Useful Tools To Improve Your Business Performance

Starting a startup isn’t as easy as it sounds. As the journey goes on, the business owner faces different situations and he/she constantly has to think about improving the business performance. Business performance is what measures the success of the business.

So, to improve business performance, a business owner spends a lot of time, effort, and money unaware of the tools that can help him/her to boost business performance. With the help of such tools, tedious tasks can be done smoothly with minimal effort within no time.

Useful Tools for a Tech Startup

There are limitless amounts of online tools to boost business performance. It can be hard and time-consuming to handpick the right tools for your startup. So, we have listed some of the best tools that are very useful to save your time and effort. The tools listed here are freemium.

Communication Tools

Slack

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Slack is one of the best communication tools available right now. You just need to create a workspace and invite team members to that workspace.

The best thing about Slack is creating channels. Slack helps to keep messages and conversations organized through dedicated channels. You can create different channels for different projects that make it easier to
communicate with teams working on different projects.

Moreover, Slack helps in creating private or public channels. It also allows you to message directly to a team member. The good news is that it is available on macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android.

Skype

Slack is another best communication tool that allows free calls anywhere in the world. You can chat, video call, and share your files with your team members and clients.

The best thing about Skype is, it allows you to share your skype number with other people. People with this number can call you from smartphones and landlines and you can pick up the call on Skype. It is available on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.

Zoom

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Zoom is an online video communication tool allowing you to share your screen, your content, and record your calls. Not only these, but Zoom also helps in client meetings, group meetings, and adds multiple participants in a video conference.

One of the best things that makes Zoom better than other communication tools is that a user doesn't need to have an account to join a meeting. Each meeting has a unique number that is required to join a Zoom meeting. It is available on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Google Hangouts Meet

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Google Hangouts Meet is an online communication tool developed by Google. It allows you to connect with your team and hold virtual meetings from anywhere.

You just need to share a link for the meeting and anyone with the link can join the meeting. It is integrated with Google Calendar thus making it easier for you to share your meeting link and information on the calendar. You can also record and save your meetings on Google Drive. Up to 50 participants can join the meeting.

It is available on Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS.

Email Hosting Tools

Gmail

Gmail is a free email service developed by Google which offers 15 GB of storage initially. You can upgrade the storage as per your requirements.

You can instantly send and receive emails without having to worry about security. It allows you to share any files and contents with anyone anywhere in the world. With a Gmail account, you can use any Google products and services.

It is available on Android, iOS, and browsers.

Zoho Mail

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Just like Gmail, Zoho Mail is a free email hosting service developed by Zoho Corporation. The main advantage of Zoho Mail is, it is easy to set up, secured, encrypted, and ad-free service.

Zoho Mail allows you to manage multiple email addresses. It initially offers 5 GB of storage. You can upgrade to another edition as per your needs. It is available on Android, iOS, and browsers.

Collaboration & Project Management Tools

Trello

Trello is a project management tool developed by Atlassian. It is simple to use tools to organize tasks, track progress, and manage projects.

One of the best things about Trello is, it provides a drag-and-drop feature to easily manage your tasks and projects. You need to create a board and invite your team members to that board to make collaboration easier.

It is available on Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS.

Asana

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Asana is a collaboration tool developed by Asana, Inc. in 2008. If you are looking for a clean and simple UI to manage your tasks and projects and track progress, then Asana is one of the best options to go for.

You can create projects and invite your team members to that project and delegate roles and responsibilities, specify deadlines, and track the progress of each member. It is used for improving team collaboration and also used for communicating about projects and tasks directly in Asana.

You can also share your files and it has a built-in calendar to specify deadlines. So, give it a try and you will love it.

It is available on Android, iOS, and browsers.

Jira

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Jira is another project management tool developed by Atlassian. It was mostly used for tracking and prioritizing bugs, but now also used for project management by different organizations. It is great for organizations no matter what the size of organizations and teams is.

It offers one of the best UI and customizable dashboards and workflows. You can also track the progress of the tasks and projects and track how much time has been spent by your team members on a particular task. It is also great for generating reports.

It is available on Android, iOS, and browsers.

Basecamp

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Basecamp is another project management and communication tool on this list. It was developed by Basecamp Software Company.

Basecamp is used for planning, scheduling, and team communication. It is all in one package including boards, to-dos, storing and sharing files and docs, team chat, and so on. You can assign roles and responsibilities with deadlines. Everyone on the boards is well-informed about the projects, tasks, and deadlines.

And more importantly, you get notifications if any new updates or changes are made. It is available on Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS.

Google Suite

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Google Suite or simply G Suite is probably the best tool out there that includes everything from Gmail for email service, Hangouts for communication, Calendar for scheduling meetings, Google Drive for storing and sharing files, Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms for
storing, sharing, and creating docs on the go, and Admin panel for managing and organizing services and users.

It improves team collaboration and increases productivity. What do you expect more?

GitHub

Github is an open-source version control system that helps developers to work on the same projects simultaneously. It is one of the best platforms for software development teams.

The best part about GitHub is, it helps to share code with your team members and undo your code to avoid errors. Your team members can work on different branches to avoid collision between them, thus avoiding
rework. You can easily manage your projects and get feedback not only
from team members but from developers all around the world.

GitLab

GitLab is another version control system that is new to this field. The features provided by both GitHub and GitLab are mostly similar, but what separates Gitlab from GitHub is that GitLab offers unlimited private repositories for free.

GitLab is a repository manager that helps team members to collaborate on the same projects and code.

Time Tracking Tools

TopTracker

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TopTracker is a time tracking tool that lets you track the progress of the tasks. You can easily track how your team members are spending their time, what tasks they are doing, how much time they have taken to complete tasks, and so on.

Moreover, TopTracker takes screenshots of the tasks that let you know what your team members are doing and how much time they have spent on a task. It helps to increase productivity and decreases the time spent on
unnecessary tasks.

It is available on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Social Media Marketing Tools

Buffer

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Days are gone when you have to post your content on social media manually. Now with the likes of Buffer, you can easily schedule on which day, at what time to post your content automatically. You can easily analyze the results including the engagement in a post and plan accordingly to grow your business and plan to increase traffic on your website and boost your digital presence.

You just need to add your social media accounts and schedule your post. It has a clean and simple easy-to-use UI.

Hootsuite

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Hootsuite is another social media management tool similar to Buffer. But, Hootsuite has an auto-scheduler that shows the best time to post and schedules your post accordingly.

You can view your timelines and replies and find and filter conversations based on keywords, hashtags, and location. Not only these, but Hootsuite also helps to search for content from anywhere in the world.

Meeting Scheduling Tools

Calendly

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Calendly is an online meeting scheduling tool with simple and easy-to-use UI. You now don’t need to call, email, or message to schedule meetings with your team members, clients, and so on. You can share your Calendly link and ask others to schedule a meeting with you.

Now you don’t need to waste your precious time to call, message, and email to schedule meetings and interviews.

Marketing Tools

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the most popular and most used marketing tool to track the traffic coming to your website and increase conversion rate.

Google Analytics is a free service developed by Google to analyze the traffic to your website, create digital marketing campaigns, enhance user engagement and experience, and so on. You will be able to find out which pages and links are popular and what users are searching for on your website. With the help of analytic reports, you can devise marketing strategies and accordingly improve your website and also improve user experience and engagement.

SEMrush

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SEMrush is another popular marketing tool to analyze your marketing
strategies. The most important for any business is to rank higher in search engines, focus on queries and keywords the users are searching for, analyze the keywords used by your competitors, and so on. So, Oleg Shchegolev and Dmitry Melnikov came up with one solution i.e. SEMrush.

SEMrush is one of the most trusted SEO tools by business owners, users, developers, experts, and so on. It helps to analyze how good your website, your content is doing and how good your competitors are doing. Go for SEMrush if you want a good SEO and marketing tool.

Alternatives to SEMrush are Moz, Ahrefs, etc.

Mailchimp

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Mailchimp is an email marketing tool that will help you to connect with your customers. You can customize your emails and it has an automation feature that will send the right message to the right person.

With the help of Mailchimp, you can send multiple emails to your customers all at once. You can create and manage your mailing list and newsletters, customize your emails, automate your marketing and email
campaigns, and so on. Ultimately, it helps to generate more leads for your business.

Keyword Research Tools

Google Search

Keyword is one of the main factors that helps to rank your website higher on search engines and boost your digital presence. And Google is the best search engine right now. So what could be better than Google Search to find the best keywords?

Millions and billions of users use Google search engine daily to find solutions to their queries and search the content that they are looking for. Just type a keyword and see the suggestions it gives to you. Those suggestions give you information on the user’s search query and keywords.

Google Keyword Planner

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Another keyword research tool developed by Google. With the help of Google Keyword Planner, you can research the keywords, competitor’s
keywords, have an idea on blog topics, and so on.

Google Keyword Planner shows the average monthly searches, cost per click, competition, and so on. This gives you an idea of which keywords to focus on. You can get information on the performance of keywords.

Ubersuggest

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Ubersuggest is another keyword research tool developed by Neil Patel. With the help of Ubersuggest, you can get information on search volume, SEO difficulty, paid difficulty, and cost per click. It suggests keywords and content ideas as well.

In addition, you can also analyze your competitor’s site and see which pages and links are more popular, see high ranking keywords, organic keywords, backlinks, and so on.

SEMrush

As said earlier, SEMrush provides information on keywords that will help your website and pages to rank higher on the search engines. It will help you find the best SEO keywords.

Design Tools

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is one of the most popular design tools to design and edit images. It is a must for web designers, web developers, graphic designers, etc. It offers vast editing features.

Adobe Photoshop helps to increase the resolution of an image, transform the image including crop images, remove objects, collage images, add colors and effects, and many more. Make banners, logos, posters, etc. with the help of Adobe Photoshop.

Adobe Illustrator

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Adobe Illustrator is another design tool developed by Adobe, Inc. It is also another design tool gaining traction by web developers, web designers, graphic designers, etc. It is mainly used for creating vector graphics.

Adobe Illustrator is used for making logos, graphics, and many more. When working on Adobe Illustrator, you don’t have to worry about resolution issues. You will never lose the resolution of images, graphics.

Canva

If you want to go for an online design tool, then you use Canva. It also offers templates for social media posts, posters, flyers, banners, and many more. You can design and edit images and easily download images.

You just need to choose the design and Canva will offer the perfect size and template ready for you. You can also upload images, logos and edit them as per your needs.

Photopea

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If you don’t want to download Adobe Photoshop, then you can go for an alternative to Adobe Photoshop i.e. Photopea. If you have worked on Adobe Photoshop, then you will get the same feeling when working on Photopea.

Photopea is an online design tool and it offers the most of the features provided by Adobe Photoshop.

Other design tools are Sketch, Invision, Axure, Craft, and many more.

In Conclusion

Tools are made solely for making our work easier and faster. Tech
startups who face challenges like software quality, software delivery,
deadlines. The use of tools will boost their performance, make their
work more simple and easier, and quality will be top-notch.

So we prepared a list of useful tools for a tech startup. These tools not only help a startup but are useful for any business. Also, these tools are very important while working remotely as well. If such tools are utilized properly, your business will grow and your day-to-day business functions will be effective.

This post was first published on Truemark.