Whether you’re starting an online business or setting up in your local area, a virtual presence is essential to marketing your concept. Apps and e-tools can make running your business easier and more efficient by helping you manage admin tasks, reach more customers, and plot your financial development. An online business app can also help you with things like marketing campaigns or designing your brand content or logo. Here’s the top 10 apps and e-tools we recommend if you’re looking to get your business off the ground!
10 Great Online Business Apps
- An Online Office
When you are first developing your online business ideas, it’s helpful to have everything you need in one place. Investing in a productivity suite, like Microsoft 365 or LibreOffice, can help you organize and back up your business files on a cloud. Most productivity software involves an email component, so you can start making contacts and building your team. These software solutions often also contain tools for creating presentations, spreadsheets, and word documents.
- Website Builder
Having an online presence that you can direct potential clients to and where you can catch online traffic, is probably the most crucial part of running a modern business. The good news is that your website still doesn’t have to be elaborate – it just has to be there! So long as your site looks clean and professional, you can achieve everything you need with a straightforward website building tool. Online platforms like Wix or Ucraft can provide you with everything you need to start online business activities or to advertise your skills. Just make sure your site has a concise description of your services and your up-to-date contact info and you’ll be good to go!
- A Social Media Presence
Even though you should have an official website, most successful brands also manage a business social media account. This can include apps like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook and should keep customers regularly updated on your services and promotions. Try to create consistent and relevant content and to engage with your audience as often as possible as this has been shown to increase consumer interest in a brand.
- An Online Store
Even if you’re selling merchandise or providing services through a traditional shopfront, an online store can increase your company’s revenue. You can create an online store using programs like Shopify or WooCommerce. Similarly, you can incorporate an online store into your business website by adding Paypal to your site or using an add-on if you run your business through WordPress. Online shops give you another outlet to sell your goods and mean you can make the most of global sales.
- Analytics Tool
If you’re running a startup business that relies on generating the content, you want to be able to analyze the content you put out and see how consumers respond. Tools like Google Analytics can help you see which items of content perform well versus which perform poorly. This can help you plan your content based on what your audience likes and what they will likely engage with. Engagement is the key to generating profit when it comes to content creation industries, so the more knowledge you have, the better!
- Email Marketing Tools
Email marketing is a great way to keep up a line of contact between you and your regular subscribers or clients. This allows you to keep interested parties in the loop about new deals or promotions and increase your online visibility. For example, if an online casino has a new offer that will help customers win money online, email marketing is a more successful strategy than advertising on an open platform.
Email marketing is also ideal if you run business services online as you may have more specific events to advertise. Using a mailing list rather than advertising on a website or social media account will allow you to tailor events to suit your clientele. E-tools like Mailchimp, which provides email templates and marketing campaign tools, are a great option for this.
- Image Design Tools
If you run a content creation service or your business relies on you selling personal merchandise, then clever, eye-catching branding is a must. Hiring someone to create your brand logo can be expensive. Besides, you may want to create different logos and designs to promote different products and events. If you’re the creative type, the online business mobile app Canva might be a good choice for you. Canva also allows you to design brochures and newsletters.
- Customer Surveys
When you’re running an online business, knowing your audience is the key to your success. A tool like Typeform is a great survey app – benefits for an online business are really unlimited when you can understand your customer base. Typeform lets you create standard review surveys, but you can also make them in the form of fun quizzes or make contact forms. It’s basically perfect for enhancing customer engagement.
- CRM
CRM, or Customer Relationship Management tools, are software programs that provide a wide range of functions for enhancing customer/client relations. CRM programs can help you find and analyze leads, plan marketing campaigns, automate sales processes, and allocate team members effectively. CRM’s can be quite large suites and can be expensive to purchase, but they’re definitely worth considering if you run an online business that involves mainly a customer interface.
- Accounting Tools
Keeping track of your finances is one of the most important parts of running any business. Handling the accounts isn’t always easy, however, and professional help can be pricey. An accounting tool like FreshBooks can lighten the load and automate certain maintenance financial tasks, like invoicing or tracking employee hours. It’s actually quite common for businesses to use some form of accounting tool, so don’t feel the need to do everything manually.
Conclusion
Running a business is hard and you need all the help you can get. Whether you want to run an online consulting firm or a game slot machine that offers a no deposit bonus, these tools will help you. We hope our list has given you some inspiration!
Final Call: Do you use e-tools to help run your business? Which ones and how do they help you? Tell us about them in the comments!
