Are you starting your own business? Are you overwhelmed with all the work you just have to do on your own? If so, then you need several tools to help you increase your growth and productivity. These tools will take care of small tasks as you continue taking care of your core business.
It can be difficult to start a new business. The fact that it’s new may even expose you to challenges that you did not expect. Your time, budget and manpower sometimes get stretched. Business tools help you get things done faster. They also help you remain professional and organized when carrying out important tasks.
Here are 4 tools to help you start your own business:
1. Mobile-Friendly Website
Why do you need a mobile friendly website?
Mobile long overtook desktop as the preferred method of accessing the internet. It is no longer just nice to have a mobile friendly site; it has become mandatory for anyone who wants to get proper attention from their online audience.
The number of people who own smartphones has constantly been increasing. In the US alone, 68% of people owned smartphones in 2015, which is a huge leap from 35% in 2011. The figures are similar in the UK. These numbers clearly depict that you need to have a mobile-friendly site.
Such sites rank well in Google. Google itself confirmed this in April, 2015. Therefore if your site is still not mobile responsive, you’re losing a lot of SEO juice. You’re also not meeting your audience where they prefer to read from you. You definitely need to either create a mobile-friendly website or use a responsive theme.
For a mobile site, use a mobile friendly website builder, to make the process hassle free. The main advantage of this is that you won’t need to spend lots of money to redesign your site. You can easily build it yourself. Your website will also work well on all devices; it will simply identify the device that’s browsing your site and optimize your site for that screen.
2. Payment and Invoicing Tool
You need to get paid, right? That’s the whole essence of business; to provide an excellent service that meets a need, and get paid for it. It may be hard to track payments and invoices, especially when you’re very busy trying to give your startup some major traction.
Many business owners find it hard to get time to send estimates and invoices. Using web-based payment and invoicing tool makes the work easier. This allows them to quickly prepare invoices, send them to clients and track their payments. Following up on unpaid dues becomes easier.
A good invoicing tool should be fast, generate professional invoices and be able to integrate seamlessly with other services. You should also be able to export your estimates and invoices as CSV, XML or other formats. Through such tools, you’ll be able to easily see what invoice has been sent or paid. Also, those that are due. Furthermore, there should be options for discounts, taxes, and language.
3. Webinar Solution
Webinars are huge and have been giving excellent results for quite some time. Over 60% of marketers use webinars in their content marketing strategy. Webinars result in high-quality leads and give marketers a great opportunity to give prospective clients top-notch value.
Webinars help you to become an authority to your readers. You appear to them as a great presenter who is confident and provides value. This creates respect and brand trust. Remember that when you build a trusted brand, you increase your content consumption, clicks on your ads and overall conversion.
Webinars act as traffic magnets. They attract droves of traffic and give you lots of new subscriptions. Best of all, if you promote your products during the webinar, you can significantly increase your sales. With an effective overall strategy, you can get repeat sales from the people you convert through efficient webinars.
A great webinar service provider will make it easy for you to create a webinar. Some great features of a good one include webinar rebranding, global web conferencing, customized invitations, polls, and surveys, attendee statistics among others.
4. Project Management Tool
Did you know that for every $1 billion that’s been invested in the US, $122 million was wasted due to poor project performance? Most organizations believe that project management is very important for the performance of their business or success of their organization. This goes to show that any startup should be serious on their project management.
Project management skills play a huge role in any business. Quite often, a project’s outcome is affected highly by the early planning and monitoring stage. In small businesses, all the work is done by just a few people, but they still need to perform. Due to globalization, there are many projects that are carried out remotely.
Due to the heavy project management demands, entrepreneurs and SMBs are increasingly using integrated project management tools. These maximize productivity and organization. They help in keeping track of projects, managing workers, setting milestones, scheduling work and sending invoices among other features.
Conclusion
There is cut-throat competition in business today. For you to succeed, you need flexibility, speed, and agility. Ensure you have a mobile-friendly website so that you can take advantage of the increasingly popular mobile internet viewership. Use an excellent payment and invoicing tool so that you can better track your payments. Use a powerful webinar solution to get massive leads, traffic and sales. Finally use a great project management tool to ensure you have incredible project success.
