Free tools are always very welcome. But in the beginning of a business, saving money is one of the most important things you need to do to avoid extra expenses and try to make your company grow.
Did you know that there are about 28 million small business in the United States and around 80% of them fail in the first 18 months? Well, with this data confronting every entrepreneur, small business always look for competitive advantage. Anything that make you stand out is worth trying. That’s why I selected 10 free essential tools you should consider having and using to start your business. This doesn’t mean that you are safe, but that you have a good list of tools to support your work without spending money.
1. WIX
Wix offers a simple, yet powerful online platform. Using a browser-based interface, you can choose from a wide selection of design templates or start with a blank canvas. It presents an easy drag and drop system, is mobile friendly and is totally reliable when it comes to hosting domain. However, unless you upgrade to a premium package (starting at $4.95/month), you don’t have much control over your domain name.
2. ONLINE LOGO MAKER
After you plan and name your company you are going to need a logo. So this is a the most complete logo design tool where you can create a logo by yourself with no designers expenses. You will have access to a high variety of images and symbols. You can edit, add text and also pictures from your computer. You can design your own professional logo and download totally for free. But if you need or prefer to have higher quality and vector files it’s only $19.
3. MAILCHIMP
This tool is not just an E-mail Marketing platform, when you connect your store with one of MailChimp’s hundreds of e-commerce integrations, you can create targeted campaigns, automate helpful product follow-ups, and send back-in-stock messaging. They feed you with detailed reports that help you keep improving over time and that are really easy to interpret. Designing your email campaigns is also easy with drag and drop feature and lots of templates available for you to use.
4. BUFFER
It’s undeniable that social media is pretty important for any business, no matter its size, time or niche. So a tool like Buffer is a real game changer. Posting and analyzing up to 4 channels (for free) in just one place saves a lot of time and effort. Easy to use, edit, schedule and check the engagement on each post.
5. TRELLO
This is an administration tool. Forget about thousands of exchanged e-mails with lots of subjects and confusion. Trello is a platform where you can add your whole team and organize “Boards” with main activities, brainstorms, ideas, discussions and warnings. You can create labels like “waiting”, “urgent” and “done” to follow up the status of each task. It’s really interesting and fundamental to keep everyone integrated. Time saver, easy to use and helps you maintain everything very visual and organized.
6. GOOGLE ANALYTICS
No doubts about Google Analytics. If you don’t know it yet, you are losing some serious time and info about your website and public. In a few minutes you attach the Analytics code into your website and start to track every action of every visitor. This is not just about traffic, you can study this tool and make the difference on your marketing using the right strategy.
7. WORDPRESS
Your website needs a blog. Every website needs one if they consider the inbound marketing a strong strategy to attract and convert visitors. In this case, go for WordPress. Better attachment to Google and pretty nice free templates. Easy to use, edit and great SEO tools.
8. BOTWAY
If you have an Online Store, you should consider getting a 24/7 chat support to avoid visitors to leave your website for unsolved doubts. This tool is free and easy to apply to your website. Guarantee full responsibility and quality on attendance.
9. CRAZY EGG
Don’t ever ask yourself again if anything is not working on your website. Crazy Egg is here to help. You can use it to make changes on your website in order to get better results and you don’t need to be a IT pro. This tool features heat maps, mouse action, reports, segmentation, feedback and researches. So you will understand how your visitors behave, likes and dislikes, what helps you increase sale.
10. BUZZSUMO
This is a great Marketing tool to understand what are the trends on your market field on the web. This helps you identify most commented and shared subjects to inspire you to write for your own blog. Also find out who are the influencers on your area. Try to contact them and send some well-written article, maybe they share your content. Your blog being your entry door to sales is not a bad idea at all.
Let us know in the comments below what is your Free Essential tool!
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