The Digital Shopping List For New Businesses
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There’s more to apps than social media apps and Candy Crush Saga! They’ve become essential to the operation of contemporary business. Business apps and digital products are helping more fledgling entrepreneurs to build businesses from scratch. Whether you’re hoping to start a small operation on your own or are looking to enhance the productivity of your existing workplace through digital means, investing in the right apps and digital services can make all the difference.
Of course, technology is only ever as good as its user and it’s important to educate yourself and your employees in the proper use of digital tools to enhance productivity and ensure workplace efficiency. Providing bespoke training packages either inhouse or through an external provider like trainingconnection.com is the surest way to ensure that your investment in tech is supplemented by your investment in people.
With that in mind, join us through a digital shopping list for your business….
Starting out
When you first start out, one of your first ports of call will be to establish your online presence. You’ll want to create something striking and professional looking (even if it’s just a temporary placeholder that you’ll later replace). Strikingly is a great service for establishing an online presence that looks professional yet can be set up within an hour, so it’s perfect for placeholder websites.
Web design
When you choose a platform for your website, it can be a balancing act finding the right look and feel for your website. Platforms like WordPress have a range of indigenous themes that look well enough but can stand out like a sore thumb to the web-wise and undermine the professional feel of your site. Therefore, unless you have a web designer on your payroll, you should enlist a designer to build a bespoke theme that’s just for your website in order to optimize the look and user experience (UX) of your digital presence. Freelance designers can be found in abundance at places like PeoplePerHour.com. You can view great design portfolios at Dribble or Behance and find experienced coders at Upwork and Angel List.
Content generation
Whatever the nature of your business, you should underestimate the importance of content marketing at your peril. To engage with new leads and solidify your relationship with your customer base, your site should be regularly updated with unique content such as blog posts, videos, white papers and ebooks. Not only will this give customers that all important something for nothing, but it’ll provide a platform for you to demonstrate your own unique perspective, knowledge and experience. You should blog as much as you’re able without compromising the operation of your business. Should you need to outsource, however, you can find bespoke content management solutions from services like FatJoe.co.
E commerce
In an age where e-commerce makes almost 10% of retail sales, it’s only natural that businesses want to get in on the ground floor. Here are some common ecommerce tools that should suit a broad range of needs:
WooCommerce- Has a simple interface and is cheap and professional looking, perfect for WordPress users.
Shopify- Also simple to use and looks great but one it also takes a hefty commission from every sale you make.
Magento- Easy to use but has a generic appearance that requires some programming knowledge to customize to suit your branding.
Collaboration
Many startups, particularly creatively led startups, can require a lot of communication between collaborators. In these circumstances you need apps that will keep all communication open, transparent and in one place. After all, who wants to waste time assembling fragments of conversations across emails, texts and voicemails?
Slack is a great mobile app on iOS and Android that enables collaborators to communicate openly wherever you go. Users can assign teams, create work groups and communicate with one another in real time. Teams can also receive push notifications whenever anyone posts so nothing gets missed. Asana is another great app for collaboration that takes the concept of the humble task list and takes it to the next level.Tasks can be created and assigned to different users or groups of users who can then alert task setters when their task is completed or pending review.
For collaboration on documents, Google Docs has the advantage over other word processing apps as it allows for much easier collaboration. Google Docs enables collaborators to share a document with as many peers as they like and each collaborator can make notes, annotations and changes that are color coded so that users can see who has contributed what.
Whatever the nature of your startup, there’s never been a better time to use the wealth of apps and services out there to help transform your vision into reality!
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