kit with your logo, colors, and fonts to help you achieve uniformity across your assets.

Pricing:

• Free version 
• Canva Pro ($15/month or $120/year) - Access premium assets, background remover, brand kit management, and all file formats.
• Canva for Teams ($20/seat/month) - Full collaboration features.

Adobe Express

Adobe Express is the beginner-friendly version of the renowned Adobe software that professional designers know and love. It features thousands of professionally designed templates and Adobe fonts, helping you create distinctive and attractive designs.

You can regard Adobe Express as Canva’s more design-forward alternative. With its seamless integration with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, it lets you create high-quality design assets for product images, branded video content, and ad creatives.

Pricing:

• Free plan - access to basic editing tools and 250 generative AI credits per month.
• Adobe Express Premium ($9.99/month or $99.99/year) - Access 200M+ Adobe Stock assets, advanced editing tools, and complete Brand Kit features.

Once you have completed your brand kit, it’s time to give your products their proper virtual home. Just like physical, offline establishments, your online store should offer an unforgettable experience to your customers.

Shopify

With 4 million stores worldwide running on Shopify, it’s safe to say that it’s the ruling platform for e-commerce brands and for good reasons. Shopify already takes care of everything for you — product listings, inventory, marketing, and shipping. There’s no need for you to go anywhere else because everything is all in one place.

Moreover, Shopify lets you incorporate your branding into your store with its collection of themes and apps. You can also pair Shopify with themes from Debutify, designed to showcase your brand and convert each visitor into a buying customer.

The platform also has its own built-in payment processor — Shopify Payments. When activated, it can provide a smooth, reliable checkout experience to your customers. You won’t have to set up any third-party payment gateway just to process payments. It already accepts PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and all major credit cards. 

Pricing:

• 3-day free trial only
• Starter ($5/month) - Social selling only.
• Basic ($39/month or $29/month) - Full online store features.

As an e-commerce brand, you need to present your products through aesthetically appealing images. However, if you’re starting, you probably don’t have a studio or a budget to hire a professional photographer to capture your products. Fortunately, there are online tools for that as well.

Placeit by Envato

Placeit is a mockup generator to help you showcase your products beautifully. Whether you sell tech accessories, clothes, or accessories, this platform has a template for it. All you have to do is upload an image of your item, and it instantly generates a realistic photo with your product.

Pricing:

• $7.47/month (billed annually) - Unlimited mockups and full access to design templates, videos, and logo makers.
• Pay-per-use basis - Individual asset downloads.

Building an e-commerce brand doesn’t stop with a business name, logo, and visual assets. You have to make noise for your brand and make people see you. This is usually the most challenging part of growing your brand, so here are some effective tools to help you.

Klaviyo

One of the things you need to do before launching your brand is to set up a Klaviyo account. It’s the e-commerce brands’ go-to platform for email and SMS marketing. 

It’s integrated with Shopify, making it more convenient to send automated messages at the right time. It can greet new subscribers, remind buyers about their abandoned products in their carts, and thank them for making a purchase. In addition, you can use it to win back lapsed customers.

The platform also ensures your emails and SMS won’t look like annoying ads. It allows you to personalize your messages, so your interactions can seem genuine and on-brand at the same time.

Pricing:

• Free Plan - Up to 250 contacts, 500 email sends/month.
• Email Plans (Starts at $20/month) - Up to 500 active profiles.
• Email + SMS Plans (Starts at $35/month) - To include SMS marketing.

Later

Later is a social media scheduling tool that can help you create a cohesive and consistent social media presence. You can use it to plan and schedule your Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Pinterest posts. It has a visual content calendar so you can see how your posts will look once they go live. 

Another feature that’s crucial for e-commerce brands is the link-in-bio tool that transforms your Instagram account into a shoppable page. This allows you to drive traffic from your social media accounts.

Pricing:

• 14-day free trial on all plans
• Starter - $25/month
• Growth - $45/month
• Advanced - $80/month

Semrush

While Klaviyo covers your email marketing and Later handles your social media presence, Semrush helps you be seen on search engines. It allows you to search for the keywords your target customers are using, check how your competitors are ranking, go over your store’s SEO, and put together a strategy to help your online presence grow organically. 

Pricing:

• 14-day free trial only
• Pro ($139.95/month or $117.33/month billed annually) - It offers keyword research, site audits, and competitor analysis.

Google Analytics

Another tool to help you monitor online activity is Google Analytics 4 (GA4). It’s a free tool that monitors where your store visitors are coming from, the pages they visit most, the page they check before leaving, and the channels that are generating the most engagement. 

Knowing all these things saves you from guessing and lets you create data-driven strategies to promote your brand more effectively. It’s also connected with Shopify, Google Ads, and other marketing channels, so you don’t have to do any work when it comes to gathering all the important data.

Pricing:

• Free

As mentioned earlier, part of your branding is how you interact with your customers. It’s important to nurture every individual who reaches out to you and keep them for life. 

Gorgias

Another platform built to support Shopify stores, Gorgias serves as the one-stop shop for your customers’ communication with your brand. Whether they came as emails, live chats, or direct messages from social media, they’re all gathered in one unified inbox so you can easily get back to them right away.

Since Gorgias is integrated with your Shopify store, it can access all your customers’ order history, shipping status, and their past communications with you. This way, you can respond with a more personalized tone, avoiding cold, generic replies.

Pricing:

• 7-day free trial only
• Starting ($10/month) - Includes 50 tickets/month, which suits early-stage stores.
• Basic ($60/month) - Provides 300 tickets/month for growing brands.

After you have set up your shop and all the tools to help you market your brand, you have to ensure you get to deliver your products to your customers after they make their first purchase. Fortunately, you don’t have to shell out any money for a printer or warehouse. 

Prinftul

Printful is especially helpful if you’re selling clothes, accessories, and merchandise. It handles printing, packaging, and shipping your products to your customers for you. What’s amazing is that there’s no need to pay for inventory right away, as you only have to pay when you make a sale. 

You can integrate this print-on-demand fulfillment service platform into your Shopify store, so you don’t have to process each order your store makes manually. All you have to do is create designs — whether on Design.com, Canva, or Adobe Express — then create mockups using Placeit and upload them to your store.

Pricing:

• Free Plan - Only pay per product when an order is placed.
• Growth ($24.99/month) - Gives you up 33% product discounts. It becomes free if your store hits $12K/year in sales.