10 Essential Tools for Small Businesses

We all have our favorite web apps we use for our business and even everyday life.  Below is a list of mine that I think are essential tools for small businesses.  Notice that most of these tools are free, which is always nice for your bottom line.

Freshbooks is a financial application that does both invoicing and time tracking services.  The user interface is nice and clean.  Creating an invoice or tracking your hours is simple and intuitive.  Depending on the number of clients you have, this will dictate the cost of the tool.  Pricing ranges from free to $149 per month.  I’ve contacted the company’s customer service department several times and they’re very responsive and helpful.  I notice the company continually makes improvements to the user experience so the program will only get better and better.

Jing is a video and screen capture application that can be very handy for everyone from designers to project managers.  You can capture an image and send it over the web instantly.  Your screenshots can be edited with simple editing tools that are provided within the program.  You can put together a tutorial (5 minutes max) to show your cohorts how to do something rather than sending confusing text instructions.  Additionally, your screen captures and videos are archived, once you hit save, to access anytime you want.  The user experience in this program is so simple and there is really no learning curve.  Pricing is free for up to 2GB, which should be sufficient for what you want to accomplish, however there is also a Jing Pro that you can purchase for $14.95 per year and the extra capabilities include different formats you can save video to rather than just swf (flash) file.  Another feature in the paid version is the ability to record video from your webcam.  You will need to download this program onto your desktop for use.

WordPress is an open source content management system for blogging.  In 2009, the Open Source Content Management System Market Share Report crowned WordPress as one of the top leaders in terms of adoption and brand strength.  To all the businesses out there, if you haven’t created your own custom website yet, start here.  At the very minimum, begin your online presence using something like WordPress or any other CMS based blogging tools like Joomla! and Drupal and BLOG.  Having a blog for a business is as second nature as paying your company taxes.  It is a must in this day and age, because now more than ever your brand is nothing without a personality.  I’m an avid WordPress user and so naturally I recommend WordPress.  It has a clean yet powerful user interface design and is quite simple to use.  The beauty of WordPress is that most of the programming has been done for you, so you don’t need to know how to code.  There are so many beautiful, highly functional and free WordPress themes that are offered that you don’t need to know how to design either.  Plus, this CMS has a plugin for everything just like there is an app for everything on the iPhone.  This application is also very SEO friendly, which is a major advantage for getting found online.

Basecamp is a project management and collaboration tool.  You can create to-do lists, milestones, whiteboards, and share files.  This is a robust tool to keep you organized when working with clients rather than sending 10 million emails back and forth.  This is also a great application to keep your priorities straight and turn projects into digestible tasks so you can maneuver through your projects easier.  The file sharing feature allows you to share big files, which is usually the case when you’re working on accounts.  The interaction design is simple and the user interface is somewhat customizable in terms of background colors and etc. New features come about frequently so it’s constantly improving. Prices range from the basic plan at $24 per month for working with small groups to the max plan at $149 per month for larger groups.

Constant Contact is well known for its email marketing program.  This is a simple tool for email campaigns where you simply choose a template; add some content, images, and links and poof you’re on your way.  If you want to get a quick newsletter or email out, then this is a good tool to turn to.  There are no programming skills needed whatsoever and you can select from a wide array of templates and layouts. If you are a bit saavy with HTML, you can paste your own code in too for a more customized look.  Pricing depends on the number of emails you send out and it ranges from $15 per month to +$150 per month.  Constant Contact also offers online surveys and event marketing tools.  I have yet to use them but if they’re anything like the email marketing application, then I’m sure they’re great tools as well.

Google Analytics is a metric tool used to track your website’s traffic.  It tracks everything from the number of unique visitors to your site to where your traffic is coming from.  It has a good UI design, which makes the user experience a cinch.  This tool is as essential as having a WordPress blog.  You must have it if you own a website.  Metrics are very important because it is one way of monitoring and understanding ROI.  Many analytics tools out there cost way too much for small businesses just getting started, so that’s why Google Analytics is such a great option.

Hootsuite is an all in one solution for your social networks.  This application allows you the ability to manage Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Ping.fm all in one spot with a very simple and dashboard-style user interface.  There’s also a simplified metric for analytics, and you can create Twitter lists and schedule tweets, as well as research what people are writing about your brand.  Another neat thing about this tool is that you can have more than one Twitter account, Facebook account, etc.  You are not limited to just one of each.  Did I mention that it’s free too?

Google Voice is a free calling service where you get your own number that contains some pretty cool features. When people call into your Google Voice number you can control which one or all of your other phones ring – cell phone, home phone, office phone, etc. Also voice messages are transcribed and recorded in your Google Voice user interface so you can listen to them anytime.  You can send and receive SMS or text messages and even do a conference call. This service is packed with lots of features and best of all they’re all free.

Alltop is described as an “online magazine rack.”  It’s the mother of all RSS feeds, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, where works including text, audio, video, etc are updated frequently.  The application stores everything on one screen from your favorite financial articles to the latest industry news, so you can stay up to date on what’s going on in your industry or specialty.  The service is free and also very simple to use with a well organized user interface.

Slideshare is a handy way to display and distribute your work in ppt, pdf, or doc formats.  Some of the best presentations come from Slideshare as there is a wealth of information on topics from visual design to health.  This application is free to use to publish your work whether it is an ebook or a white paper.  This is just another excellent place to showcase your work and the number of views and downloads of your documents are tracked so you know exactly how much your presentation is referenced.