Want to make sure your business succeeds online? Of course, you do! And, thanks to a wide variety of online tools and software, the streamlining process for your business has never been more effective and easy-to-accomplish. In fact, here are 15 ways you can use these online resources to streamline success for your business.
1) Day-to-Day Tasks
As you’re already well-aware, being a business owner requires you to wear multiple hats. Thanks to a number of online tools, however, you can simplify your day-to-day operations. For example, there’s Zapier. It’s a tool used to connect your most commonly used apps so you can move data and automate tasks.
Other online tools include the eSign service EchoSign, TripIt for travel, and Work for pretty much everything (project, management, CRM).
2) Project Management
Trying to schedule meetings, keeping your entire team on the same page, and collaborating with others can be a major hassle. There are now more than enough tools to help handle these otherwise daunting tasks. Here are a couple of recommended project management tools.
- Asana: Communicate with your team without email.
- Wrike: Collaborate and share files in real-time.
- Basecmap: Popular project management tool that helps you complete projects.
- Evernote: Take notes and share with your team.
3) Analytics
If you use a tool like Google Analytics, you can keep an eye on the health of your company’s website. The information Google Analytics provides lets you know where your site visitors are coming from and what they’re doing on your website.
4) Email Marketing
Embarking on an email marketing campaign can be a lengthy process. However, a service like MailChimp helps you send targeted emails to your audience on a regular basis through automation. You can even use MailChimp to discover subscriber profiles and when is the best time to send out an email.
5) Social Media Management
Keeping tabs on all of your social media accounts is another task business owners don’t always have time for. But, it’s a necessity if you want to successfully grow your business. Hootsuite and Buffer are both trusted apps to manage and monitor social media platforms. Sujan Patel also has some other recommendations on Entrepreneur like BuzzSumo, Mention, and Oktopost.
6) Digital Marketing
Your marketing efforts are ever-growing and ever-changing. So, why not take a load off and use tools like Surveymonkey, Unbounce, and Constant Contact to help you with customer feedback so that you can discover exactly what customers are expecting from your business.
7) Accounting
Accounting is absolutely essential, but it’s another task that most business owners dread. With software like Wave, you can handle all of your accounting needs online. Whether it’s general bookkeeping, invoicing, payroll, and personal finance. Due.com can track the time you spend on a project, as well as send out recurring online invoices.
8) Customer Relation Management
Top-notch customer support is one of the best ways to get customers talking about your business, which in turn leads to more referrals. Platforms like Salesforce have proven to be a great assist for businesses in the past. You can also try these tools like Insightly, Pipedrive, and Sprout Social to help you engage with customers.
9) Productivity
Running a business is hard work. But, the ones that succeed are the ones who have figured out how to be more efficient. With Productivity tools like Producteev, Wunderlist, RescueTime, and Pocket you can manage your time more wisely and stay on track so you can focus on tasks that matter.
10) Website Creation/Management
Your website is often going to be the first contact a potential customer has with your company. You can easily create a landing page with LeadPages. If you already have a killer website, you can enhance it with:
- LiveEngage: A powerful customer engagement tool that goes right on your website.
- Optimizely: Test your website to improve the customer experience.
- Wufoo: Create online forms for your site.
11) Human Resources
No matter how awesome your product or service is, you need a stellar team to help deliver a great customer experience. With online tools like The Resumator, Effortless HR, and TribeHR, you can find and train the best employees possible.
12) E-commerce
Selling your products online has never been easier. Thanks to platforms like Shopify, Magento, Bigcommerce, Miva Merchant, and the WooCommerce plugin for WordPress, you can create and manage an online shop in just a couple of minutes.
13) Brand Reputation Management
Warren Buffett once said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” Nowadays you don’t have to put as much time into tracing your online reputation. You can search for what other are saying about you by using IceRocket or Social Mention. Trackur also allows you to monitor what’s being said about your brand. And, Google’s handy Me on the Web can be used to track employee mentions. Managing what others say about you online has never been so easy.
14) Communication
No matter where you are in the world, you can now have a global workforce or chat with clients whenever you need to. Skype, GoToMeeting, Google Hangouts, Speek, and HipChat are all great resources to help you conveniently communicate with team members, host a conference call, or speak with customers.
15) Security
Because of everything else you’re worried about when running a business, it’s completely understandable to forget about the security of your website. Hosting is one tool that can ensure that you important information is safely stored online. Lookout is a great security tool for mobile devices. And, you can put your customers fears to ease with a TRUSTe Verified Seal.