Every startup is hard and usually it requires much preparation. Often you are on your own or with just a few people to help you with all the work. And even when you finalize your startup idea, create a business plan and website, there’s still much work to do. If you have just started your business and you don’t have a big team and resources to operate daily chores, here is an ultimate list of startup tools to help you with every possible challenge.
PDF conversion tools
Dealing with business documents can be tough especially if these are in PDF form that is hard to edit. Thanks to PDF Converter online tools you can easily convert PDF files to editable file formats, merge multiple PDFs into one or split one big PDF into smaller documents. Everything is free and no email is required. You can even convert scanned PDF files.
Data visualization tools
If you need to make graphics for your company blog or website, to create a business card, leaflets, brochures and you still haven’t hired a skilled graphic designer, you can use some of data visualization tools for that purpose. There are different data visualization tools such as Visual.ly,Plotly that have tons of pre-made templates you can repurpose to create infographics, cover photos etc.
Webinar tool to organize product demo
Whether you sell products or services, you will probably want to attract more customers and that can be hard at the start. If you want to stand out from your competitors, you may consider offering product demo trainings to your customers. Thanks to webinar tools you can easily organize trainings for new users and it will pay off for sure.
User experience tool
Even if you created your product and website, there is still room for improvement. At early stage of every startup business, you should try using a user experience tool. With limited resources it will be easier to use such tool to test user experience than to hire a UI designer.
Project development tool
Every startup business starts with a small team. But small team doesn’t necessarily mean that the number of projects will be low as well. Assuming that your small team has much work to do, it would be better to use project development/tracking tools such as Asana and Trello to centralize all the work.
Accounting tool
If you don’t have enough budget to hire an accountant, you can turn to any of these accounting tools for help: Expensify, Xero, Quickbooks, Waveapps. These tools are good enough for every startup business that doesn’t have much experience in managing revenues and money flow.
Social media tools
If your startup is not present on social media, it doesn’t exist. Even if you are sure that the industry your startup belong to doesn’t have much potential on social media, you need to have accounts on at least Facebook and Twitter. Posting twice or three times per week is good for a start and if you don’t want to think of social media every day, just use social media tools such as Buffer or Hootsuite. These tools are like organizers and calendar, just prepare the posts and copies, set up the dates and that’s it.
Email marketing campaign tool
Email marketing is not dead. No matter what is your startup you can use email marketing tools when you want to reach out to your existing customers or potential leads. You don’t need an army of people that will send the emails, just use Mailchimp, Drip or similar email marketing tools to run email campaigns.
Survey tools
After some time when you have a decent amount of users and clients, you can run surveys that will help you conclude what you can do better in the future. Survey tool like Survey pal can help you with technical side of things, you just need to think about the questions for the survey.
Stock images
If you still don’t have an in-house designer or there is too much work, stock images can be the first aid kit for every startup. Even if you don’t have a budget for stock images, you can find a lot of free images. There are websites such as Pixabay and Unsplash that store images on all topics and queries.
Recruiting tool
From working late hours to finish all the daily tasks, to setting up new goals for your startup business, you may not have time to recruit new people. Luckily there are recruiting tools that can do some job for you.
Cloud storage tool
Google Drive and Dropbox are a must for every startup business. Not only will you be able to access your documents wherever you are, but also other team members will have easy access to them. Not to mention that you can all be synchronized and up-to date with the changes.
Writing tools
Whether it is website content, articles for the blog, guest posts, ebook materials, you need to use writing tools that will automatically point out grammar and spelling mistakes. Plagiarism checker tools also belong to this category, as you know how bad for SEO can be to have plagiarised content.
Seo tools
Speaking of SEO, you need good SEO tools to track ranking, discover new keywords and spy on competitors. If you don’t have budget for Ahrefs, you can also try free tools such as Ubersuggest or SEMrush. These tools will help you fix all SEO errors and improve your website. As a result, the better ranking will increase your chances for success.
Live chat tools
Once you have a lot of customers, you need to think to keep them. The first tool to help you with that is live chat tool. Implement live chat so your customers can always reach out to you for help. Make them wanna stay and use your product or services.
Wireframing tool
If you are still in the first phase of startup business and you haven’t finished your website or shopping cart page, you can use wireframe tools to sketch some ideas. Wireframing tools are the best way to show to your website developer what do you want and expect from your new website.
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