#Online business tools professional#
#Online business tools series#

We recently published a review of Xero on the Style Factory website if you’re interested in learning more about this rather dry but important aspect of running a business.

Online accounting tools allow you to automate a host of financial activities – including invoicing, bank reconciliation, payroll and credit control – whilst making your accounts accessible 24/7 online. One of the best things that you can get for your business is a good bookkeeper – but failing that, an online accounting tool like Xero is a pretty good substitute. These allow you to create and edit a multitude of documents on any device, and store them in the cloud – in effect, providing your business with a network drive that can be accessed from any location and on any device. In the old days, this simply meant installing a copy of Microsoft Office on your PC, but in today’s online, multi-device world it now makes more sense to buy productivity tools that work in the cloud – like Office 365 or G Suite. Productivity toolsįor the day to day running of your business, you’re going to need some productivity tools: email accounts, spreadsheets, document editors and so on.

#Online business tools series#

These tools not only allow you to send mass mailouts easily, but they allow you to automate your communications too, by letting you use ‘autoresponders’ – a series of ‘drip’ emails that are sent automatically to your subscribers (at time intervals of your choosing) after they sign up to your mailing list. There are a wide range of e-marketing tools available that allow you to host an email-marketing list and send e-newsletters to it – my favourites are probably Getresponse and Mailchimp (for more on the pros and cons of each of these, you can check out my Getresponse vs Mailchimp review). An email marketing appĬapturing email addresses is an essential part of growing a business: a good mailing list allows you to communicate directly with your warmest leads and develop ongoing, profitable relationships with them. If your business chiefly involves selling products online, then I’d plump for Bigcommerce or Shopify.

#Online business tools professional#

In an ideal world, it’s good to get a professional web designer on board to help you construct a site, but if budgets don’t allow, I’d suggest shortlisting Squarespace or Wordpress as platforms to use if you intend to build your own website. A fully-fledged website is a much better bet: it allows you to define your brand precisely the way you want to and attract more traffic through organic search.

In 2017 stressing a need for a website may sound a bit ridiculous, but you’d be surprised at the number of new businesses that think that a Facebook page is a substitute for a proper business site. Written by Professional Academy Guest Blogger Chris SingletonĬhris Singleton – director of digital marketing company Style Factory - highlights 5 key tools that can help kickstart a new business.