Here are some of the tools, websites, and apps we use! And a few that we like but didn’t quite work out :(

Let us know what tools you use in the comments so we can check them out, too!

WEBSITE

We pretty much did what anyone else would do - Google “Best Website for E-commerce”!

There were many options, so we signed up free trial for what most people use: Shopify and Squarespace. I’ve heard Squarespace’s ads on a lot of different podcasts (those ads totally work! I google about those companies all the time) and I’ve used Shopify at a previous job, therefore these were the obvious choices.

After playing around for both platforms, Chin thought the design and template of Squarespace was better and easier to navigate. We just went with that! Quick and simple. Picking out the platform was surely the easiest part of building a website. 

Though Sqaurespace is pretty intuitive to use, setting up all the pages, understanding what each function is for, and designing all the colors, fonts, spacing, etc took us forever a month to set up.

The worst most time-consuming part was uploading all the products! Scanning, resizing, writing description, etc; it was way more work than I had imagined. But after understanding how everything works, the process was much faster.

For payment we just use Stripe since it is integrated in the Squarespace. And also Paypal since we had customers request it.

PHOTO/DESIGN APPS

• The app I use the most-est is OVER. It is so great—I paid for the upgrade because it is so worth-it.

  They have so many cute and unique graphics, you will definitely find something you like for every occasion! I use it to make our logo, social posts, edit my personal photos. Super easy to use, even a non-designer with no artistic skill like me can master it.

• I also use Canva, another very popular design website/app people use, to resize the product photos on the website. I didn’t understand the dimension for product photo when I first set the pages up so they didn’t fit well and I didn’t want to re-scan everything so I batch upload them to Canva to resize them quickly. They are also great for making social post. (I used to use Canva a lot until I met Over lol.)

• To edit photos I use Snapseed (Android). There are tons of photo editing apps now so it is really personal preference which one you want to use. I like Snapseed because it is like a simplified/dummy version of Photoshop. I don’t have Photoshop and never properly learned how to use it, and find that Snapseed is a good alternative for people without much photography or Photoshop background. They also have some tutorials that teach you how to use certain features.

SOCIAL

We use Later to schedule and auto-publish our Instagram posts. It lets you view your post in calendar view and preview of how it will look like on your profile. It is very useful if you want your feed to look a certain way (we want ours to be color coordinated by row). 

We are not currently using the paid version, but they have very helpful analytic tools if you pay for the upgrade. Even if you don’t use Later, it is great to sign up for their newsletter where they share Instagram posting tips, trends, new changes, and now to maximize your effort if you have a marketing goal!

We don’t use any app or website to schedule Facebook post since Facebook lets you save and schedule posts directly on the page.

COMMUNICATION

• Google Sheets is pretty much what we live off of. All our ideas, website planning, social planning, information are all documented in our too-many-tabs-sheets. (I feel like we have 20 tabs in the main sheet we started)

• And we use LINE to talk to each other about SRS and everything else. Because they have a million cute stickers - it’s like virtual stationery!

• Lastly, Dropbox and Google Photos for sharing all the pictures we take for social and website. I love Dropbox and my life LIVES on it. (Ok, maybe on both Google and Dropbox.) I don’t store a lot of documents or photos on my laptop and phone because I back everything up on Dropbox and I can access it anywhere from my devices. It is so convenient and so easy to sync everything. (It’s 2019, you should always always always backup your files and photos. ALWAYS.)

SOME SOFTWARE WE TRIED BUT MOVED ON FROM

• Shopify: I mentioned earlier that we tried it out but chose Squarespace instead. It’s not that we don’t like it, we just prefer Squarespace. They are definitely strong in ecommerce and if we were to choose again I will still consider using Shopify.

• Airtable: I kept seeing ads on this and thought I would give it a try. I wanted to plan out our social calendar and store our assets on there, but I think without a more organized way and a process already set up, it is difficult to learn and get used to a new tool when Google Sheet is sufficient for what we need. 

  I even watched their tutorial videos and learn all the tips and tricks on how to use their features. I think since we are only 2 people, it’s easy to talk about what we need on LINE and make changes quickly. The design and the setup of the software is so nice and seamless and I really wanted to use it, but it was not practical for both of us to learn it and figure everything out on our own.

• Plann: This is an app/website similar to Later but it doesn’t have auto-publish feature when we started (not sure if they do now). The design and interface are really nice and easy to use, but I never remember to post my post even when they send me notification, so I really just need something that will post for me.

NOTE:

Another software we use but not listed here is Google Analytics, because they are a lot a lot of people who are more skilled in GA than I am so it’d be better to look them up if you want to know more about it! I am still learning how to navigate and understand the data on GA because there are just so much to learn!