Digitization has changed the paradigms of  marketing, entrepreneurship, and the media. The world is now literally at your finger tips. The advent of information technology, data clouding, virtual spaces, and 24/7 Internet connectivity from anywhere in the world has made business practices dynamic.

One of the most enticing aspects of digitization is the introduction of savvy apps and commendable tools. Web applications and Internet tools have made small businesses grow by leaps and bounds. Entrepreneurs feel they have more control over business performance due to greater transparency, accessibility, and systemization.

If you too wish to take your business to the next level, do bring the following fabulous apps for small businesses in practice from now onwards.

Evernote – Go Paperless!

No more sticky notes; now have an amazing app to help you remember everything that you want to. Need to collect and store website excerpts, audio and video files, memos, and notes in one place? Get Evernote and go paperless! You can store any type of data on a cloud, organize it the way you want, and refer back to it when needed. Sort, tag, edit, share, and sync information with Evernote. It saves time, energy and is of course cost effective.

Google Drive – Cloud Technology Made Better

File-sharing is often an urgent need and thus quite critical to a business' success. Thanks to Google Drive, small businesses can now easily view, share, edit, and update any type of data file in a completely protected interface. Google Drive allows multiple users to work on a given file at the same time. Since it's a cloud app, you can access it from any device and any place in the world. Google Drive has all the advanced office features so it encourages productivity.

Zendesk – Serves Beyond Customer Expectations

In today's competitive business environment, no other factor probably matters as much as customer service does. You simply can't afford to annoy your customers. Why? Even a single negative comment or impression can bring down your company’s popularity in minutes!

Zendesk is a fantastic app to streamline your customer support services.It lets you consolidate and merge customer communication at one place so that every concerned employee can access it when needed. Storage of customer communications is not only helpful for future reference, but the information can also be used to automate standard replies to customer queries.

Zendesk also helps create customer forums for live chats where they can share their experiences and talk more about your products and services. This way you can save your marketing costs too. In short, it really is a helpful app for small businesses.

A Few More...

In addition to the above, there are several other apps that can take your business to the next level. As indicated earlier, an overwhelming range of apps for small businesses are available that can streamline a business and simplify day-to-day business activities. A few known and commonly used apps include FormMobi, MailChimp, Tripit, Square, LocalVox, HootSuite, InDinero, Mint, Asana, Wunderlist, Bump, and Expensfy.

Ben is a tech guy and a business consultant at Chesterfield Group company. Combining technology with business knowledge is the key of his success. At the moment he working on projects with companies at BVI, Belize, Cyprus and UK

Editor’s Note: A large portion of our clients are entrepreneurs who have just entered the marked with their fresh businesses and who are looking to hire qualified web and mobile designers to establish their professional web presence. This article will be useful for our future clients who are about to start their companies online and off-line.

image source

When you first get your initial idea for your company, it is one of the most exciting and invigorating feelings in the world. However, if you have never done it before, you probably worry that you do not know the first things about how to start your company. Fortunately, the web makes much of the information you need within reach. You can learn the basics of what you need to start your business, and even learn the steps you need to take to get your company off the ground. It is exciting and intimidating, but it is possible. You can learn how to start your company and become a business owner in no time.

Steps to Your First Business

The key to beginning your business is in the planning. You need to follow some structure that other companies follow, especially in their early days so you can learn how to start your company right.

The first thing you need to do is have a business plan. The business plan is one of the key elements in making sure your business stays on track. The written guide serves as something of a roadmap for your business and for what you want from your company. You have to be clear about why you are starting a business, and you need to be clear about what it is the business will do. Check this guide to help you write a business plan for your company

The plan can change and evolve over time. A basic business plan can be just a single page that covers what you offer, who you are targeting, and what you plan to do to make it happen. Of course, many plans have far more detail. As you learn more about how to start your company, you can add those details to help solidify your vision.

You need to have a good product or service that you feel others will actually and are willing to pay for. Part of your plan should be to find out just how much they are willing to pay so you can get your pricing right.

Start up money for the business is one of the biggest problems many people have. You might have this issue when you are learning how to start your company too. Find ways to save on costs by choosing to buy used rather than buying brand new for your equipment. Work at home instead of renting an office space. Depending on your type of business, you can come up with your own money saving ideas that work for your field. Another option that is quite popular and feasible today is crowdfunding. Let others invest in your company.

All of the Legal Matters

You also need to take care of the legal matters for your business. This means you need to determine what legal structure you want to use for the business, and you need to register your business name. You can read in the following article information on how to start with the formation of your company in various destinations worldwide.  Get your tax ID number, and make sure you have all of your permits and licenses in order. These will vary from business to business. Speaking with an attorney or a business advisor about all of the necessary elements to set up your company is a good way to make sure you are doing everything correctly.

Ben is a certified accountant in KSA. His job is to help and advice people choose the best way to start their new company with their legal and corporate needs

Editor’s Note: Quite a few tech startup entrepreneurs outsource their web and mobile development needs to our company. Our goal is not only create high quality web sites and mobile apps for startups but also support and help would-be founders as much as we can. Therefore our team publishes some useful entrepreneurship information like the below startup business plan checklist in our blog.

image source

When an entrepreneur is starting to think about attracting external investments he/she faces a problem of developing a business plan. Without it there’s no reason of meeting with investors because, surely, no decision will be made. It’s a common misconception (especially in the pre-startup phase) that there is no point of creating a business plan. And if it is still to be created it could be formal and contain nothing but generalities. No wonder such entrepreneurs usually end up with no investments. The majority of investors will look through your business plan very thoroughly. Your ROI calculations are not even their first interest as what they are looking for is your deep understanding of the market you are going to address with your product or service and whether your product / service will enjoy a good demand to eventually bring profit to the startup. That’s why you should take your business plan development seriously. This document is a kind of a check list for a startup entrepreneur to understand whether he/she has made a sufficient market research and has got a well thought-out project. I personally create a business plan with all calculations for each of my new project even if I have no intention of attracting funds from outside investors. I do it for myself, for better understanding of what I want to get, what I have to do to reach my goals and whether I can handle the project by my own or have to partner with someone. In 99% of cases the initial calculation that seemed sufficient for the project implementation would increase 2-3 times after a more thorough consideration of some small but important details every business consists of.

However startup business plans that appeal to venture capitalists are a bit different from standard business plans one can find in the Internet. First of all, it’s because angel investors prioritize some other things. That’s why the structure of the business plan you’ll find below meets the requirements of venture funds.

Structure and Content of The Business Plan for Venture Capital Funds

Project Executive Summary

• Market Size and Opportunities

In this part you need to provide data on the size, dynamics and opportunities of the existing market for your product or service. You should include a list your main competitors if there are any and describe their financial and non-financial capabilities. You also have to describe trends and problems of the market.

• Product

This executive summary paragraph contains a short description of the offered product or service, its features and main distinctions in comparison of the similar products and services. If your product is new and still under development you should give information on the current research and development stage.

• Team

Here you should give short information on your management team.

• Business model

In this part you should describe a business model of the offered project in a few sentences: the way you plan to produce / execute and sell your product or service to the end consumer.

• Investments

This part is for specifying the amount and purpose of required funds to be raised for the startup project. Here you should also define the goals you plan to achieve after attracting the financing.

• Project Exit

This part of the Executive Summary is about describing the terms of exit from the project for the investor and suggesting the investor some business exit options.

1. Market and Industry

1.1 Market Prospects

In this paragraph an entrepreneur describes the market for the offered product or service. It’s advisable to show the existing market dynamics and make a forecast on the growth potential, changes and development of the market. If you have an access to any professional researches of the market opportunities for your product or service you should provide a reference to such materials. Here you should also describe important trends and events that are happening or going to happen on your market.

1.2 Market Size, Segment and Potential Customers

1.2.1 Potential Customers

In this clause you should provide detailed information on potential customers of the offered product or service. If it’s an end product or service for retail customers your investors would like to see the customers’ consumption and income pattern (the size with a breakdown by countries/regions). In case of B2B sales it’s advisable to provide such data as the potential customers’ market share, annual turnover (if available), share of the offered product in the these businesses’ consumption patterns and their business development tendency.

1.2.2 Offered Product or Service Market Segment

By the offered product or service segment we mean the niche that the product fills or is going to fill on the market.

1.2.3 Market Size and State

This clause is for description of the size, state and capacity of the existing market for your product or service.

1.3 Competition

Here you should describe your startup competition on the existing market, list and describe all the manufacturers/providers of competing products or services.

1.3.1 Direct Competition

In this clause a would-be startup founder demonstrates and describes all products or services that can compete directly with the startup product or service. The entrepreneur’s product or service should also be compared product with its existing or future competitors.

1.3.2 Alternative Competition

Unlike the previous Direct Competition clause you should indicate hereby your possible alternative competitors.

1.3.3 Competitive Advantages

Competitive advantages are key components of the project success that’s why you need to do your best to thoroughly describe all competitive advantages of your product or service.

For example:

- A patented proprietary technology or process. Unique experience and know-how acquired by business/managers/experts.
- High-end, unique equipment.
- Special properties of the product or service.
- Exclusive contracts.
- A wide distribution network.

1.3.4 Barriers and Obstacles

Here the entrepreneur should indicate the existing market entry barriers as well as protective barriers that help hold the expected product/service share on the market. You’ll also need to add information on barriers that are to be put up to protect your project from competitors.

2. Product and Technology

2.1 Technology

In this clause you need to give a thorough description of your technology, its advantages and main components.

2.2 Technology Improvement Work

You should provide here some information on the current technology improvement work.

2.3 Product

2.3.1 Product peculiarities

This clause is for the detailed description of the product you’re addressing the market with. You should also show here your product main peculiarities and distinctiveness from the competitive products offered on the market.

2.3.2. Product Sales Channels and Opportunities

Here your should indicate the main sales channels for your product or service.

For example:

- Products distribution method.
- Suggested distributors and resellers.
- Research data on the potential demand.

2.3.3 Direct use peculiarities

Here you should describe all direct use peculiarities of your product or service.

For example:

- Outstanding features
- Flaws
- Hidden potential

2.3.4 Alternative use possibilities

This part of the business plan is for proving information on possible alternative ways to use your product.

For example:

- Outstanding features
- Flaws
- Hidden potential

3. Intellectual Property and Its Protection

3.1 Intellectual Property

Here you should describe your project intellectual property that is to be protected.

3.2 Actual Intellectual Property Protection

In this clause you should list all the patents you have, including the filed PCT applications.

3.3 Plans for Further Protection

If according to the project authors there are some parts of the project that are not backed up with patents, you should provide information regarding your plans for the future intellectual property protection.

For example:

- Patent search.
- Filing missing patent applications in your own or other countries.

4. Team

4.1 Managing team

Here you should describe your managing team in details:

- Short bio of your key managers.
- Their relevant experience and achievements.
- Contacts and references from the companies and employees related to the venture capital fund.
- Each top-manager’s motivation in the business.

4.2 Technology Development Team

In this clause you need to provide some data on your technology development team in the same way you did with the managing team.

4.3 Prospective Management Team Reinforcement

Managers availability or hiring opportunities:

- Chief Executive Officer
- Chief Operating Officer
- Chief Strategy Officer
- Chief Financial Officer
- Chief Accountant

5. Business Model

Here you should describe your current or prospective business model.

5.1 Operations and Strategy

5.1.1 Research & Development

In the R&D clause a startup entrepreneur provides some information on the project research component as well as the ongoing and expected development.

5.1.2 Production

The “production” notion here comprises the following:

- Buildings, structures and titles to land.
- Main equipment, its cost and depreciation.
- Necessity and amount of investment for improvement and repair.

5.1.3 Customer Service

Customer service here is the necessity and structure of work with clients that have already become consumers of your product or service.

5.2 Product Promotion Strategy

5.2.1 Marketing Campaigns

Here you should describe your planned marketing campaigns and key marketing activities targeted at your product end users.

5.2.2 Evaluated Marketing Campaign ROI

This clause is for the marketing campaigns cost-effectiveness evaluation. Here are some things you should try to predict and describe are:

- Marketing investments dynamics / ROI per client.
- Dynamics of a single client response to a specific marketing component.
- Expected actions for marketing campaigns effectiveness tracking and analysis.

5.3 Sales Development Strategy

5.3.1 Main Sales Channels

In this clause startup entrepreneurs should describe the promotion strategy of their products or services in the main sales channels, the way they are going to work with distributors and suppliers.

5.3.2 Alternative Sales Channels

This clause is similar to the previous one but deals with alternative sales channels.

5.3.3 Basic Sales Concept

Here you should describe a basic concept of your product or service promotion in the distribution network or to a certain type of customers.

5.4 Implementation Schedule

5.4.1 Prospective Market Entry Schedule

Here you should define your maximum capitalization schedule as well as represent your vision of the venture capitalist’s exit from the project.

5.4.2 Key Milestones

This clause is necessary for scheduling the most important events in the future the project lifetime.

6. Finances

6.1 Key Assumptions

6.1.1 Sales Forecast

Here you should describe main statements on which the sales forecast is based and put in appropriate calculations.

6.1.2 Operating and Capital Costs

In this clause you should describe all prospective operating and capital costs in accordance with the sales plan and key milestones.

6.2 Consolidated Financial Forecast

Here startup founders show the company’s consolidated financial forecast beginning the time of getting the VC funding.

7. Project Risks

Project risks hereby should be understood as:

- Industry development stages, its current condition and forecasts.
- Factors influencing sales increase / decrease and pricing in the industry.
- Dependence on other industries, the threat of product substitution.
- The State’s role (regulations, licensing).

8. Investment and Exit Strategy

8.1 Amount of Requested Investments

Here you need to indicate the amount of requested funds and investment time period.

8.2 Investment Composition and Consumption Schedule

This clause suggests the description of the requested investment composition as well as consumption rate and payoff for each point of the investment composition.

8.3 Prospective Exit Strategy

Here you should detail investor’s project exit options:

- The structure of a prospected deal and participation of the VC fund.
- Description of business exit options for the VC fund (IPO, sale to a strategic investor etc.)
- Potential buyers and their motivation.
- Availability of an option for a VC fund to purchase a share of the startup company.

Based on the translated article.

Translation: Olga Semenova

Editor: Dmytro Nesterov

See also:
What to Do If a Big Solid Business Plan Is Not an Option for a Startup? - See more at: http://quartsoft.com/blog/201408/what-if-big-solid-business-plan-not-an-option-for-startup

Editor’s Note: Our company has been cooperating with startup entrepreneurs as a web / mobile design and development outsourcing partner since 1999 and we think it’s important to provide inexperienced would-be founders will all kinds of useful information on launching and propelling their business ventures. This article is one of a series of blog publications on the early stages of establishing a successful startup company.

Without a doubt a detailed and thorough business plan of your new startup idea comprising several dozens of pages looks very impressive. And it even can gain you some more trust. The very pile of paper means that you’ve already done a lot of work aside from developing the idea, i.e. competitors and market researches (regardless of how complete they are) leaving alone the amount of time you spent to write the business plan.

But how is it applicable to an IT business? While you are writing your business plan and doing the market research, there’s a good chance a similar idea is being implemented by another startup team with no business plan at all. Or this other team may have enough resources for the “probing action” to test the market. The IT market is prone to quick changes in comparison to the traditional markets, and that is the reason why there is a risk of a business plan and the idea itself getting obsolete before completion.

And this is when a quick and sketchy business plan can come in handy and be even more appropriate as long as it includes the main points, describes problems to be solved and answers the main question of how successful the startup project could be.

There are some approaches that help create a happy middle ground between an elaborated business plan and sketchy one. We’d like to talk about three such approaches: a SWOT analysis, Innovators Scorecard and Business Model Canvas.

Using these approaches you can create a basic description of your business idea within two-four pages at the most. They help better visualize the idea as well as focus attention on the most essential parts of the startup project, not to mention a convenient format for discussion and editing.

SWOT Analysis

The SWOT analysis describes the business in a rather short form taking into account four main factors: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

SWOT Analysis

Cons: the evaluated factors are general, there’s no clear discrimination between the internal business factors, such as team, for example, and external ones, e.g. market.

Pros: there are only four factors to evaluate which are pretty easy to comprehend. This approach can be used not only for external but also for internal activity of the company.

Innovators Scorecard

The scorecard approach might be less pleasant for an inexperienced user. But the point here is to evaluate each criterion rather than describe it.

One of the famous evaluation tables was offered by Thomas K. McKnight, whose book Will It Fly? How to Know if Your New Business Idea Has Wings...Before You Take the Leap became very popular. He also held a lot of trainings for top managers from different parts of the world.

This table includes 44 criteria and each of them is be scored from -10 to +10 and “weighed” by its importance from 1 to 3.

Innovators Scorecard

Some of these factors are easy to understand such as Resources available. The others are rather vague, like Passion (how would you assess your personal passion for the project). You can find a detailed description of each criterion in the book.

The idea will “fly” if in the end you’ll score at least 70% of maximum score. And if not, you’ll intuitively feel which criteria need extra attention.

When you get some more experience with this table you can easily add some of your own criteria. You can (and should) also adjust the table in the course of your company development tracking your current strengths and weaknesses.

Cons: one needs to read the book to understand all the criteria.

Pros: though the evaluation here is quite subjective, you can observe the distinctiveness between two ideas expressed in plain numbers. After some experience one can fill up the table within 30-40 minutes or less. According to the author’s recommendation you’d better assess any promising idea you learn about using the scorecard to have a clearer understanding of what it’s worth before the further discussion.

Business Model Canvas

This approach is relatively new new. It was offered by Alexander Osterwalder in 2004. The method is gaining its popularity, especially with startup entrepreneurs. It’s based on the classic “The 4 Steps to Epiphany” book by Steve Blank. If you like the book you might like Business Model Toolbox by Alexander Osterwalder.

A business model is described on a single page divided into 9 blocks.

Business model canvas example

These 9 blocks or parameters comprise main business points.

• Infrastructure (key activities, key resources, partners)
• Value propositions (the main value of products and services offered by the company)
• Customers (customer segments, sales channels, clients relationship development)
• Finances (costs, revenue streams)

Pros: it’s quite illustrative and sufficient for a basic evaluation of a startup idea or IT business. It can be a good basis for a detailed business plan. It is convenient for regular changes and editions.

Cons: no qualitative assessment unlike the Scorecard method.

None of these approaches exclude any other, so you can combine them for your brief business plan purposes. And their main advantage is that they all are accessible, take only a little of your time and there’s no need in any special education. And there’s no doubt that after using a SWOT analysis, Scorecard or Business Model Canvas you can come to better understanding of your startup business idea and its strong and weak points.

Based on the translated article.

Translation: Olga Semenova

Editor: Dmytro Nesterov

See also:
Startup Business Plan Checklist for Success with Venture Capitalists

Everybody seems to be into startups nowadays. Though the risk is there, people are willing to invest in one. After all, creating one is not that difficult. The Internet has made running a startup an easier and a more affordable venture.

Today, you could just build a startup from a website. You do not necessarily need to have a physical office. Depending on the nature of your startup, you can already begin by hiring freelancers or remote workers then you are all set.

Regardless of how you set up your own company, there are definitely costs to incur. And, if you are wondering how much does it cost to run a startup, here is an interesting infographic from Staff.com.

The infographic compares running a basic tech startup from different major cities around the world. A basic tech startup would mean having only one designer, two developers and an office. The facts are surprising.

For example, it would cost you 6 times more to run your startup from Zurich than in Manila. In Zurich, you will need an average annual cost of $314,000 and only $45,000 in Manila. In the United States, it is a bit more expensive to run a startup in New York than in San Francisco.

Another interesting thing to take note is the difference in the rates of the designers, developers and offices. In San Francisco, the designers and developers are paid way more than those who are in Paris. But, their office costs are cheaper. Zurich and Sydney gets the most pay in these 8 cities on the list. Manila has the most affordable annual office cost.

Check out more of the facts below. Do they in any way influence your decision on where you would decide to build your startup?

Source: Staff.com

Related articles:
Inside the Mind of a Startup Entrepreneur [Infographic]

Many companies all over the world have migrated their services and started marketing to online audiences, the reason is because the Internet market is a daily growing source for all kinds of industries, you could easily beat your competition just by having a website online! Yet saying this, I have been in the commercial human resources industry for a little over 20 years, I still see companies a businesses without a website, if you are one of these people, you are losing out!

You Are Missing out on Potential Business

The first thing I thought I would touch upon here is probably one of the most important, missing out on the potential to sell your products and services to a worldwide audience. Offline marketing can only stretch so far, unless you have contacts halfway across the globe in offline marketing sectors. The easiest and most efficient way of reaching customers abroad is by using a corporate website, once a web design and development firm has charged the fee to create your site there are hardly any significant costs involved at all, so you will basically have an automated money printing machine on your hands.

So if you don’t want to let your competitors take all of the money and potential clients from under your nose, create a corporate website for your business!

Gathering Feedback from Current & Past Customers

Company feedback is also very important. Feedback let’s us know if our customers are happy with the services and customer support we provide. The days of phoning customers for a feedback survey are over, people don’t like these calls anymore and are not prepared to answer the questions, even if they do they just want to answer them quickly, get off the phone and get on with their day. The same applies to paper surveys, the minute people read what they have to fill out, it goes right in the bin!

A corporate website will help you with all of this, you will be able to send out a URL to your customers and have them fill out a quick survey online, the process is also much quicker as instead of writing their answers, they will be simply ticking boxes. In fact, there was an online poll taken where they compared results taken from phone and online surveys, customers are 60% more likely to fill out a survey online than over the phone.

Providing Better Support for Customers

Having an online presence as a company offers so much more than just the marketing and gaining more customers, you are also able to provide a better customer service. Many people now have access to smart phones from anywhere on the planet, a lot of people use emailing and social media to keep in touch, well so can you as an organisation!

Offering Email support is an excellent way to provide your customers help with anything they may need, whether it be asking about your services or asking for help using your software or products. Emailing is also a great way for your customers to make complaints.

I see a lot of companies outsourcing their support live chats and emailing systems to specialist companies offshore so they do not even have to deal with it themselves, the companies will go right off written scripts and send out professional email or live chat support to all of your clients and customers.

By Sophie J Eagan

Our company has been helping entrepreneurs build their web-based business platforms since 1999. Since its early history, our team has been behind the sciences of start-ups that tried to struggle their way to success through a fierce competition of the ever-evolving world of digital innovations. We witnessed ups and downs of business ventures and novice entrepreneurs. We saw entrepreneurial passion and disappointments. We saw both start-ups persisting in scaling despite all the troubles and those that pivoted quickly after a few unsuccessful iterations. After so many years of cooperating with entrepreneurs, we got interested in the start-up successes nature. So our Marketing Department has decided to create a series of articles dedicated to start-ups’ success stories.

Analyzing start-up failures is no fun and depressing. It’s better to focus on success stories to help entrepreneurs who would read this article discover some practical tips and strategies for developing a thriving start-up. The task for our Marketing Department is to distil the most significant and notable milestones in the development of successful business ventures, as well as the most crucial decisions of their founders and ordinary team members. We hope that by following our Start-up Success Story series aspiring entrepreneurs will find a key to success of their businesses.

We’d like to use some text formatting convention in our Success Story articles:

Risky and ineffective steps will be in italics
Crucial and highly successful practices will be highlighted with underlined bold text.

QuartSoft's marketing department is on a constant lookout for promising start-ups that could serve as good examples of the right strategy for team building, product development, advertising, client acquisition, funding, and business expanding. We came across an interesting SaaS start-up called Canvas. It looks like this company has a big future. So we decided to find more information on Canvas to understand what was done to bring the idea to success. And here is a distilled success story we can offer for entrepreneurs to learn from and get inspired.

Meet the CEO

Name: James Quigley

Education: United States Merchant Marine Academy (B.S., Marine Engineering)

Previous Experience:

• Service Manager - Latin America at United Technologies Corporation
• Regional Sales Manager at Nalco Chemical Company
• Director - Products: North & South America at Transamerica Leasing & Finance
• Director - Product Management at Orbcomm
• Sr. Director - Business Development at Aether Systems
• Director of the Mobility Solutions Division at PEAK Technologies
• VP & Managing Director - Mobility Solutions at Verisign, Inc.
• Vice President & Managing Director - Enterprise Mobility Solutions at inCode Wireless

Personal Qualities:

• Highly motivated leader
• Understanding of the mobility market and work force management
• Outstanding presentation skills
• Entrepreneur at heart

Click to enlarge the infographic

The Idea

Canvas is a service that enables businesses to replace expensive and inefficient paper forms with powerful apps on their smartphones and tablets.

Problems to be solved with the product:

• Cutting down too many trees to produce paper
• Expensive and inefficient paper forms
• Filling out the same data on multiple forms

The Team

• Hand picking the best team members from day one
• Partnering with trusted developers from the founder’s past
• Starting with the team of only 3 persons
• Zero salary and living on personal savings for 6 months
• Paying people in stock, options, beer, Xbox's for some time;
• No salary for non-coding members including founders for over a year
• Exhausting but exhilarating work on the idea whenever there is time
• Partnering with an outside team to help build the 2.0 product
• Enabling every employee to take their best ideas forward and turn it into impact
• Letting the team validate ideas through group thought
• Giving developers / designers free reign with 20% of their time to work on suggested ideas
• Letting team members act more like owners then employees
• Increasing the team around product innovation
• Having internal team members closely focusing on SEO
• Having inside sales team members for trial subscribers
• Creating a culture of empathy

Seed Funding

• Attempting not to raise money before getting a basic product
• Using founders’ own savings
• Friends and family contacts were early investors
• Bootstrapping for 6 months to bank money amid an economic crisis
• $20K seed funding
• Using the first investment money to buy must have-things like computers etc. but not for salaries.

The Solution

• Learning experience of lots of SaaS companies
• Signing up for dozens of products to look at their UX & UI, payment processing, subscriber communication etc.
• A very minimal viable product created early on with zero money
• The MVP serving a few critical needs and unable to scale
• A workable MVP with a certain value for customers
• Rewriting the code later on
• 18 months of work from the MVP to a decent customer-appealing product
• Engaging the outside help to go past MVP
• Adding productivity improvements for more value
• Integration with third-party services like Google Drive, Box, Dropbox, Evernote, SAP

Product Features

• Capturing information online or offline
• Capturing photos/GPS locations
• Conditional screens and lists
• Calculations;
• Workflow and dispatch functionality;
• Bringing other databases into apps;
• Sharing captured data to other systems and users based on a variety of criteria
• Customizable data output
• Downloadable pre-built templates
• Pre-built Application/Document Store
• Shareable cloud storage for customers and businesses (MyCanvas Cloud);
• Desktop client
• Integrations with Google Drive, Box, Dropbox, Evernote, SAP
• Built-in ROI tool

Marketing, Client Acquisition and Retention

• Engaging potential customers to test the idea and see if they pay for it
• Listening intently to users’ feedback and suggestions on enhancing the product
• Early discounts for active ongoing feedback
• Old school methods of reaching first customers: cold calling, stalking and knocking on the doors
• Finding local prospects in the target community
• The first paying customer: a HVAC provider hired on the condition that they become Canvas’ first customer
• Promoting both money-saving and environmental benefits of the product
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) including a proprietary app store allowing customers to share specific industry apps created with Canvas
• Automated marketing, redirective marketing, compelling content creation, advertising
• Partnering with wireless carriers to help promote Canvas’ cause
• 30-day free trial to convince non-tech-savvy customers;
• Establishing of a marketing team;
• Affiliate program;
• Cloud sharing solution to help Canvas subscribers share digital documents with their customers and thus spread the word about the brand
• Built-in ROI tool to show how much money subscribers are saving by using Canvas
• Gifting the Canvas application to nonprofit organizations of employees’ choice (Ante Up Program)
• Using dozens marketing tools such as Kissmetrics (metrics tracking) and Optimizely (A/B testing)
• Calling to trial subscribers only after some time in business

Venture Funding

• Attending lots of angel pitch events, asking for introductions to potential angel investors
• Using LinkedIn to approach people who could introduce the company to an investor
• Creating a pitch deck (about 12 slides) to tell the startup story to potential investors
• Starting to pitch venture capitalists years before money is needed
• Kurt Warner, a well-known football player and brother of one of the Canvas founders, became one of the first Canvas angel investors
• Saying “no” to early investors about changing course on company’s vision
• Showing investors the knowledge of how to scale the business and increase its value
• $750K in series A funding (March 2009) from a small private equity group;
• $325K in series A funding (July 2009)
• $1.2M in series B funding (July 2011) from Camber Creek and Motorola Solutions Venture Capital
• $3M in series C funding (March 2013) from Melanie Perkins
• $4M in series C funding (May 2013) from Camber Creek, Osage Venture Partners. Motorola Solutions Venture Capital
• $1.8M in venture funding (January 2014);
• $9M in venture funding (December 2014) from Camber Creek, Osage Venture Partners, River Cities Capital Funds

Growth and Revenue

Want to protect your software idea? Best way - MOVE FAST.

• An average revenue growth of 300-600% a year
• Over 45,000 paying subscribers in 65 countries
• 106 partners including 5 telecoms
• Library with 15,000+ pre-built fully customizable apps for 30+ vertical markets
• Around 50 employees (end of 2014);
• CoWorking Space built into the company
• Opening an office in Sydney, Australia
• HIPAA Hi-Tech certification;
• Strategic partnership with Telstra, Australia’s leading telecommunications and information services company;
• Raising a financing round of $9 million

Conclusion

One of the main reasons why Canvas proved to be so successful is because their SaaS solves environmental problems besides allowing customers save money on buying paper and managing paperwork. A green and money-saving solution simply cannot be ignored by thousands of businesses. Who wouldn’t feel good to save money while saving trees for a greener world?

The question is how to make customers discover the product and love it. What Canvas did is a great lesson for other start-ups willing to harness the power of the World Wide Web for customer acquisition. They let customers submit content to the Canvas web platform (App Store) thus turning customers into volunteer marketers. A significant amount of user-generated content as well as own SEO efforts led to the constant inflow of leads that use Internet search engines to look for problem solutions that Canvas can offer. By investing into SEO and the content sharing platform, Canvas could grow their customer base and revenue successfully and fast to catch venture capitalists’ attention.

The Canvas CEO has no problem with selling parts of the company to investors as he believes that a SaaS company should grow fast to win the market. And it’s hardly possible to do so without attracting outside funds. So after the first results of a successful SEO strategy the canvas team had something to pitch and have angel investors’ attention. Being persistent and regularly attending investment pitch meetings, they eventually managed to raise millions in venture capital to keep their business moving fast and revenue growth well over 100% a year.

No doubt one of the most important success factors for the start-up was Canvas founders’ passion, confidence and self-sacrifice. The initial team had no salaries for 6 months and the founders for over a year during the MVP creation period. Not many founders, let alone ordinary team members, can stay loyal to a company for such a long time when paid zero salary. That’s probably why every time the Canvas CEO is asked for a tip on how to build a successful start-up, he says that the most crucial thing for an entrepreneur’s success is finding co-founders, employees and even investors who are passionate about the idea. With enough passion, he says, one can walk through walls.

By Dmytro Nesterov and Anastasiya Plaksiy

Today’s digital age has enabled many entrepreneurs to turn their business ideas into a reality. With the help of the Internet, entrepreneurs have had the opportunity to launch successful web-based startups.

image source

If you’re thinking about launching a web-based startup, you need to create a plan for your business. Here are five things a web-based startup needs to do before launching their business:

1. Find your niche.

The biggest mistake entrepreneurs make when launching their startup is trying to market their product to every market. A startup can only be successful if it offers a product or service that fulfills an unmet need for a targeted audience.

The first step to finding your niche is researching your target customer. Sit down and write a profile describing your ideal customer. Think about who your ideal customer is and make a list of their interests, habits and potential attitude toward your product. Once you’ve identified your ideal customer, think about how you’ll provide the best value to them.

2. Create a budget.

Before you can start selling your product and accepting funding from investors, you need to know how you’ll spend your money once you have it. By creating a budget for your web-based startup, you’ll be able to create a roadmap for the future of your company.

Start your budget by making a list of expenses. Think about how much it’ll cost to produce your product, total startup costs, and additional operating costs. Next, think about how much revenue you’ll have to bring in to sustain your business. When you analyze your budget, make sure your number are as realistic as possible. The last thing you want to do is underestimate your costs or potential profits.

3. Reach out to investors.

When you’re getting ready to launch your web-based startup, one of the biggest hurdles you’ll face is attracting investors to your business. As an entrepreneur, you need to give investors a reason to be interested in your startup.

Create an AngelList profile to showcase your startup to investors. Your AngelList profile should include information about your company, product, and team members. This will make it easier for investors to discover your startup.

After you’ve began building awareness of your startup, start networking with investors. Create a list of 30 to 50 people you’d think be a great fit for your startup. Next, develop a concise pitch email describing your startup and funding goals. As you start reaching out to investors, remember to be authentic and try building relationships. This will make it easier for you to spark conversations about your business.

4. Design a marketing strategy.

Now that you have an idea of who your target customer is and the investors you want to reach, it’s time to develop a marketing strategy for your business. Remember, no one will discover your business unless you make your web-based startup accessible to your audience. A well-planned marketing strategy can help you get your business noticed by the right audience.

The first step to creating a marketing strategy is developing a website for your business. Once you’ve created a website, create a webpage with a sign-up form to collect emails from people who are interested in your business. This will be a great way to start building your email newsletter lists and finding a target audience for your marketing campaigns.

After you’ve created your website, you need to create a content marketing strategy. This content marketing strategy should consist of a content creation and social media marketing strategy that will help you build awareness of your business. Start by creating a blog and selecting the best social media networking for reaching out to your customers. You should also create metrics that will help you measure the success of your marketing strategy.

5. Begin searching for potential employees.

If everything goes well when planning your web-based startup, it’s very likely you’ll need to hire employees in the future. Begin researching potential talent that will be a good fit for your business once it successfully launches.

Keep a look out for people such as web developers, graphic designers, and marketers who would help your web-based startup grow. After you’ve created a list of potential employees, start networking with these individuals. Although you don’t have to tell them you’re hopefully going to hire them once you have the funding; you should create a talent pipeline so you know who to hire immediately when you’re ready.

Launching a web-based startup can be a rewarding opportunity if you create a plan and stick with it. By following these tips, you’ll be able to launch a successful web-based startup and experience the results you desire.

What are your best tips for launching a web-based startup?

If you have just set up a small online ecommerce business it may be tempting to keep a store of your stock around the house and set up an office space in your home. Advantages of working from home include fewer overhead costs and a greater flexibility in working time. However, this flexibility of working hours can put a strain on you, creating a list of subtle problems that will affect both your working and social life.

If you own an ecommerce website (or run a store on Amazon, eBay, Etsy, etc) and can’t afford to hire a genuine office/warehouse setup it may be worth your time to consider working from a self storage office. Many of these self storage facilities offer storage and a flexible pricing structure with a small office space included, this is perfect if you only have a small amount of stock.

Like anything with business, it’s worth weighing up the merits of this to see if it suits your business model. An infographic from My Storage Pod looks at some of the pros and cons:

Arguably the most important points to take from this infographic revolve around your routine and free time. It may seem more flexible to work from home at first but the lack of structure to a working day can leave you feeling as if you never finish work. If you can’t literally shut the door behind you when you finish work you may find yourself picking up some work you left behind at an unusually late time of the day. Enjoying your leisure time in the same space as your work time can be stressful, for example you could be on constant edge during free time incase the phone rings for a work related issue. If you couple these problems along with the problems of isolation and distractions you may find that working from home is putting too much strain on your working and social life as well as your mental health.

If you find you are experiencing these problems then a self storage / office setup may be able to help you. A lack of routine and order will be restored to your working life and the cost of utilities, security and insurance will be more tailored to the needs of a business rather than a homeowner. Working from a self storage facility is a growing trend, for example in 2013 in the UK there was a 3% increase of businesses using self storage facilities to run their business from.

Ecommerce is increasingly competitive, and any advantage your business could gain can lead to growth and meeting your objectives quicker. Flexible warehousing is just one way to do it, but it might be the right way for you.

It’s never too late or too early to start your business as long as you are passionate about your idea. Although an idea is the key to any startup business, an entrepreneur has to be able to implement and market the idea in order to make it fly. Quite a few startups were launched by young enthusiasts. Today they are high-flying brands such as Facebook and Apple. Those guys like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates were lucky to start their businesses at the dawn of the digital era when the competition was feeble, and their ideas were fresh and attention-grabbing. Customers had an enormous appetite for new things in the IT world thus they were more than happy to try and buy anything coming their way.

The situation is different today. The competition is fierce, and all the best ideas seem to be implemented. So would-be founders have to not only come up with a great idea but also be able to manage and market his/her business to overcome all obstacles and competitive rivalry on their way to success. Too many entrepreneurs are courting too few investors; too many new ideas are emerging or get improved by millions of innovative minds accelerated with new technology advances. A rudimentary idea is not enough to catch anyone’s attention in today’s world of innovations. Investors wish to see at least a minimum viable product and first signs of the business success. At the same time, customers would prefer a full-featured product comparable to a great many high-quality services they are using on the daily basis today. That’s why new startups have to invest time and money to develop their idea into something tangible before bringing the product before the eyes of consumers and investors.

Unfortunately, not every wantrepreneur with a great idea has an MBA degree or is competent in growing businesses. The biggest problem for many startup founders is that they have absolutely no idea of how to manage their business and avoid pitfalls once they launched their company. All too often young startup founders need to be taught seemingly basic things because they are usually focused on building their product while being unaware of a lion’s share of best practices and tools used to facilitate their ultimate goal of reaching out to customers and making them want to actually pay for what is offered.

I am not an entrepreneur, but I work for QuartSoft Corp. – a company that builds online presence and web-based business platforms for startups. So I can feel the pain of many young entrepreneurs struggling for success in the ever-growing world of IT. There is plenty of information on how to grow a startup company, but the amount of data is overwhelming with so many generic articles out there that the process of looking for a practical advice is getting frustrating. So I decided to monitor a few startup forums in order to find some interesting thoughts and decent recommendations on nurturing a startup including tools one can use to develop and market the product. I mostly focused on the U.S. startup experience as the vast majority of successful startups emerge in the United States. Also, lots of initially non-US startup companies get purchased by U.S. investors or relocate to the USA in order to develop their products in a more startup-friendly ecosystem. I am a fan of articles that distil the best practical information to put it in a concise, digestible form on a single page for those needing it but having no time to look for it all over the Internet. So I did my best to pack this article with information any startup entrepreneur would appreciate and hopefully make use of for a better business.

The Idea

The idea is indeed the most important part of the business as your company will grow around it. The success will depend on how much your idea will be able to help your customers. Here are some wise thoughts I’ve found regarding the idea phase of a startup business:

• To get an idea, listen to your own or other people’s frustrations
• It’s unnecessary to come up with something unique as long as you can improve on an existing solution
• Add your creativity to any concept or customize old ideas to the times and your community
• Be persistent with your idea and learn to hear “no” more than ever
• Assess the risks. Avoid foolish risks and don’t risk what you can’t afford. Ask yourself whether you’ll be worse off then you are now if your business fails
• Be passionate about your idea and hire people who are passionate about your business
• Ask yourself what you love to do and whether you can build a business around your passion
• Monetizing your passion is more promising than monetizing your business
• Your customers are looking for values like joy, entertainment, inspiration and a benefit of some sort.

Business idea evaluation worksheet. Source

Useful Links

• Business Idea Center

Protecting Your Idea

Writing a patent application is not the first thing you should do when you have an idea. However, if you think it’s something big you can go for it. You can patent the idea either by your own as an inventor or hire a patent agent/patent attorney. A provisional patent application is very popular among U.S. startup founders as it allows quick protection of an idea without formal patent claim or an oath or declaration. The provisional application lets you use the term “Patent Pending” to preserve rights for the invention for 12 months to test the idea and potentially file a standard non-provisional patent. And it all can be done for less than $250.

If you are not sure you’ll be able to create patent drawings and write a detailed description of your idea and its usage or you think you may screw things up because of lack of experience it’s advisable to hire a patent attorney or agency. The biggest issue with a patent expert is the amount of money he/she may charge for the services. That’ll be something between $1,000 - $7,500 for a basic patent application of a higher quality than you can make working alone. Complicated idea patents may cost tens of thousands of dollars.

If you’d like to protect your idea outside of the United States, you should check out the website of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Useful Links

• Directory of Intellectual Property Offices on WIPO site
• Template for provisional patent
• United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)

The Company

Now that you’ve got an idea it’s time to monetize it and turn your passion into a business. Starting a company is a watershed moment in every entrepreneur’s life. You should be prepared for lots of disappointments and even failures. But still you should be persistent, learn the lesson and keep going in the right direction towards your dream.

The first, although minor, challenge on the way to the success would be coming up with your business name and/or your product(s) name(s). It’s hard to advise anything here as naming a business depends on lots of metaphysical things like the imagination, audience and brand nature, the existence of similar business names and trademarks, current trends, etc. But I've found some online tools designed to help entrepreneurs quickly come up with a name for their startups. Here is a list of websites to be used to generate catchy names for businesses, products and domains:

• Impossibility - domain name generator
• Lean domain search - tool generating numerous available domain ideas in seconds
• NameChk - checking name availability on a great number of social media sites
• Naminum - business name generator
• Short domain search - short single-word domain availability checker
• The name app - finding available domain and social networks names
• Wordoid - short and catchy names for new ventures

Those tools can give you a good start in brainstorming the best name for your startup and toy around with different word combinations.

The Team

The team is one of the most important assets a company can get. It’s advisable to have people on the team who are passionate about your idea and competent enough to develop it into the product as well as market it. Startup founders often start out alone or in cooperation with close friends who helped them nurse the idea. The most efficient co-founder configuration seems to be the classic “business guy + tech guy” duo. After all, the story of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak is always a good example to follow. So if you are a tech savvy guy looking to implement your idea, make sure you partner with someone who is good at marketing and entrepreneurship stuff. And vice-versa, if you have a penchant for all that marketing and business-y things, then you should consider finding a technically-minded co-founder for your startup.

You’ll be expanding your startup sooner or later, hiring new employees, creating departments. Being a startup entrepreneur suggests being at least aware of how things work in every department of your company. You should be able to guide the team, analyze the available opportunities and make important decisions on your startup infrastructure and business strategy. Even if you outsource many of your needs at the beginning, knowing what you need to launch and propel your business and how you can get what you need is important. So I decided to look into some real-life startup entrepreneurs’ recommendations regarding the most important activities and tools for the founder and key employees of a startup company. As a tech startup founder, you will most probably need to take care of the individual infrastructures for yourself, software developers, graphic designers, and marketers, as well as the overall infrastructure for the entire team. So here are some useful tips on activities, tools and resources your employees could leverage to build a successful business.

CEO / Founder

There are so many things to do and learn for a startup founder one can easily get confused in figuring out what to start with and what needs to be done to run the business smoothly while growing, attracting customers, improving the product, and looking for investors. So I’d like to share some attention-worthy information shared by established startup founders to help young entrepreneurs put their businesses on the right track.

Startup infrastructure infographic. Click to open the full-size image

The early stage of company development seems to be the hardest one for young founders because of the lack of business experience. Here is a startup CEO’s to-do-list I’d like to share in order to help wantrepreneur find their bearings in the new entrepreneurship field they are stepping into.

Startup Founder’s To-Do-List

• Get a lawyer and accountant
• Get W-9's form
• Set up Quickbooks or another accounting app
• Hire a payroll processor
• Get a city license
• Mail an 83(b) election form to the IRS (attach to tax return)
• File articles of incorporation
• Prepare a cap table
• Open a bank account and get credit cards
• Prepare Founder’s Agreement (ask lawyer)
• Register domain names (to corporation)
• Create an AWS account (to corporation)
• Buy SSL Certificates
• Set up email accounts
• Set up VPN
• Ensure secure storage and management of SSL keys, logins, passwords, accounts
• Choose a payment processing tool
• Terms of Service / Terms of Use (ask the lawyer for help)
• Copyrights [if needed or applicable]
• Phone number
• Purchase printers/scanners
• Liability and D&O insurance (for consideration)

When you are a young entrepreneur starting out your business as a corporation for the first time, you really need to be able to work with a competent lawyer from day one in order to avoid legal issues during incorporation documents preparation and optimize your tax strategy. Of course, hiring a lawyer is an expensive affair. But a good legal expert can help you avoid unnecessary troubles and advise you on saving money. The average cost of startup lawyer’s services is $350-$800/hour. Of course, the price depends on the lawyer’s seniority and residence. You can find a junior lawyer in a small city who charges as little as $150/hour and a senior partner in major cities charging over $1000 per hour.

The same situation is about hiring an accountant early on. Especially with many online and offline accounting systems that can help entrepreneurs track some basic things. Well, the decision depends on the complexity of the business venture and the number of paying customers as well as on the amount of funds available at the early stage of the business lifecycle. Anyway, it’s a good idea to outsource your accounting needs at any time when you need a financial and strategic advice.

Useful Links and Information for Founders

• FounderNotes– online community of startup founders sharing and discussing the best content
• Foundrs - co-founder equity calculator
• LawTrades– a startup helping startups find the best legal help
• Phone.com and Grasshopper allow entrepreneurs to get a cheap toll free 800 phone number for their businesses
• Quirl - ad spend calculator

Founders’ Tools and Infrastructure

Besides the general team infrastructure, the founder can make use of the individual set of tools that mostly facilitate the financial part of the business. Below you can find lists of tools an entrepreneur should consider using to run a startup company. When you get swamped with lots of tasks, some of these instruments can be lifesavers for a newbie startup. There are a few tools in each category so it’s up to you to choose the right app or services for your business.

Accounting and Invoicing Tools

• Expensify
• FreshBooks
• GoDaddy Bookkeeping
• QuickBooks [popular choice]
• Wave Apps
• Xero

Payment Processing Tools

• 2Checkout
• Braintree (owned by PayPal)
• ChargeBee
• Chargify (subscription and recurring billing)
• Cheddargetter (metric-driven billing)
• Fusebill (subscription billing)
• PayPal
• PayWhirl (recurring payments)
• Recurly (recurring payments)
• Spreedly
• Stripe [popular choice]

When you are an aspiring startup entrepreneur you have to learn lots of new things, ask for advice as well as share your own experience in order to be able to lead your business to the next stage. That’s why you need to get closer to people who can inspire and help you. Here are some networkings sites any today’s businessman must be active on to reach out to partners, brand advocates and customers.

Startup Founder’s Wisdom

• It’s not your words but your actions people care about.
• Funding is not the ultimate goal but only the beginning.
• Funding does not relieve your stress but rather adds to it.
• No need to beg venture capitalists for investments. After all, they pay to be your partner.
• Disrespectful and arrogant investors never make good partners.
• Never pay to pitch.
• You can take huge risks in your 20’s but should be more prudent in your 30’s.
• Learn new things daily.
• Failing is a part of growing.
• .com is the best domain you can get even if it costs more.
• Don’t expect too much from tech conferences although they are fun.
• Communicate with your customers daily.
• Work/life balance is necessary for a success.
• Help other entrepreneurs whenever you can.
• Working flat out is counterproductive.
• Accept any speaking opportunity you’ve been offered.

Questions Startup Founder Should Be Able to Answer

• Why customers would want sign up for your product?
• What mechanism is used by your team to capture and retrieve users’ data?
• Who are your major competitors and how good are they?
• How big are your competitors’ teams? Can you compete with them with a smaller team?
• How many users your key competitors have?
• Can you track your competitors’ activities and improve on what they are doing?
• Where does your company have the least and the highest risks?
• What are your first big milestones after the launch?
• How big a minimum required team should be build the product or keep it operational?
• What kinds of experts might you need in the team (legal, content writer, etc.)?
• What are your profitability expectations for the first year?
• How much money is to be spent on marketing?
• How much is to be allocated to the team (salary, equity etc.)?
• What technology is to be used to develop the product?
• Do you have to take care of any security risks?
• What are your day-to-day responsibilities as a founder?

Here are some networking sites any today’s businessman must be active on to reach out to partners, brand advocates and customers.

Must-Have Accounts for Startup Founders

• Hacker News
• LinkedIn
• Meet Up
• Quora
• Reddit (Entrepreneur and Startups subreddits)
• Twitter

Where to Find Investors or Raise Funds Online

• AngelList
• Gust
• Kickstarter (great for physical products)
• LinkedIn

Marketing Officer

Marketing is an extremely important but often underappreciated part of any business. But, as they say, nothing matters but sales. No business can exist without marketing efforts especially when the Internet has simplified things so much in this field. With so many online social networks and affordable advertising opportunities, there is no excuse for not doing marketing even if you are starting your business alone, because your competitors are most probably doing it and are gaining the ground. You may leave tedious and clunky marketing work such as business plans and various market analyses for later but start attracting potential clients since you came up with a startup idea. Luckily with today’s technologies you don’t need to spend tons of money in order to compete even with the famous brands. You can slowly but steadily start using such affordable and effective marketing methods as blogging, video marketing, social media marketing as well as search engine optimization (SEO) as early as possible to promote your business and let potential customers discover your product.

Useful Links and Information for Marketers

• Canvanizer– brainstorming better concepts and defining business strategy
• Followerwonk allows you to find influencers in your niche on Twitter
• Howwelaunched - marketing tips from startup founders based on the real-life experience
• Monetization lab– exploring monetization opportunities for online businesses and startups
• SurveyMonkey– online surveys and questionnaires to send to your target audience

When getting a handle on your newly created business, there is rarely any budget for building a full-fledged marketing team. So the marketing part of the business is often taken care of by the founder or one of marketing-minded employees who has to deal with multiple marketing assignments including writing for blog(s), posting in social networks, sending out promotional emails, SEO, managing sales and customer acquisition, measuring and analyzing business results. If you belong to one of such small startup teams where people have to learn new things in marketing, it’s important for you to be aware of some tools available for marketers.

Marketing Tools

CRM & Sales

• Bittrix24
• Infusionsoft
• Pipedrive
• Quotewerks (quoting and proposal solution)
• SalesForce
• Streak (connected to Gmail)
• Sugar

Social Media Management

• Buffer
• HooteSuite
• Mention

Email Marketing

• AWeber
• Campaign Monitor
• Elastic Email
• iContact
• Interspire Email Marketer
• MailChimp [popular choice]
• SendGrid
• Sendy

Feedback and Customer Support

• Customer.io
• Desk
• Hellobar
• Intercom [popular choice]
• Pickfu (feedback polls)
• Snapengage
• Uservoice
• Zendesk

Analytics

• Crazy Egg
• Google Analytics [popular choice]
• KISSmetrics
• Lucky Orange
• Mixpanel
• Optimizely (A/B testing)
• Sumall

SEO and Competition Analysis

• Ahrefs
• Magestic
• Open Site Explorer
• SEMRush

Marketing Automation

• Eloqua
• HubSpot [popular choice]
• Marketo
• Pardot

The early marketing can give you the first customer feedback that greatly helps in improving your product to meet your target audience’s needs. So go online with your product or idea as early as possible, start a blog about your business and everything related, create business pages on major social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and Instagram; post something your customers might find useful or entertaining, find influencers in your niche and try to draw their attention to what you are doing by creating and sharing high-quality content. And you’ll see pretty soon that your customers are expressing more interest in buying your product or services as well as helping you make your business better. The early startup marketer’s to-do-list could look like the following example:

Startup Marketer’s To-Do List

• Create and use a corporate Twitter account (mention other relevant companies and niche influencers in my tweets)
• Share company info / website at: Betalist, ErliBird, StartupLi.st, KillerStartups
• Submit site to Product Hunt
• Create a CrunchBase page
• Answer relevant questions on Quora
• Write and submit a press release to PR Log
• Launch a topic page at Scoop.it, share our website there
• Write an article for the corporate blog
• Create an infographic and share it on Visual.ly
• Create a presentation to be submitted to SlideShare
• Send out email newsletter
• Write guest posts on other people's relevant blogs
• Posting and commenting in relevant LinkedIn and Facebook groups

It’s important to let as many people as possible know about your new startup company. Not only it can boost your brand awareness among potential clients but also it can reveal some valuable remarks and suggestions from those who might want to pay for your product or service. You can find quite a few websites to submit your startup information to, but here are some most popular and reputable sites you can use to show the world what your startup is doing.

Where to Submit Your Startup

• BetaList
• Hackernews (Show HN forum)
• Product Hunt
• Reddit (use subreddits such as Entrepreneur and Startups)

Unfortunately, there is no quick way to establish yourself in the market unless you are lucky with some kind of a viral campaign. But in most cases marketing isn’t luck, it’s hustle. So you need to work hard in the field of marketing especially if you are a new business.

Programmers

People who develop software, mobile applications or websites are no doubt the most valuable human assets of a tech startup company as the product quality pretty much depends on them. Entrepreneurs that start small are often unable to hire a team of full-time developers. That’s why they prefer to outsource the biggest part of their programming needs to third-party developers to build the first stable version of the product. However, many new startups have at least one programming-savvy person in the team to control the development process if not directly participate in it. The founders themselves can be aspiring software developers. As a rule, programming guys are considered to be the most technology-competent employees, so, besides programming and testing, they have to perform many collateral tasks such as system administration, domain management activities, hosting and server control, customer tech support and consulting, etc.

Programmers have to be responsible for the product they are building as the entire team depends on it and is been built around it. Therefore, they need to ensure a high level of security that is reflected in the developer’s daily to-do-list:

• automated testing
• daily backups and version control
• logging

Useful Links and Information for Software Developers

• Built.io– mobile and web application development platform
• Dash - API documentation browser and code snippet manager
• Elasticsearch - tool to make logging data searchable

Tools for Software Developers

Hosting and Server Control

• 1&1
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) [popular choice]
• Bluehost
• DigitalOcean
• Google Cloud
• Heroku
• Linode
• Pagodabox
• Rackspace
• ServerMania
• SiteGround
• SoftLayer
• VestaCP (hosting control panel)
• Windows Azure

Domain Registration and Management

• GoDaddy
• Name.com
• Namecheap

Source Control and Code Collaboration

• Github [popular choice]
• GitLab
• Jenkins
• Sourcetree
• Bitbucket

Continuous Integration (CI)

• Bamboo
• Cruisecontrol
• Integrity (CI server)
• Pulse
• Semaphore
• Solanolabs

Testing, Monitoring and Issue Tracking

• Airbrake
• Blitz (load testing)
• Exceptional
• FogBugz
• Rollbar
• Ruxit
• Unfuddle

If one day you manage to attract venture capital for your startup, your investor may demand expanding the team with full-time software engineers engaged in further product development. Therefore, sooner or later you’ll have to think about your own software development team and its infrastructure. Knowing about available handy tools can help you a great deal with creating the most productive and comfortable ecosystem for your software development department.

Designer

Designers are the less talked about employees. Their role in the life of a startup company is rarely discussed in articles. It happens probably because newly created startups prefer outsourcing their graphic design needs rather than hiring a full-time graphic designer. But it does not mean there are no startups employing designers full-time or planning to do so or even those created by designers. Even if you are using outsourced graphic design services, it’s never a bad idea to know more about how a designer works and what kind of tools can facilitate and boost his/her performance. After all, graphic designers create something no business can do without. And the below designer’s to-do-list totally reflects it.

Designer’s To-Do-List

• UI/UX design for website and mobile app Logo and branding desig
• Landing page design
• Ad banners design
• Banners and icons for social networks
• Infographic design
• Packaging design [for physical product startups]
• Printed advertising material design

A graphic designer is important not only for designing essentials like a logo, website and mobile app but also for marketing purposes. In cooperation with a marketing team, a graphic artist can create some beautiful illustrations, infographics, explanation videos and a great deal of other eye-catching creative stuff that is in fact a valuable content a marketer can bring to social networks and forums in order to get the company noticed by potential customers and partners. A talented designer is an indispensable tool for boosting your business awareness. And I can tell you that mixing technology and creativity can really be fruitful in regard to building a lovable brand.

Useful Links and Information for Designers

• Font Squirrel - free fonts for commercial use
• Freebbble - design freebies
• Graphic Burger - free mock-ups, UI kits, icons etc.
• The UX Newsletter - tales of researching, designing, and building from @MailChimpUX

Inspiration for Designers

• Awwwards
• Behance
• Dribbble
• Material Up

Tools for Designers

Design Tools

• Adobe Creative Cloud

Design Collaboration

• ConceptShare
• Pixelapse

Working as a Team

So we’ve discussed individual infrastructure for the key employees of a tech startup company. The important thing is to build a bridge between employees to establish an effective collaboration. There is no success without team members’ cooperation and keeping tab of the progress. Here are a few lists of some tools that can be utilized to create a perfect synergy in your startup team.

Project Management and Team Collaboration

• Asana [popular choice]
• Basecamp
• Campfire
• Confluence
DoFlowDock
• Freedcamp
HallHipchatJira [popular choice] JixeeMavenlinkPivotal Tracker
• Skype
SlackTrello [popular choice] Yammer

File Storage and Sharing

• Dropbox [popular choice]
• Google Drive
• OneDrive

Email

• Google Apps (Gmail) [popular choice]
• Zoho

***

I really hope novice startups will find this article useful and practical. Hopefully, the above information will help them save time while researching for startup infrastructure tips and marketing strategy. When browsing Internet, I often come across some valuable recommendations and real-life experience shared by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. So I’ll be adding more to this article from time to time to make it a solid guide to the US-based startup success. I would appreciate if you share your thoughts on how to launch and propel a startup company towards success.

By Dmytro Nesterov

When you're on a tight budget, as most startups are, it is important to squeeze as much goodness as possible from the money you have. There are some things you can't be too cheap about though, and this short guide should hopefully give you a few things to think about.

Setting Realistic Goals and Reasonable Expectations

This is probably the last thing anyone wants to hear when they are so excited and eager to get their product or service ready for that big day when it all goes live, but it's an important point. It would be nice to think that whatever your new idea is will suddenly go viral and have the whole world beating a path to your website. This probably won't happen though, at least not right away, so you may want to put off renting a whole room full of servers and keep your hosting plan at a reasonable level for now.

Dedicated Hosting

Having a dedicated server gives you much more freedom and power to do what you want, and extra security, but it comes at a price. The cost of hardware and bandwidth is coming down though, so you may be able to fit this in to your budget.

Pros:

• Nobody else to share server resources with.
• More options to customise to your needs.
• More access to storage space and hardware upgrades.
• Better security.
• Easier to scale up.

Cons:

• It costs more than shared or VPS.

Shared Hosting

In the past, shared hosting was basically the only starting point to get your website online because the cost of a dedicated server was drastically higher. It is still a good starting point, and a VPS (virtual private server) from a provider such as bestwebhosting.co.uk is even better.

Pros:

• It's cheap, so you can take your time without rushing to go live and make sales.
• Very little (or no) knowledge of servers required.

Cons:

• You're sharing the server resources with others.
• Generally less secure than dedicated servers.
• Not as much room to move.

Planning for the Future

If you are serious about doing whatever it is that you're doing, then there is a good chance that you will need a dedicated server (or more than one) at some point in the future. Although it shouldn't be too difficult to switch from shared to dedicated at a later date it could still bring up a few minor issues. These issues can usually all be solved by competent hosting support at the provider you are moving to, so there is no reason to worry about moving from shared to dedicated. If you have regular backups, and a seamless method to transfer over to the new provider without downtime then you should be fine.

At the end of the day, the decision to use dedicated or shared hosting comes down to finances and other personal situations such as how soon you think you will need more bandwidth and resources to cater to your new customers and users. Don't lose sight of your current situation while dreaming about your millionth customer though.

Data is a vital asset for every business. It must be stored and maintained in perfect health. When you do not have data, business decisions will be harder to make. On top of that, making very good decisions will be nigh impossible. You have to review the current and past facts to make informed decisions. This is why databases are of great importance to a business. When you have a database, you can always retrieve the data to make smart decisions for your business to progress. The problem with databases though is that they are quite hard to manage. Managing a database is quite difficult, but there are solutions to that.

Benefits of Having a Database

Before explaining the best ways to manage a database, it is probably good to mention a few reasons why having a database is good for your business. The first reason is the aforementioned easy decision making. You will have an easier time making decisions if you have informative data available for this. Other reasons include:

1. Transparency

When you have a database for your business, you will reduce the complexities that are brought about by lack of transparency. The status of various activities in the business will no longer be a secret to many people. Moreover, it is possible to see what is going on in a business. Hiding things that are not going well will become hard.

2. Tracking Progress

A business that has so many activities to engage in will become overburdened and forget about some activities. You forget all about that client who wanted some work done, the deal that was supposed to be closed. A database makes it possible for the business to track its own progress. Even if the individual handling a particular case is not around, someone else can easily take up the project.

3. Remote Control of Business

Business owners can now take vacations peacefully. Internet technology has made it possible for remote management of businesses. You will always have business data at your fingertips. It does not matter where you are on this planet, with internet connection, you can effortlessly learn the performance of your business. This is the same logic behind the remote DBA services.You can hire a database administrator to keep an eye on the ‘health’ of your database.

4. Effortless Communication

With a database, contacting employees or customers will be more of a walk in the park. It could be a kind of triggered phone ‘alert’ or email. You do not need to keep structuring email messages for certain things.

Keeping Good Data

The best way to maintain a good database is to get a database administrator. This is the secret to data management. These professionals will monitor the activity of your database and make sure that it is performing at its best. Remote database administrators make things for your business even easier. There is no need hiring a resident administrator to do the data management. The remote DBA companies provide you with a team of dedicated database administration experts.

Author bio

Terry Charlotte has been blogging about business data IT solutions for some time now. Recently she has turned her attention to remote DBA services. To learn more about these services visit her blog http://remotedba.com

The biggest reason small businesses fail is scaling up prematurely, according to a Startup Genome report. Seventy-four percent of 3,200 Internet startups surveyed attributed their failure to spending money on non-essentials, such as extra staff, office space and marketing, before making sure their product fit their market.

Report contributor to Forbes Nathan Furr, author of "Nail It Then Scale It," explains that premature scaling kills businesses because it consumes cash flow while limiting agility and the ability to adjust. Once you start hiring more personnel and investing in capital and advertising, you become committed to an expensive approach that may or may not work.

But how do you avoid this trap? How do you keep your staff small enough to manage but big enough to get the job done? One solution is to use business automation technology more efficiently.

Use Analytics Tools to Make Smart Decisions

Waiting patiently until you have a winning fit between your product and your market is key to avoiding the premature scaling trap, Furr says. Business analytics tools can help you achieve this by providing you with accurate information to guide your company's decisions without requiring you to deploy a large staff of analysts.

Over half of small businesses are now using predictive analytics tools for direct marketing, cross-selling and retention analysis, according to a TDWI Research report. Predictive tools let you spot marketing trends and predict buyer behavior, complementing tools like Google Analytics that let you measure performance.

Street Fight senior editor Stephanie Miles surveys some of the top analytics tools suitable for small businesses. These include Canopy Labs, which helps you shape marketing campaigns and sales offers to buyer behavior; IBM's Watson Analytics, which simplifies complex analytics into understandable terms for analyzing all types of data; and Stitch Labs, which helps you plan inventory purchasing decisions.

Streamline Your Payment Processing

Revenue is the lifeblood of any business, and today, generating revenue requires being able to accept mobile payments. In 2016, one in five smartphone users will be using their devices for purchases, leading mobile payments to triple next year, eMarketer projects. For your company to attract its share of this cash flow, you need a payment processing tool such as Sage Payment Solutions that lets you offer customers a flexible range of payment options. Accepting mobile payments also leverages your workforce by letting you collect revenue online without deploying additional sales personnel.

Automate Your Accounting

Sage also offers solutions to handle your accounting, another area where automation can help you economize your workforce. Accounting is essential for any successful business, but 46 percent of small business owners say it is their least favorite task, according to a TD Bank survey. Automation and outsourcing are the two best ways to lighten your accounting burden task without hiring a full-time bookkeeper.

Increase IT and Office Efficiency With the Cloud

After health insurance, Internet-related costs are the highest budgeting concern for most small businesses, a Sam's Club study found. In addition to Internet connection services, IT management can consume both manpower and costs. Computer infrastructure can also expand your office space and personnel requirements.

Using the cloud as a virtual office can help you in all these areas at once. It minimizes your on-premise space, equipment and personnel needs. The most popular cloud solutions small businesses will be adopting in 2016 are email, collaboration, and office and productivity tools, such as Gmail and Google Docs, according to a New Jersey Institute of Technology survey.

Manage Your Marketing

NJIT's survey also found that 52 percent of small businesses are moving their marketing to the cloud in 2016. Marketing is another area where automated cloud tools can maximize the productivity of a small work force. Social media management tools such as Oktopost help you coordinate the distribution of your content across your various social media profiles, while CRM tools such as Salesforce's Marketing Cloud help you manage your email, mobile, and social marketing and advertising.

Using tech tools to automate your business helps you ensure that you don't scale too quickly. These tools help keep overhead low and productivity high.

Related articles:
The Ultimate Guide to Startup Success

Manufacturing technology is becoming increasingly integrated with customer care and marketing. Under omnichannel marketing theory, the total customer experience, from inception of thought to far in the future customer loyalty, is the main focus of any business. Mass customization techniques have taken a new turn, adding customer experience modifiers and social media tie-ins.

Flexible Manufacturing Systems

Modern design software has opened up a new world of flexible manufacturing in which an idea can easily go from concept to mass production. There was a time when only large firms with highly trained staff could design a part to be manufactured, but now small business owners, entrepreneurs and free thinkers can put their ideas down in an actionable way. Flexible manufacturing allows smaller businesses to enter the supply chain market of once restricted companies or develop new supply chains for its own burgeoning industry.

Management Level Changes

Communication within omnichannel marketing is multidirectional. It moves between consumer and business, consumer and friend, and business to business. A single manufacturing event, like the creation of the next best widget, can have millions of communications exponentially going out through Internet communiqué and social media. As the messages are received by the company, smart organizations make changes to the infrastructure of the organization to accommodate the consumer’s needs. This form of mass customization, called collaborative customization, lets customers interact with the company at a higher level than that offered by front line sales representatives. Collaborative creation means that the mass customization process happens automatically or at the engineering level.

Collaborative Creation

Japanese sunglass manufacturer Paris Miki uses a semi-automated design system in which a consumer can upload a photo and the system will help create a set of glasses that match the facial dimensions. Because it is mainly automated, it saves costs in the form of salaries and creates a positive customer experience.

For products that are a bit more complex or need quality assurance protocols, collaborative creation may require a blend of DIY and expert advice. Seal and o-ring manufacturer Apple Rubber uses mold compression modeling with the assistance of trained engineers to create prototypes and then takes the final product into production. This mass customization technique proves to be a useful hybrid for people who need higher levels of professional assistance.

3-D Printing

The advent of affordable 3-D printers has ushered in an era of customizable mass production. Jewelry designer and manufacturer David Wilkinson uses a 3-D printer on a daily basis as a customization tool to give his clients a glimpse into the final product. After approval from the customer, the same 3-D generated mold can be used to produce one or many pieces of identical jewelry. Since the materials for fine jewelry are costly, this intermediate customization step saves him money and increases the customer’s overall experience.

Social Media Integration

A report by consulting firm McKinsey and Company shows that mass customization techniques can be rolled into social media marketing at a collaborative, omnichannel level. By using automated design systems that link to platforms like Facebook or Pinterest, consumers can create product designs with the assistance of their social media network. This provides valuable feedback to the designer and creates a meaningful conversation for the manufacturer. This wraps the manufacturer into the total customer experience, including the experience of consumers further down the supply chain.

Read also:
Online store for an art supplier with a personalized product feature

Who does not want to be financially independent? The majority of people are dreaming of creating their own stable source of income to avoid the stress of being an employee whose destiny largely depends on the boss’ will and success of someone else’s business.

We all want to control our life. But many of us are too much dependent on our employer. If we are young and inexperienced, we cannot be sure that sooner or later we cease to be useful / profitable for the company we are working for. We are lucky if we get some experience and learn some valuable things from your boss and co-workers before we are fired. Many of us hate the daily frustration and stress of being financially dependent. Steady work is great, but many of entrepreneurial-minded employees never stop secretly dreaming about quitting their corporate jobs to gain the total control of their financial lives by launching their own businesses.

Building an online store can be the right step in the direction of the so much-coveted financial independence. It’s not always the easiest option but building something of our own can be both more rewarding and satisfying than working for someone else’s business. At least, one can get rid of the worst stress of relying on other people for a job and being bossed around by them. And even if an aspiring entrepreneur fails, it will be a valuable lesson and experience that will help him/her improve himself/herself for the future success. Hopefully, the below tips will help wantrepreneurs avoid failures.

With the global opportunities provided with the Internet, one does not even need to be able to manufacture or ship a product to build a successful eCommerce business. Some people have managed to build a profitable business without any inventory. All they needed was the ability to write about other sellers’ products in their blogs that were properly optimized for search engines. This is how many product bloggers got their financial independence through dropshipping and affiliate programs. However it does not matter whether your eCommerce business is based on dropshipping or classical digital commerce manufacturing and/or shipping methods, the best practices are universal for all kinds of online stores.

Being a team of web developers and designers creating professional online stores, we have a special interest in what makes digital commerce businesses successful. That's why we have read a number of success stories (and some failure stories too) published by eCommerce business owners to pick up some actionable and useful recommendations on building a profitable web store. This little research has helped us distil a big chunk of information down to some tried and true entrepreneurial practices you can use to avoid mistakes and boost your online store performance.

Product Idea Tips

Designed by Freepik

1. Whatever idea you have you can find a manufacturer in China to turn it into a physical product.
2. Take your time to learn things from other businesses and wait passionately for a great idea before starting your own business.
3. Do something you enjoy or otherwise you’ll get burnt out quickly.
4. Make your product absolutely awesome. This is the best PR.
5. Research and develop your product based on customer feedbacks.
6. Buy your competitors’ products to see their limitations and values. Improve your products based on what you discovered.

   RELATED TOOLS AND SERVICES

   • Alibaba.com (the leading platform for global wholesale trade)
   • RFQWork.com (online job quotes for machine shops, fabricators, stampers, casters, molders, forgers etc.)
   • Worldwide Brands, Inc. (a wholesale directory for online sellers)
   • Wholesale Central (a B2B directory of wholesalers and wholesale products)
   • eSources.co.uk (a B2B directory of UK-based wholesale distributors, suppliers and products)

Team Tips

Designed by Freepik

7. Be prudent about your partnership and business structure. Multi-member LLCs can be dangerous if every partner has access to the checkbook. You may want to consider the S-Corp formation.
8. Avoid partnering with friends and family as a favor. Do it only if you trust and respect them.
9. Don't give equity unnecessarily. It may cost you more than giving cash in the long run.
10. Sooner or later you will need to hire the following workforce:
    • Web developer
    • Warehouse/shipping
    • Customer service
    • Content writer
    • Graphic designer
    • Office assistant
11. When partnering with someone, make sure the person cares about the business as much as you do and he/she will keep you motivated even in times of difficulties and stresses.
12. Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you.

Online Store Tips

Designed by Freepik

13. Choose eCommerce platform that can easily grow and has minimal customization limitations.
14. Placing pictures of human being on the homepage make customers trust you more. Especially if your product speaks to a person’s identity like fashion, grooming, fitness, makeup etc.
15. Professional website design is essential for gaining the trust of customers, partners, and suppliers.
16. Big, high-quality images create a better shopping mood.
17. Indicate websites that have mentioned or featured you for a better credibility. You can do it even if those sites are nothing but local blogs for now.
18. Make sure you have a spot on the homepage for future testimonials.
19. Add some trust elements to the website such as Verisign, SSL Security, Safesite Secure Checkout or simply PayPal logo to indicate security associated with PayPal.
20. If you have some certificates in your industry, make sure to show them on the site.
21. Check what your competitors are doing to build credibility and trust in the eyes of prospects.
22. Indicate your telephone number in the header.
23. Make sure you choose a proper company email to communicate with customers.
24. Good original copy is essential for your success with the search engine traffic.

ECommerce Marketing Tips

Designed by Freepik

25. You can start marketing your products on major eCommerce platforms like Amazon and eBay especially if you are a manufacturer.
26. Content marketing (blog / podcast / Youtube channel) is a must for a long-term success.
27. Start promoting your business on social media even before your start selling
28. Promote your store with the help of popular YouTubers, instagrammers and bloggers whose accounts are somehow related to your niche. Look for those who make unboxing videos and reviews of your kind of products, then contact them to find out if you could send some of your items off to them for review.
29. Instagram is especially great for eCommerce businesses in terms of conversions.
30. If your products are not very expensive you can give them out as Christmas presents for people to want more
31. In case of subscription business model, show how customers would save if they subscribe for more than one month (e.g. semi-annual and annual subscriptions)
32. Run social media sharing contests.
33. Ask your happy customers to send you pictures of your products they received and post them on your Facebook. Try to make following you as much fun as possible.
34. Boost your best and noteworthy posts on Facebook.
35. See what other successful companies are doing about the content marketing in your niche and follow their proven strategy.
36. Interact with as many people as possible through your business account in social media.
37. Don't get easily discouraged at every step. Be persistent and have a goal in mind.
38. You can cooperate with complementary businesses that do not directly compete with you to repost each other’s content, accept each other’s guest posts in your blogs or buy a post on their website.
39. Article writing, guest posting, and giving products away for review are the most effective SEO strategies for eCommerce businesses.
40. A regularly updated blog is ideal for search engine optimization (SEO) of an eCommerce website
41. Become a Google Trusted Store
42. Add a live chat to the site.
43. Add an upsell interface to the online store to suggest other products customers might want with the one they added to their cart.
44. Community features, reviews, video resources can add unique value to your business.
45. Offline customer service is another way to boost your sales.
46. Create a Youtube channel explaining how to use your products.
47. Always be nice to your customers to build a positive reputation from the very outset of your business.

    RELATED TOOLS AND SERVICES

    • CartHook (cart abandonment recovery)
    • Yotpo (plug and play social reviews solution for online stores)
    • Prezly (PR tool)
    • Intercom (customer communication platform)
    • Privy (email list growth platform)
    • MailChimp (email marketing service)

Logistics and Inventory Tips

Designed by Freepik

48. Order goods from wholesale vendors way earlier than you expect them to arrive.

    RELATED TOOLS AND SERVICES

    • Stitch (automated multichannel inventory management)
    • Fulfillrite (eCommerce order fulfillment)
    • Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) (Amazon's fulfillment networks)
    • Flexport (logistics for global companies)

Competition Tips

Designed by Freepik

49. Do your best to beat your competition on quality, design, and customer service.
50. Differentiate yourself from the competition in a meaningful way.

    RELATED TOOLS AND SERVICES

    • Prisync (competitor price tracking tool for all sizes of eCommerce businesses)

Financial Tips

Designed by Freepik

51. Learn how to save money before you start your own business. This ability will help you effectively manage company finances.
52. Start saving money as early as possible before launching your eCommerce business.
53. Bootstrapping makes mistakes less costly.
54. If you are failing, fail quickly.
55. Start small and lean and spend some money on advertising to test whether your business is going to be successful.

    RELATED TOOLS AND SERVICES

    • Xero (online accounting software)
    • Fourlane (bookkeeping, project accounting, tax planning, and tax preparation)
    • Riskified (end-to-end fraud prevention solution for online merchants)

We hope that the above tips will help aspiring eCommerce entrepreneurs build the right and actionable business strategy. We’ll be adding more valuable tips to the article as we read new articles and reports based on successful experiences of online store owners. If you have any advice on how to build a successful online store you are welcome to share them in comments to this article or send them to us by email.

You are also welcome to contact us if you need the help of experienced eCommerce website developers and designers to create a professional and full-featured online store for you.

Businesses of every size rely on software to be more efficient. For small business owners who need to run multiple functions, having the right software that's in line with their company's budget is crucial for startup success. Here is a list of business apps that get the job done.

Stormboard

If you are looking to brainstorm with your partners and need to provide quick feedback efficiently, look no further than Stormboard. With Stormboard, you can brainstorm, organize and prioritize your team's work in real time, never missing a beat on what's important. Collaborate on prototypes and launch strategies and marketing ideas — all seamlessly synced on your iPhone, Android and desktop apps. Stormboard is free for up to five users, then priced at $8.33/user for more advanced features like reporting, document sharing and custom templates.

Basecamp

Basecamp is one the leading project management tools and for good reason, it delivers powerful collaboration tools for managing all of your projects. With features such as to-do lists, a Gmail-like message board, group and private chats, reports, scheduling, notifications and deep search, it's really the go-to for businesses of all sizes. It's free for the first account you create and $29 per month for a team account.

Proved

Market validation is one of the most important steps an early startup can undertake, after all, why build something if no one wants it? Proved provides a place to test your idea for free. It works by sending out your company's pitch and gathering unbiased customer feedback from a targeted demographic. The feedback will include what they like about it and most importantly, whether they would buy it as a customer. Proved offers a number of plans to choose from from free to pro, depending on the number of respondents you wish to include. Bonus: They offer discounts for startups.

Slidebean

When your company is looking to present its idea in front of potential investors, it's important to have a pitch deck that's not only captivating, but expertly crafted and tailored to the people you're meeting. Slidebean allows anyone to create a pitch deck in minutes. It also offers numerous resources, like pitch deck templates crafted by leading investors themselves. For $19 per month, it's really a no brainer.

FounderSuite

Finding a few investors is hard enough, but how do you find investors who are well matched for your company's idea? FoundersSuite gives you access to over 25,000 investors, indexed from the very popular AngelList. Along with a powerful search with filters, FoundersSuite offers a platform for managing the entire fundraising process. With their platform, you can host your company's pitch deck, non-disclosure agreements, term sheets and financial needs, making it easy for potential investors to see everything in one place. If you're looking to fundraise efficiently and cost effectively, look no further than FoundersSuite.

Divide.io

If your company creates mobile apps, you have to have a BaaS (backend as a service) solution. Divide is one that is quickly growing in popularity for its stable service and on-going development. Being fully open-sourced and free, Divide is perfect for mobile app companies that are just starting out. With Divide, you can sign up and login users, store and retrieve data, and set up push notifications. The service is ideal for mobile games, social media apps and apps that require data syncing.

Sage 50

Accounting for your company's finances doesn't have to be hard or cumbersome. Sage 50 online accounting tools let users track invoices, payables and receivables, as well as manage payroll. And with the software being in the cloud, you or your accountant can manage the company finances from anywhere where there's an internet connection. A perfect option for busy entrepreneurs on the go.

Small businesses need to run efficiently and to do that, they need to empower their routines. From accounting with Sage to presenting client proposals through Basecamp, small businesses need to make software work for them, all at the price points that make the company run lean.

You may also like:
The Ultimate Guide to Startup Success

When an average person thinks about a website for business, he/she usually fancies a site serving traditional functions of announcing the business’ existence and offering information on its location, services/products and possibly prices. Not many know that a modern website or online shop can be not only a 24/7 source of information about the business venture or a mere online shopping outlet but also a great tool that attracts visitors and converts them into buyers at a new level made possible by cutting-edge technologies.

Image credit: Freepik.com

It is time to take a fresh look at why 21st-century entrepreneurs would need a professional website to grow their businesses and make more money. We are going to recall some old-school functions of the online presence as well as to learn some new features that have been implemented for businesses by modern web designers and developers.

Demonstrating Professionalism

Frankly speaking, many businesses, especially small ones, can do without websites. They easily content themselves with the web presence offered by social networks like Facebook or by business listing and review sites such as Yelp and Angie's List. Many small vendors sell their products through Amazon without having their online store built. So online business without a website is possible. However, one will need to think of an advanced brand identity as well as a professional look and feel of the company as the business grows. An expertly built website is an essential part of the modern business’ brand and one of the most valuable tools that help entrepreneurs use the full potential of their ventures. Moreover, today’s websites can be equipped with features that add value to your business and help better convert the Internet traffic into sales.

Businesses that have nice looking websites inspire trust and are more competitive on the market. A solid entrepreneur simply cannot make a client trust his/her business today without a high-quality web presence. By having a professional website designed, the entrepreneur shows he/she cares about his/her brand and business reputation. Adding more functionality to the site will make the company stand out from the competition.

So social media may suffice for new small businesses, but sooner or later entrepreneurs will have to consider having a corporate website or online store designed to professionally represent their companies online. It is about how the online face of the business looks to customers living in the digital era. A business without a website cannot project a compelling and trustworthy image. A reliable brand cannot be built with only social networks or with some cooky-cutting website. It’s hard to find a successful company that does not owe at least a part of its success to its professional web presence that includes a high-quality custom website.

Reaching Global Market

If a business addresses the international market, having a professional website is a must. First of all, looking professional is a matter of prestige and trust which are one of the basic prerequisites for a successful international business. Secondly, a professional website allows for localization. Such site can automatically offer different content in different languages depending on visitors’ location. No doubt, a feature like this requires the involvement of experienced web developers and designers.

When targeting prospects on the global market, the key to success could be search engine optimization (SEO) that can help entrepreneurs get traffic from search engines like Google. It is really hard to succeed with search engine rankings without content marketing. It means entrepreneurs have to publish as much relevant content on their websites as possible to offer Google and other search engines enough content and information about their products or services to outrank their business rivals. The more content the site owners publish, the more chances he/she gets to receive links back to their sites from other websites which will add to their domains authority in the eyes of Google. They will most probably have to integrate blogs into their sites to compete for search engine traffic. SEO is considered to be one of the best marketing methods in terms of ROI but it can be done effectively only if you own a website.

Tips:

• Make sure your website is mobile friendly
• Learn what SEO is in more details and optimise your website for search engines
• Create and regularly update your business blog
• Localize your site for your biggest markets

Targeting Local Market

Many small-size companies working within their local market successfully run their activities without own websites. They only use social networks and their local business listing platforms to address their customers. However, a significant part of local firms understood that owning a website could add lots of value to their businesses. There are at least a few reasons why local entrepreneurs hire web designers and developers to build the self-hosted web presence for their businesses. Here are some key benefits that make them realize the importance of professional websites:

• Unlike social media pages, self-hosted websites are highly flexible for branding, customization and creating the necessary look and feel to appeal to the target audience
• Self-hosted websites offer better possibilities for SEO including the usage of an integrated business blog, Schema markup etc.
• A shopping cart and payment gateways can be integrated into the website to let customers easily purchase products or services online
• The customizable website has a better layout to display product catalogues, price lists, restaurant menus and whatnot which considerably improves the user experience
• A professionally looking website adds to business value and credibility in the eyes of customers, partners and investors

That is why even if a local entrepreneur starts a company without a site, it is only a matter of time when he/she realizes the need for a professional website for a better business future. Being present only in local business listings, Google reviews, Better Business Bureau, Yelp or any other review site with thousands of listed businesses and probably dozens of entrepreneur's competitors neither make his/her business unique nor provides enough information about the company for potential customers. No wonder that 83% of US consumers consider having a website and being active on social media as important factors when choosing a small business .

There are people who deliberately choose not to join social networks. Those are elderly people or those who think social media make them procrastinate too much so they have to stop or abstain from using Facebook and other popular social networks. If a business’ online presence is limited to pages on social networks, there is a barrier between some potential customers and the business.

Some people deliberately decide not to join social networks. Those are elderly people or those who think social media make them procrastinate too much so they have to stop or abstain from using Facebook and other popular social networks. If a business’ online presence is limited to pages on social networks, there is a barrier between some potential customers and the business.

Showcasing Products

A well-structured website is an ideal place to display products. One can add the entire product catalogue embracing thousands of items that would be very problematic to display anywhere else. Having a website is the best way to show the extensive amount of inventory, restaurant’s menus, product options etc.

There are some state-of-the-art ways to display products on modern websites:

• Virtual try-on allows customers to instantly see how they would look wearing a pair of eyeglasses, clothes or a hairstyle before paying for the product / service. Some businesses selling wheels and tyres use virtual wheel visualizers to let customers see wheels on their cars before buying.

Virtual try-on implemented by QuartSoft for an eyewear vendor




Virtual wheel visualizer created by QuartSoft for a company selling wheels and tyres

• Virtual tours are great for real estate businesses as they make it possible for potential buyers to explore inside and outside of a property even before they have a chance to visit the place. The virtual tour solution is also ideal for property rental businesses, museums, event organizers and many other businesses
• Motion animation that allows displaying physical products with a 3D effect. In many cases the ability to see products from different angles has a significant impact on online shoppers’ purchase decision.

Motion animation creates a beautiful 3D effect for better product showcasing

• All kinds of rotating banners, carousels and slideshows can be used to draw attention to multiple products on a relatively small area on a web page

Grabbing Customers’ Attention

The above-mentioned advanced product displaying methods can serve as attention grabbers to form a positive first impression of the company with potential buyers and make the venture stand out from competitive businesses. Attention can cause interest, and interest can lead to a purchase. There are other ways to grab customers’ attention using a website:

• Engaging blog posts with attention grabbing headlines attract more clients and links back to the site from other resources
• An interesting video (such as an animated explainer video) integrated into the home page can easily grab prospects’ attention and retain them on the site longer to learn more and potentially get interested in the company's offerings and activities
• No other online resource can match a self-hosted website in the ability to customize the layout and the creative usage of graphics. Efficient use of images can provide a more riveting visual experience and create a memorable brand that attracts customers. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

High quality extra large images can create a positive impression of your products. Image source: McLellan Jacobs




Pictures of the design and production process inspire trust in customers and make the brand more human. Such images create a rational appeal. Image source: Wootten




Appealing characters make a positive impression of your brand. Such images create a rational appeal. Image source: Coucou




A colorful, illustrative design can create an emotional appeal for the brand or products. Image source: Torie and Howard

• Value-adding features are an excellent way to grab customers’ attention and make your brand look more professional and trustful. One of the examples of such tools is interactive cost calculators that allow customers to determine an estimated cost of services or related expenses.

Bayswater Car Rental website has a fuel cost calculator that can be very useful for potential customers as well as helps the business stand out from the crowd.

Tracking Your Success

When owning a self-hosted website an entrepreneur can add useful third-party analytics to track the online business performance. There is quite a number of tracking instruments from the free and powerful Google Analytics offering tons of data to the paid services like Crazy Egg generating heatmaps to visualize visitors activities on the website. Detailed analytics let the business person determine the strong and weak points of the business to make some tweaks in order to improve the site’s conversion rate. The website owner has all the controls over the content, design and layout to make necessary adjustments based on a great deal of metrics and insights revealed by integrated analytics tools.

Automating and Streamlining Online Sales

Selling products or services is the ultimate goal of any business. So a website should be one of the tools that facilitate sales. In fact, a professionally built website is one of the best sales-boosting tools an entrepreneur can get. A professional eCommerce website can have the entire arsenal of tools for enhancing business productivity by automating and streamlining online sales. Today’s eCommerce platforms and third-party developers offer quite a few features that allow:

• automatic adding of new customers’ emails into the mailing list for improved marketing
• automatic adding of new orders details into a task manager and to-do list for employees
• automatic sending of personalized welcome/thank you emails to new buyers
• automatic input of sales data into spreadsheets for accounting and order tracking purposes
• bulk order processing (invoicing, shipping, changing status etc.)
• and many more useful automatic functionalities

A professional digital commerce website can automate an online business all the way from marketing to shipment label printing. The productivity enhancement like this helps entrepreneurs handle their eCommerce routine as well as avoid errors and save staff time, thus boosting their bottom line.

Gaining Ground on Competition

When an entrepreneur starts a business in a competitive field, he/she can gain some ground at the outset by building a website as good or even better than that of competitors. When hiring web design and development help, the entrepreneur can sit down with experts to discuss how to make a more appealing and customer-oriented web presence based on what competitors already have.

Offering Better Customer Support

Good websites can provide the 24/7 support for customers. They work as tireless salespersons. There are some ways to keep customers informed and updated on the business activities and offerings:

• Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
• Live online chats
• Integrated maps and driving instructions
• Downloadable product user manuals
• Request forms
• Online price calculators
• Newsletter subscriptions
• Tutorials
• Expert articles and videos

Just like the appealing look and feel of a website, the top-notch customer support can create a positive impression of the business. And, as a rule, a positive impression is the first step in acquiring loyal clients and referral leads.

A professional website can bring lots of value to the business as well as project a compelling and trustworthy image. Websites are businesses’ online headquarters that are always there for customers to get information and buy products. Ignoring to invest in a high quality site can lead to losing business to competitors. If you are looking for an expert help with designing and developing a corporate website or online store for your company, our team of professionals can assist you with building your online presence that includes cutting-edge eCommerce, branding and marketing capabilities.

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The aim of any ambitious entrepreneur is to take their business to the next level and become an international company. But this is easier said than done with so many elements to consider, from production issues to legal matters. So how does a technology business expand abroad?

Image designed by Freepik

First steps

The first question to ask yourself is whether you are truly ready to become a global brand. It is not enough to believe you have a saleable technological product or service that people abroad are crying out for just because your homegrown market is. How do you know if there is a demand for what you do in foreign markets? You know by conducting market research. You can do this remotely from the comfort of your own office, but it is far better to set foot in the region you are thinking of expanding into. Make sure the customers you think exist actually do exist, and that they have the means and inclination to spend money with you. If your home market has become saturated, by yourself or by your competitors, then it may be the right time to expand into a foreign market, especially if by doing so, you are the first. Your technology business, for example, may be able to offer foreign companies the opportunity to expand their own businesses out of their home region, perhaps through website design, apps, or e-commerce sites that sell products they cannot get inside their country. Take the time to research any local companies that provide what you offer, and it would not hurt to also research those companies your rivals consider to be the competition.

When thinking about which regions to expand into, broaden your horizons a little. While Europe may have many advantages, such as selling to a similar customer base to that you already have, fewer language difficulties, and good exchange rates, it is not the only market out there. In fact, you could have far more success if you were to consider up and coming regions, such as the Middle East. The Middle East is currently enjoying a huge surge in popularity among businesses, such as that owned by Fahad Al Rajaan, whose principal business location is in Bahrain, but who has successfully become involved in organizations in Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar, and Oman, as well as in the West, namely the UK and America.

Next come considerations regarding finance. Put simply, can you afford to expand your business in foreign climes? Whilst your home office may be able to act as a headquarters, it is likely you will need to set up premises at your international site. If you can still control everything from home, then appreciate that you will need to take on extra staff to deal with the increase in custom you are expecting. Ensure you have a strong and adaptable team around you to handle the expansion.

When considering which region to expand into, be aware that expanding into a region that has a significantly different culture to your own requires even more research to be carried out. You will need to have a thorough understanding of the local legal system and taxes to be sure you do not fall foul of these and end up paying fines that could cripple your business before it has even begun. You should also consider logistics in your foreign branch. For example, you need to make sure that the roads from your production premises are good so that items do not get damaged en route.

You should also seek to build relationships with local people who are going to be your representatives, and remember that you should conform to the way they do things, and not expect them to conform to yours. Learning the language is a great step forward, but if this is not possible, you should consider hiring bilingual staff members who can translate for you and so minimize language problems. This will also be of great help when it comes to customer relations. There is no point offering a great technological product to a foreign market if you do not back it up with excellent customer service. After all, a good after sales service may be a prime reason why your foreign customers buy from you rather than from a homegrown company.

The key to successfully expanding a business overseas is to plan, plan, plan, ensuring finances are adequate and that you and your team have a thorough understanding of the region, and backing this up with solid business relationships is paramount.

While the last economic downturn hasn’t been kind to enterprises, startups have flourished in a post-crash market. According to Forbes, there are now over 28 million small businesses in the United States and more than 50 percent of the working population is employed by an SMB. Thanks to the rise of reliable broadband connections, cloud computing and the evolution of Internet standards such as IPv6, more SMBs are choosing the web-based startup route to minimize overhead and get their products to market as quickly as possible. For startup owners, however, managing web portals, e-commerce solutions and social media can eat up valuable time better spent championing their product or reaching out to new customers. Here are four ways to help automate your web-based business processes.

Image source: Freepik

By the Numbers

Your business lives and dies on numbers. How many people are visiting your website, and what are they doing? What do your sales numbers look like? How successful are current marketing campaigns? Couple this with the ability to gather data from virtually any source and it’s easy for any startup to get overwhelmed by 1s and 0s — you need a way to collect, sort and easily display this information without having to go out and mine it yourself. The solution? According to Small Business Trends, it’s worth spending on the right analytics automation software; look for something that provides a “single pane of glass” dashboard that pulls data from multiple sources and lets you see key metrics at a glance.

Get Social

Facebook now claims over 1 billion active users per month, while Bloomberg notes that video- and picture-sharing app “Snapchat” has more than 100 million users who generate over 10 billion video views per day. Tapping this market is a huge boon to SMBs — if you can get potential customers talking about your “story” online or sharing your posts, you’re on the fast track to improved revenue.

The problem? Managing multiple social sites can quickly overtake other business priorities, leaving little time for innovation or promotion. Small Business Computing recommends the use of social automation tools; Hootsuite is a popular option that offers a 30-day trial and automatically pulls data from more than 35 social networks. While email marketing has slipped out of first place, thanks to social sites, it’s still a popular engagement and networking tool. The right email management solution can automatically detect and reject spam, prioritize senders and streamline your marketing efforts.

This, Then That

If you’re running a web-based startup, web design is a top priority — if users can’t quickly access content on your site or find exactly what they’re looking for, they’ll choose a competitor and you lose a sale. The result? Web design and development for startups is key to long-term success, but since most owners aren’t content experts. it’s often difficult to bridge the gap between potential and profit. As noted by Entrepreneur, however, solutions like “if this then that,” often abbreviated IFTTT is “one of the most streamlined automation tools on the Web.” Often used by homeowners, it can also be leveraged to great effect by SMBs; the free tool lets you create “recipes” that automate specific web-based tasks, such as integrating contact info or keeping track of your website’s search engine ranking position (SERP).

Pass on Paper

Last but not least to improve your startup automation? Take a pass on paper. Even web-based businesses often fall into the trap of keeping multiple paper copies of critical records in addition to digital documents, or don’t convert physical old files when making the switch to a more streamlined web presence. By combining all document access into a single, collaborative, cloud-based platform, you’re able to both increase productivity and lower total costs — employees are able to quickly edit or add documents while original versions are kept safe and sound. Plus, by leveraging cloud technology, you’re not on the hook for costly server hardware or the expense of ongoing maintenance. By automating the flow of documents in your organization, such as accounts payable or order processing, you both improve customer satisfaction and reduce time between partner billing and payment.

Web-based solutions empower startups to embrace a global audience and increase their marketing reach. Automation of data collection, social insight, web design and document control meanwhile, can help SMBs own their market niche.

Author bio: As U.S. Chief Operating Officer at Esker, Steve Smith is responsible for all operations in North, South and Central America. Esker is a global leader in business process automation, helping organizations around the world automate various business processes. Through Esker’s variety of software packages, businesses are able to increase their workflow and productivity.

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Project management is nothing new. People have been pitching and managing projects since the olden times. From the Great Wall of China and Pyramids of Giza to mass movements and wars – humans have planned and executed huge projects with their skills. Traditional project management worked well in the old days, but in the fast-paced world of today, it is impossible to handle a to-do list and check off items while memorizing every task that is assigned to team members.

Your project can be anything that you do, either for a living, or just something you do in your spare time – wedding planning, home budgets, and sports team management or in the corporate world. Today’s project manager can’t do without a tool that zooms in on every aspect of the project. Web-based project management tools are the top choice of many corporations and small businesses nowadays, because of the ease they provide. These tools track progress, maximize productivity, help manage multiple projects at a time and distribute the workload. If you want to know which tools are used by successful project managers of today, take a look at some of the tools below:

1. ASANA

Asana is ranked as one of the top choices of PM in the corporate world. Asana is a hybrid task and project management tool. Since its launch in 2011, it has boosted its collaborative features for individuals and organizations. Adding multiple projects is as easy as a breeze and you can structure individual and team goals and set milestones.

You can order goals by date, time, and set limits that depend on tasks to be tagged as complete only when the sub-tasks are finished. Notes, links, tags and comments can be added to any task for better communication. Asana also has a lot of keyboard shortcuts for ease in usage.

Companies like Dropbox, Uber and Pinterest use Asana to manage their projects. It is free to use, unless you have more than 15 people onboard.

2. BaseCamp

BaseCamp is the top choice amongst individuals, entrepreneurs, freelancers and small businesses. Projects can be handled well when people can talk to each other and discuss ideas openly. BaseCamp focuses on making this easy. Once you, as a project manager, know where the time has been spent, you can always use different ideas that get your team motivated and produce more work in same amount of time.

BaseCamp can be integrated with time-tracking tools like Minterapp which help in keeping a track of the time spent on different projects. There are no more messy email threads because you can post messages to BaseCamp. You can share files, images, designs and documents with your clients and team. Making a to-do list takes seconds on BaseCamp.

Packages are plus, premium and max, from $49-$149/month.

3. TeamBox

Many managers, contractors, teams and freelancers use TeamBox as their favorite tool. It is the pioneer in integrating social tools with online project management. The vision behind TeamBox, is to change the way people work, by making it easier so that more things get done.

TeamBox projects have conversations, task lists, pages and storage for files. Members can share ideas, files, images and videos. Task creation is fast and linear.

TeamBox can be used for free or can be expanded to personal, basic and professional versions

.

4. Projecturf

Projecturf is a web-based project management tool that helps freelancers and businesses manage projects, peoples and tasks. Projects can be big or small, personal or business. Once you create a project, you can add team members to the project and give them instant access via web.

There are multiple options available for your project, like creating and managing tasks, events on the calendar, discussions, uploading story and designs and analyzing project data. Dashboard activity can also be recorded for post-project analysis.

Pricing is based on monthly usage, varying from 20-100 projects for $39.99-$119.99 per month.

5. Apollo

Apollo is a project and contact management tool that is used by many skilled managers. Using Apollo is going to help you get things done quickly and efficiently. It helps you keep track of where you and your contacts are. It will make you feel on top of your tasks, regardless of how hectic your situation is.

One key feature of Apollo is its interactive timer. With interactive timers, you can start a timer and keep track of how much time you are spending on a task. You can see your activity and set milestones. Pricing can be done on basic, plus, premium and max.

6. Huddle

Huddle is the world’s leading cloud-based collaboration platform, which is currently being used by 90,000 businesses and government organizations. Its key features include online file storage, discussions, tasks, files and permissions.

Huddle encrypts data exchanged with the server to industry standards and authenticates the server to the user. Hold discussions with your team members, immediately track deadlines and milestones for your projects. It is chosen by government offices because of its ability to restrict permissions against each folder, as to who can view and manage it.

7. Lighthouse

Lighthouse simplifies your projects, so you don’t have to spend extra time dealing with the nitty gritty. You can collaborate on projects, be it a team of 5 or 50. Lighthouse notifies you of the progress with ease. It will also help you in keeping up with the project’s progress on the go.

Dozens of useful services can be integrated with Lighthouse, to make it efficient all in one platform. Tasks are termed ‘tickets’, which you can organize in custom states, tagging system, advance searches, saved searches and a mass editing tool.

Pricing varies from Bronze, Silver and Gold editions, for $25-$100/month.

8. MyCollab

MyCollab is a multi-purpose tool which has several features, like customer relationship management, document management and project management. The project management one is called ‘MyCollab-project’.

MyCollab project has notable features like Gantt charts, milestones time tracking and issue management. It supports agile development models on its Kanban boards. The community edition of MyCollab projects is free and open source, and it can be upgraded to paid editions with an expansion of features. It has great mobile readiness and requires a Java runtime.

9. Trello

If you like personal Kanban and like to use cards or notes to organize your work, Trello will make your life easy as the web counterpart. Trello is very fast, very flexible and very easy to work in a fun way. You can organize tasks within minutes and organize them in categories, however you want. You can create different boards for different projects, add colors to notes and drag and drop them in columns. Trello is available as an application on iOS and Android.

Trello is free to use, but the company offers Gold edition, which has more options like larger file attachments and emoji usage. Teams like The Verge, New York Times and Tumblr use Trello for their tasks.

10. Odoo

Odoo is a full suite of applications, and project management is one of them. It provides multi-platform solutions, in terms of managing any task at all. It supports Windows, Linux and other operating systems as well.

The community edition of Odoo is free, but has limited features as compared to its enterprise version. One of the key features of this tool is a special Kanban view that is based on a smart interface. Other features include Gantt charts, tasks, issues, community resources and its official Docker image.

11. Taiga

Taiga is an open-source project management platform for startups, web developers and web designers. The main focus of Taiga is on the agile development method. It has all the required features like Kanban board, backlog, tasks, sprints and issues, etc.

A notable feature is that Taiga can be integrated with GitHub, GitLab and BitBucket, which means that its management efficiency can be maximized.

Taiga can also be extended via plugins and has a REST API.

AUTHOR BIO

ABOUT ALMA CAUSEY

Alma is a mother, wife and a professional blogger by choice. She has completed her masters in English literature from the University of Groningen. As a blogger she wrote quite a few posts on health, technology as well as management. She loves to discover new places and share experiences in words. Oh, Alma- is incomplete without cats.

Find her on Twitter: @Almacausey