As a small business owner you would be a fool not to take advantage of the Internet. It is a vast ocean of free marketing opportunities, added to which, most people look online now if they want some sort of product or service. Some people do not go shopping at all, and purchase everything from groceries to new shoes online. Therefore, the Internet is a good place for small business owners to drum up a little more business. The tools listed below will help the small business owner to work a little easier and efficiently online.
1 – 99designs, Amazon Web Services and Balsamiq web development
99designs is a tool you should use if you are looking for a few ideas. It is good for if you would like access to lots of different designers and access to a number of good ideas.
Amazon Web Services is a tool that a small business may find useful as it allows the small business to run their entire business on the cloud as it has storage space and online services and tools.
Balsamiq is a tool that will allow a small business to create online mockups. It is good for people who are designing a website or who are changing their current website.
2 – BidSketch, Highrise and Leads360 for sales
BidSketch will allow you to gain a client signature. It gives you client proposals in just minutes, which you may then send off to be authorized by the client.
Highrise is a tool that allows you to keep track of all of your customer contact. It does things such as save notes, save tasks and save email conversations and leads.
Leads360 is a tool that helps you to convert your leads into customers. It is a sales management tool that will allow you to improve your sales whilst tracking your sales performance.
3 – Legal Zoom Business Attorney Plan, Trademarkia and Docusign for legal matters
Legal Zoom Business Attorney Plan is an online tool that helps small business with legal matters. It allows you to have documents and contracts reviewed at a lower cost.
Trademarkia will allow the user to search more than six million registered names, slogans and logos. It helps a small business to build a brand without infringing another.
Docusign is a tool that will allow eSignatures. It does it in a way that is secure and above all legal. It is becoming more popular and is ideal for small businesses who cannot afford to wait around for legal documents to be signed.
4 – SpyFu, MailChimp, HubSpot for marketing
SpyFu is a keyword tool that is going to help a small business market its services better online. It allows you to monitor the search engine marketing tactics that your competitors are using too.
MailChimp has a number of newsletter templates. You simply pick the one you want to use and then use it to send out emails to customers and people who have signed up with your newsletter.
HubSpot has its own inbound marketing software. It gives search engine optimization blogging tips, and has automatic marketing functions that may benefit small businesses.
5 – Freshbook, Expensify and wave accounting for your accounts
Freshbooks is a good program if you want to do online invoicing or track your expenses. It is an easy to use program, so many small and new business owners will like it.
Expensify is a business expense and invoice tool. It helps the small business owner to create invoices very quickly and helps them the track expenses for the entire company.
Wave Accounting is more of a payroll and receipt managing program. It will help you to keep track of your staff accounts, staff pay and related expenses involving staff.
6 – Carbonite, Yammer and Trello for operations procedures
Carbonite offers cloud storage that you may use in order to share files with clients, associates or staff. It also has a backup feature which the user may use to backup business files.
Yammer is good if you want to share files overseas. It allows you to create a very small and very private network through which you may share files with your clients or staff.
Trello is a collaboration tool that lets you create projects and then organize them using online boards. The people using it may share files and update the project.
7 – Vendio, Shopify and Recurly for eCommerce
Vendio is a tool that will allow you to add adverts and then sell them across a wide variety of websites. It allows you to synchronize your sales between a number of online eCommerce websites.
Shopify will help you to install a shopping cart onto your website. It takes a wide variety of cards and a number of global currencies.
Recurly is a good tool if you wish to install recurrent billing. You may wish to bill your customers weekly or monthly, and this tool will allow you to do just that.
8 – Intelius, ZipRecruiter and AnyPerk for Human Resources
Intelius will run a background check on the people you are looking to employ. It allows you to do things such as browse criminal records of people who consent to it.
ZipRecruiter is a tool that is going to help you to find better staff. It has things to help you screen resumes and catalog them in order to streamline your recruitment process.
AnyPerk is a tool for helping you to reward your employees with a number of employee perk programs. It is good for giving your employees discounts to certain stores.
9 – UserTesting, MixPanel and Jira for technology matters
UserTesting will allow you to get feedback on things such as your website, but you get them from real users. They provide you with written answers to the questions about your website.
Jira is a bug tracking and reporting tool. It shows you your most urgent issues and helps you to work through them.
MixPanel is an analytic tool. It is good for both mobile Internet and desktop Internet. It measures user activity to give you relevant metrics.
10 – SurveyMonkey, ZenDesk and GetSatisfaction for your customer Support
SurveyMonkey is a tool you may use in order to conduct market research via polls and satisfaction surveys. It allows you to question your customers in a very un-intrusive manner.
ZenDesk is a tool that will help you create a more easy to use customer interface. It has mechanism that allow you to streamline the process of contacting and communicating with customers.
GetSatisfaction is a tool that allows you the get feedback from your customers. It is also good as a two-way system for helping you to give your customers technical support.