Must-Have Tools for Small Businesses and Startups

There are many significant web tools on the market today. Website tools are important to help website owners build their products faster, create interesting content, and of course, sell products online. It has always been a challenge to stay on the top of your game among millions of other websites/web apps.

In this article, we’ll go over what website tools small businesses and startups should focus on as they start to have higher traffic and conversions.

5 Must-Have Tools for Small Businesses and Startups

Below are the tools that one should use if he/she runs a small business or a startup.

1. Analytics tools

The first type of tools I feel the need to talk about are analytics tools. These tools are highly important for tracking your progress and flaws, overall, making your website much more appealing to search engines. There are many analytics tools out there you can use, here are a few of my favorites:

• HotJar offers session recordings for real-time analysis. Far more interesting features are the analysis of the website content starting from tracking vague CTAs up to long-form content with high bounce rates.
• Clicky is your go-to tool if you want heatmaps, spam/bot filtering, website monitoring, search keyword rankings, Twitter analytics, and tons more. It’s not only feature-rich but also mobile-friendly and comprehensive.
• Google Analytics a universally claimed analytics tool that is a fit for those who want to track their traffic in real-time. Additionally, Google Analytics is easy to use, offers many features and all for free.
• Chartbeat another great real-time analytics tool that can let you know how many users are currently at your site and how they’re engaging with your content, and more. It’s great for publishers, editorial sites, and blogs.

2. Live Chat

Live chats are a great customer support option. It is a great way to get the production going and give your customers what they desire even if it can get a little noisy. It is less frustrating and less stressful to communicate with a support team through live chats instead of emails, as there is not as much of a wait for a response as you might face with an email. So, to take your customer support to the next level, here are the best live chat software to take into consideration;

• Glassix is a top-rated live chat software used by thousands of small businesses and startups. Glassix offers a unique blend of human takeover and handoff to the chatbot every time during the live chat session. In addition, it allows your users to switch channels from your website live chat to other channels like WhatsApp, Apple Messages for Business, Messenger, SMS, Email, and more making the live chat experience on your website completely omnichannel and advanced.
• Intercom with installing a widget in the bottom right corner of your website, Intercom allows you to engage users with live chat solutions along with setting up automated chatbots.
• Zendesk the best thing about Zendesk is the number of integrations it offers to help you build chatbots, and case management workflows to meet your customers’ needs.
• Hubspot chat the free live chat software happens to dominate the industry for many reasons. The best part of it is unlimited, personalized conversations executed with a build-in chatbot that is free and doesn’t require coding skills.
• Live Chat over 30k+ companies trust Live Chat with their live chat sowftares around the globe.

3. Payment integrations

Payment integrations are are a must for eCommerce platforms or marketplaces, for accounts receivable and payable. Payment gateways are known to increase customer loyalty and sales. Setting up automated invoice processing and accepting payment for your company or organization through a digital platform is often a strategy that will improve your overall performance. There are a few dozens of payment (gateway) integrations you can try, but I strongly recommend starting with these best invoice scanning software:

• Stripe has to be the number #1 choice of many Ecommerce teams. The payment gateways offer dozens of features, including various payment options, dispute handling, clean canvas invoices, financial reporting and much more. Stripe imposes a charge for every payment transaction, and the exact amount can be figured out with the help of a Stripe fee calculator.
• Paypal happens to be another big name in the market. Paypal is easy to use and integrate with. It’s especially great for Ecommerce as you can have simple checkout options for your products and easily receive money online.
• Buy Me a Coffee is here for those who don’t own eCommerce platforms but still have amazing talents and skills worthy of your attention and paycheck. Buy me coffee is internationally known as a platform that is created for creators and artists to accept support from their fans. And, yes, you can integrate the platform into your web apps/websites.
• Gumroad is also a popular one among eCommerce and marketplace owners and is easy to set up.

4. Online Forms

Next up are online forms. With the right online form creating tools, you can produce fully responsive forms to instantaneously capture and store information, which will then turn into dynamic, interactive, live data. Additionally, online forms can be implemented consistently to gather the information you need safely and securely. This being said, here are the set of online forms tools to add to your toolkit;

• Google Forms are the most popular option for creating dynamic forms free of cost.
• Typeform is gaining popularity for offering dozens of templates, conversational data collection, unlimited type forms and much more.
• Wufoo if you need to create graphics without spreadsheets, Wufoo is the most fittable option for you.
• JotForm helps millions of users implement unique workflows by creating templated forms without writing a single line of code.
• Formstack is a workplace productivity platform that helps businesses regulate their work with no-code forms.

5. UI, UX, Web Design and more.

The last section is for those folks out there who are crazy for little details that make websites whole, beautiful and responsive. There are many ways you can go with your web design. Tools like Figma offer a great variety of features to help get the desired result. But I would like to let you know small tools can sometimes be much better for your required small and critical aspects of UI. So, to conclude our article, here are some of my favorite tools that can help with visuals, fonts, illustrations and other components of your site

• Undraw is a design project that can help you improve your web design with open-source illustrations of any kind.
• SVG Wave Generator is a free generator that offers a variety of shapes to get your web design game to the next level.
• Announcement Bar – a tool for generating a website notification bar with your wished design.
• Back to Top – generate a Scroll to Top button with this free tool with your desired color, size, icon, etc.
• Icon Finder – the one of the largest marketplaces for vector and raster icons in various formats includne SVG and PNG.