Improve your efficiency with the latest business tools

Whether you are a sole trader or a growing concern, chances are that you never seem to have enough time to complete all the tasks your business demands. Technology helps the entrepreneur expand his or her efficiency to stretch those precious hours. You can improve your own productivity and that of your enterprise by employing the latest business tools. This list covers six handy services and apps that will solve the problems you face in your working day.

New businesses pop up everywhere. You don’t need to pay high rental fees for big-city offices to be a success. However, every salesperson and product designer will tell you there is no substitute for face-to-face contact, and getting to meetings with faraway customers can be time-consuming and expensive. If you feel that email contact isn’t enough and you want to work with collaborators and customers all over the world, consider using a video-conferencing business tool. Thanks to improvements in broadband speed, video conferencing is now a very effective way to get face-to-face contact without having to travel. The Fuze video-conferencing system offers HD-quality video and sound. Best of all, there is a free version.

The biggest trend in web access during 2014 was the shift from access through desktops and laptops to access via smartphones and tablets. Since January 2014, more Internet access time in the U.S. has come from mobile devices than from desktops and laptops. That fact sent big Internet companies, such as Google and Amazon, scrambling to produce mobile-friendly versions of their sites. The IDG Global Mobile Survey 2014 found that 77 percent of executives use a mobile device to research products and services, which shows that you need to get a mobile-formatted version of your site prepared. Small screens require different layouts compared with those traditionally used for webpages, and getting an expert to produce your mobile version can be expensive. DudaMobile is a business tool that enables you to quickly create a mobile-friendly site for your business via a series of templates and apps. You can also add “click to call” buttons and interactive maps to help boost your conversion rates.

Many entrepreneurs find they now access their emails from their phone more often than from their desktop computer. MailBox is an email system specifically written for smartphones. This mail app business tool is formatted to be mobile friendly and includes some special features. It learns your habits and sets priorities for emails from those senders that it notices you access immediately, and it gives less priority to emails from senders you tend to ignore.

Tripit “automagically” converts all your travel-booking confirmation emails into a travel itinerary. If you have ever gone on a business trip to a conference or seminar, or made a customer visit, you know there is enough to worry about, such as making sure you have all your notes, brochures, and samples organized, without having to keep track of all the printouts of hotel confirmations and electronic boarding cards. The Tripit business tool can be accessed from a range of devices and is even available on your phone or laptop when you do not have Internet access.

You are legally required to keep sales and employment records for a number of years, depending on the nature of the data. However, you do not have to store all the original paper documents to comply with these requirements. Still, if you digitize your records and your computer crashes, wiping out everything, you could be in big trouble. Therefore, it is very important to back up all data, although having a backup device on your premises is a bad idea. If your office gets robbed, the thieves are likely to take any USB memory sticks they find, along with the computers. Fortunately, many online-data backup business tools are now available. CrashPlan offers cloud-based storage that enables you to back up all your data on the Internet and protects your business from data loss.

Every website and online service that requires a log-in advises you to choose a password that is different from those you use for other services. Having the same password for everything would enable a data or identity thief to get access to all of your business’s online services after learning that one word. However, keeping track of all the different passwords you need to log in to all of your essential services can be a headache, and you certainly shouldn’t write down a list of them. LastPass fixes this problem by providing a secure list that is password-protected. You write all of your passwords into the system, and then it logs you in to each site you visit, prompting you only for your LastPass password. With this business tool, you only need to remember one password.

These six essential business tools will enable you to run your business even when you are on the move. Savvy entrepreneurs know that acquiring and adapting to new technology provides a business edge that improves productivity. The rapid proliferation of mobile-friendly business tools shows just how important it is for your business to have a website that can be accessed from a mobile device. The World Wide Web is going mobile. Make sure your business doesn’t get left behind.

Improve your website with the latest technology tools

You might be pleased with your company’s website and think it is performing well, but do you know for sure? Even a website that brings in sales could be improved to bring in more sales. The only way to discover whether your website is doing the best possible job is to test its performance. This review covers the best technology tools that will help you improve the performance of your website by identifying your potential customers and asking them about the site. Word of mouth is an important sales tool, so you need to ensure your back-office functions and after-sales service are also maximized.

Until recently, to get product testing for your website, you would need to hire a marketing firm. However, new feedback technology, analytical services, and website traffic analysis services can do much of the work for you. Take a look at the top six technology tools that will help you improve your website.

1) UserTesting

The classic method of product testing involves gathering a group of typical people from your target market, getting them to use the product, and requesting their opinion. UserTesting offers analytical services that do exactly that with websites. No matter where your website is hosted, it is accessible throughout the world. You don’t need to go to the UserTesting offices. They communicate with you over the Internet. Because you can’t physically be there to witness the testing, the company creates videos of typical users moving around your site and then sends those videos to you. The tests are specifically based on an aspect of your site you want investigated; for example, you can determine whether users can find the FAQ page or whether the payment page is easy to use on a smartphone.

2) Mixpanel

Mixpanel is a technology tool that covers information similar to that provided by UserTesting. However, the data that is used by the analytical technology of Mixpanel is gathered from regular users of your site rather than from nominated test subjects. To use the feedback technology of this service, you have to install a set of programs on your web server. This enables you to request data on the behavior of your site’s visitors. The aim is to gather business intelligence on how people use your site, which gives more detailed information about your site’s strengths and weaknesses than a simple count of the number of people who visited each page. You get information from the system by assembling data queries from a series of drop-down option boxes. Mixpanel’s pricing structure is a monthly subscription payment. The analytical services track either a certain number of people or a certain number of data points in your site. The plans cost up to $2,000 per month, but there is a free version available.

Mint is similar to Mixpanel in that you install the technology tool on your web server. The program applies analytical technology to visits to your site, and you access the gathered business intelligence through a dashboard program. Mint is much cheaper than the paid version of Mixpanel. You pay a one-time fee of $30 when you install the technology tool on your site. However, the information you receive from the system is much less comprehensive than the data presented by Mixpanel.

Clicky provides feedback technology through a range of technology tools, the list of which expands with increasingly more expensive plans. This analytical service has a much wider range of analysis options than Mint does and doesn’t require you to assemble queries of data to get business intelligence from the system. Clicky has a menu of pages, each of which presents a different graphic covering aspects of your site. All the information shown in the analysis includes live data, so the reports are up to the minute. A distinctive feature of Clicky is its Heatmap presentation of your webpages. This shows which features of each page attract the most clicks, by overlaying colored spots over the image of a particular page. The Heatmap feature is available only with the Pro Plus plan and more expensive plans. Pro Plus costs $14.99 per month, while the Pro plan, the cheapest paid plan, costs $9.99 per month. There is a free version, but it only allows you to monitor sites with daily page views of less than 3,000.

One of the most straightforward ways to get customer feedback is to ask for it. You can either put feedback buttons at various locations on your site or program a dialogue box asking for feedback. Kampyle specializes in the process of asking for customer feedback and interpreting the captured data. Feedback technology can be an effective method to get public opinion about your website’s performance.

You may have lost many customers in the past because you didn’t realize that your customer service methods weren’t good enough. The technology tools in this review may help you gain business intelligence into what is going wrong, but you can’t fix lousy procedures if you are prone to poor organization. A good work- and team-planning tool like Jira will help your improve your overall task management.

The three key technology tools for website traffic analysis are Mint, Mixpanel, and Clicky. Each of these business intelligence tools can be installed and run without the need for additional technological capabilities. You could try the free version of Clicky and then progress to one of the paid plans once you become familiar with the tool. Once you have worked out how to analyze your site’s performance, you can ask for a second opinion by getting UserTesting to check the vital functions of your webpages. Adding feedback features through Kampyle will enable continuous feedback data to drive your website’s design. Implementing a task management tool for user support or project management should improve your customers’ opinions of your site. You can get started today with these technology tools and improve your site’s sales performance.