9 Resources Online Store Owners Can Use to Create Beautiful Marketing Content

This is a guest post by Aaron Beashel from Campaign Monitor.

As a store owner, you understand the importance of beautiful design across your online presence. You know that great design leads to more sales and more revenue.

However, if you are like most online store owners you probably don’t have a design background and years of experience with tools like Photoshop and Illustrator.

So how can you create beautiful marketing content that drives more conversions and revenue?

When we were putting together our guide on how to get better marketing results with beautiful design, we spent countless hours searching the web for tools, templates and resources that could help people like you create beautiful marketing content.

In this post, we wanted to share some of our favorites with you in order to help you create beautiful marketing content that drives results for your store.

1. Canva

Canva is a great tool for creating beautiful marketing images. It contains thousands of beautiful stock images and then you can add different elements, such as text, banners, buttons, etc on top to create an awesome piece of visual marketing content.

What sets Canva apart is it’s drag and drop visual editor, which means you can simply select the elements you want and drag and drop them to the exact spot you want them.

Here’s some examples of images created using Canva:

2. PlaceIt

PlaceIt is a great tool for showcasing screenshots of your application, website or digital product in various devices. You can either upload an image from your computer or enter a URL, and PlaceIt will grab the image and ‘place it’ inside the screen of your choice.

What makes PlaceIt so great for store owners like you is its wide variety of screens and devices, meaning you can easily add your screenshots to everything from a Samsung Galaxy sitting on a desk to a MacBook Pro sitting on a park bench.

Here’s some example images created using PlaceIt:

3. Death To The Stock Photo

Death To The Stock Photo is a free subscription service that emails you a handful of beautiful photographs every month for use in your marketing content.

The fact that you only get a few images sent to you each month can make it difficult if you need a specific image for a specific campaign, but there is also a premium option which gives you access to the whole archive of photos and allows you to download them whenever you need.

On a personal level, I’m a huge admirer of great photography so I subscribe just to get a few beautiful photos in my inbox each month.

Here’s an example of stock photographs available on Death To The Stock Photo:

4. Graphic River

Graphic River is a design marketplace where professional designers can upload their work and store owners like you can purchase it for use in your marketing content. There are over 285,000 items for sale on Graphic River and the site is well-categorised with great search functionality, making it easy to find the exact item you are looking for.

For online store owners like you, there are some great icons and banners on the site which can help make your next marketing or promotion piece more visually appealing.

Here are some examples of banners available for sale on Graphic River:

5. SnagIt

SnagIt makes it easy to capture screenshots and videos of anything you see on your screen, and can be great for capturing screenshots of your website for use in your marketing content.

What sets SnagIt apart is it’s built-in editing abilities which allow you to modify the screenshot before saving it. With SnagIt, you can easily:

• Add elements to screenshots - You can easily add text, speech bubbles, arrows, circles, and more to screenshots to highlight certain key elements in your screenshot or provide some additional commentary and information.
• Add effects to screenshots - You can easily add effects such as shadows, reflections, fading and more to your screenshots to give them that professionally designed look.

Here’s some example screenshots captured using SnagIt with the Fade and Perspective effects applied:

6. IM Free

IM Free is a stock photography website that offers thousands of beautiful stock photographs for free.

The photography on the site is far above the average, cheesy stock photos you find elsewhere on the web, and all the images are really well categorised so it’s easy to find a beautiful stock photograph for your marketing content.

Here’s an example of stock photos available for free on IM Free:

7. Canvas

Canvas is a unique email template builder from Campaign Monitor that let’s you easily create beautiful HTML email campaigns in minutes.

What sets Canvas apart is it’s unique drag and drop interface. Most email editors only allow you to add text and images into pre-determined places set by the template, however with Canvas you can literally drag and drop images, text, buttons and more into whatever layout you want.

All emails created by Canvas are responsive so they look great on mobile devices as well, and once you’ve finished creating your email campaign you can either signup for an account to send the email and view the results, or you can download the email as HTML and send it from your existing email tool.

Here are some examples of beautiful email campaigns created using Canvas:

8. The Noun Project

The Noun Project is an online collection of free and paid icons which you can download and use in your marketing content.

The Noun Project is basically your one-stop shop for icons. It features a great search functionality that allows you to find whatever icons you need for your content, and a simple search for terms like ‘plane’ or ‘book’ will return hundreds of icons you can use.

Here are a few examples of icons you can find on The Noun Project:

9. Web Developer Chrome Plugin

Have you ever looked at another website when creating an online store and wanted to know what colours they were using, or what images they featured?

Web Developer is a plugin for Google Chrome that gives your browser a bit of extra functionality. While its primarily targeted at developers, there are a few handy tools in there for those wanting to create beautiful marketing content, including:

• A ruler - Web Developer includes a ruler which allows you to measure the dimensions of a certain element and get the exact height and width in pixels. If you’re creating images or content for a particular size, this is a great tool for working out the dimensions you need to work within.
• A color picker - Web Developer includes a color picker that allows you to click on a certain part of a website and see exactly what colour that part is. You can then use that colour in your own marketing designs.
• A browser resizer - Web Developer allows you to resize your browser to different screen sizes popular on various devices, such as mobiles, tablets, laptops and desktop computers. This enables you to see what your content looks like on different screen sizes and make any necessary changes to ensure it looks great everywhere. 

* Bonus Resource: Burst by Shopify

Burst is Shopify's new free stock photo platform that provides entrepreneurs with all the product photos and lifestyle images they need to get a new business up and running. All the images are totally free to use on websites, social media profiles, Facebook ads and beyond.  

The products featured include a mix of popular Aliexpress items and generic DIY products like beard balm and lip balm. If you can't find the photos that you're looking for, check back soon because hundreds of new photos are being added every week!

Conclusion

With an increasing amount of email campaigns and social media posts competing for your customer’s attention, it has never been more important to embrace the power of beautiful design in driving marketing results.

By leveraging some of these tools, online store owners like you can become masterful digital artists, creating beautifully designed marketing campaigns that increase your traffic, sales and revenue.

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About the Author: Aaron Beashel is the Director of Content & Community at Campaign Monitor. For more resources to help you create beautiful marketing content, check out their free guide on How to get Better Marketing Results with Beautiful Design.