Starting a small business can often feel like trying to build Rome in a day. It’s a laborious process and no matter how much planning you do, certain unforeseen tasks can crop up. Luckily for small businesses, an array of tools and resources are available that can greatly aid online efforts. As with any company, in today’s Internet-driven business world, an effective website is crucial to developing a customer basis, gaining B2B momentum and increasing sales. But with so many different online tools, developer databases, SEO providers, and hosting options out there, it’s often hard to know which path to choose. Below you’ll find a list of small business tools aimed at improving your online presence.
Generally speaking, small businesses must consider a variety of different crucial tasks early on. Here are just a few recommendations on areas to target as your business gets up and running:
- Accounting and Finance:
- Customer Support:
- Legal:
- Sales:
- Web Development:
- Technology:
Some great tools are available for balancing business expenses, organizing business receipts, and issuing payroll.
If a problem occurs on your site or with a customer’s order, he’ll need a way to contact you, so it’s crucial that you implement an easy and effective means for people to get in touch with you. You’ll also need a service in place so that questions can be answered and problems can be solved in a timely, efficient manner.
Taking every precaution when it comes to legal matters is a good strategy to take, and applications are available to obtain signatures on legal documents safely and securely. Many services allow you to send documents as attachments via email.
Hopefully, your sales numbers will be a big job to keep track of, and a system like Highrise can help you organize your notes, email conversations and tasks on up to 30,000 customers, leads and contacts.
Design is a serious issue, and many different resources are available out there, giving you many opportunities to find a designer who will create your perfect site or logo.
Everyone wants to have a measurement of how well their site is performing and a service like UserTesting will enable you to get immediate feedback from users so that you can make improvements.
Communication as Key
Upon reviewing the tools suggested above, you’ll notice that the issue of communication comes up more than once. If a small business is expected to grow, employees must be able to successfully communicate with each other, as well as potential clients.
Email is one of the primary forms of internal and external company communications. It should go without saying that using a personal email is not only bad for business, but it’s also unprofessional and can generate a poor perception. Email addresses should be branded and end with the business name, such as [email protected]. This type of email format, accompanied with a professional signature block, incites confidence within recipients. That being said, what is a good email without a reliable email hosting service?
A reliable email host is a must for ensuring that your email communications will be received in a timely and secure manner. Suitable storage space, a minimum of 99.9 percent uptime, and spam and virus protection are the must-have features when looking for an email host. The ability to successfully communicate with both employees and customers is the basis for business success. Choosing the best email host solution, accompanied with the web tools needed to support your business infrastructure, is not only a recipe for success, but will alleviate the overwhelming feeling of attempting to build Rome in a day.
