Building a startup is hard and life of an entrepreneur is harder. As an entrepreneur, you wear multiple hats and manage numerous things. Running a startup is a daily challenge, however, there exist tools that make your life slightly simpler. Here is our list –
Market research tools –
Market research is crucial to every business. Traditional market research is based on sampling, such as focus groups however, there with the internet age, there are some tools you can use to make research a bit simpler. Here is our pick:
• Google trends
A free service based on Google Search, Google Trends shows how often a specific search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world and in various languages.Google Trends is a great tool that shows you comparative Google searches. You can use this tool to discover what your target audience is searching for online and analyze the information to gain insights on your customers.
• Survey Monkey
Whether it’s a new product or launch or testing an existing one, market research surveys will help you make smarter decisions. For such a survey, survey monkey is the ideal tool. It lets you create and publish online surveys in minutes. You can create a questionnaire and circulate it online and monitor results, all at once. So if you are thinking of circulating a survey, Survey Monkey should be your go to option.
• Google URL shortener
An extremely useful tool, Google URL shortener lets you to track, in real-time, the clicks and referrers on any shortened URL – a perfect tool to help you understand what appeals to your audience.
• Google Insights Databoard
This tool offers fascinating insights on how people browse and buy. It also lets you explore insights from Google research studies, share them with others, and create your own custom infographics.
• Loop11
Loop11 is a usability testing service that allows you to test any webpage, even your competitors. It provides the ability to gain detailed insights and understandings of user behavior.
• CloudCherry
It is an easy to use, online feedback tool that helps you understand and measure ythe customer delight and sentiments based on their experiences.
• GetInsights
It is a very useful tool which allows you to run quick surveys and get useful insights.
Marketing tools
• Hootsuite
A social media management software, it helps you manage channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, MySpace and Foursquare, blogging on WordPress. It allows you to update pages of multiple social networks or reply directly. Hootsuite has become popular and should be your go to tool for social media management. It will save you a lot time.
• HubSpot
Hubspot is a marketing tool that helps businesses attract visitors, covert leads and close customers. It has in built tools for social media marketing, landing pages, analytics, content management etc.
• Google AdWords
Google AdWords is Google’s advertising system, which lets advertisers bid on certain keywords in order for their clickable ads to appear in Google’s search results. It is definitely one of the most important tools for marketing.
• Google analytics
Marketing involves a lot of numbers and with Google Analytics, you can get them. This savvy tool gives you data you need to make intelligent marketing and business decisions. It’s a free premium service offered by Google, which tracks website traffic
• Open site explorer
An optimizing tool created by Moz, Open site explorer helps you track the links leading to your website. It is one of the essential tools to be used as a part of off-site search engine optimization. A great part of filtering and comparison metrics is available for free, but if you want to get access to the advanced features and reports, you will need to have an account.
• PowToons
It is business presentation software, which allows you to create some cool videos and presentations. PowToons is a cloud based software and is ideal for making interesting presentations.
• Simply measured
Simply Measured offers enterprise-level analytics and management for big brands and their social efforts. You can generate the following reports on this:
1. Twitter Follower Report
2. Twitter Customer Service Analysis
3. Facebook Fan Page Report
4. Facebook Content Analysis
5. Facebook Competitive Analysis
6. Facebook Insights Report
7. Instagram User Report
8. Social Traffic Report
9. Traffic Source Report
10. Google+ Page Report
11. Vine Analysis
Collaboration tools
• Asana
Asana is a web and mobile application designed to help everyone working on a prject keep track of each other’s work. The product allows you to plan and manage projects and tasks online without the use of email providing each team a workspace. Workspaces contain projects and projects contain tasks.
• SmartSheet
This online project management software has the functionality of a excel spreadsheet combined with loud-capabilities for sharing, attachments, integration with file storage services.
• Dropbox
Dropbox is probably one tool that you will use most for collaboration. With this software, you can have access to all our documents, files and articles. Dropbox is compatible mobile platforms as well. There are built-in apps built for Windows, Mac, Ubuntu, Android, iOS and Blackberry.
• Google calendar
Google Calendar is a real time web and mobile application, which let you keep track of all your events. You can schedule meetings and share it with others with a simple click-and-drag interface. You can keep appointments simple with just a subject header, or you can choose to add more details. You can include a location for the appointment and a short description. You can choose to view the calendar by day, week, month or a view that presents just the next four days.
• Slack
Slack is perhaps the best way for teams to combine and work. It brings all your communication together in one place.This user friendly software offers chat rooms organized by topic, as well as private groups and direct messaging. All content inside Slack is searchable, including files, conversations and people.
