Small businesses touch every sector and are experiencing unprecedented growth as the business environment changes to adapt to new technologies and situations of conducting business.
As a result, many aspiring entrepreneurs love the idea of operating their entire business online – from pitching potential customers to conversions, and purchase orders to online delivery, offering delight schemes to solving queries directly from live chat support services.
Two major factors affect the exponential rise of small enterprises – first is that technology-obsessed users are increasingly looking for products and services online to fulfill their every need.
On the other hand, traditional businesses are making a massive shift toward online models. Many online-only enterprises are springing up to meet the increased demand from small business owners looking for alternatives to traditional brick-and-mortar operation methods.
As small businesses keep shining even after the pandemic hits the world, the technology around them evolves to boost existing growth.
Applications small business owners need to efficiently run business in 2024
Small business owners understand the need to remain adaptable and efficient. They must be aware of the usage of mobile devices in the daily life of their customer base.
Having the right tools is essential, especially at the initial state of the business funnel, where you aim to get a firm foundation.
Furthermore, you need a diverse set of applications to handle the most crucial scenarios.
These applications may assist you in running your business more efficiently, saving you time and money. Here are the top picks for marketing, billing, management, customer service, operations, sales, payroll, and accounting.
1. Google Workspace
Google workplace includes everything that a small business owner would need. It allows you to transfer files or data across PCs, cellphones, laptops, and other devices. Working on the primary business functions becomes convenient with this application’s help.
There are two options here. The first is to use personal accounts, which provide 15GB of free storage and access to most Workspace apps. The second option is to purchase a membership for your company, which costs roughly $6 per month per user.
Google workspace is a cluster of cloud computing applications used to create documents, presentations, forms, spreadsheets, blogs, and more.
2. SurveyMonkey
Every business must know the user experience regardless of their products and services. Positive reviews and comments about your products or services impact the potential customer purchasing journey. SurveyMonkey is the best tool to perform these tasks effortlessly.
The pricing model is freemium, where managers can use the limited features on the free trial version, and their basic premium model begins at $32.
The application conducts online surveys by distributing forms through websites, social media channels, and emails. You may utilize surveys to assess customer participation and request feedback on your products, services, and anything else that can assist you in targeting your audience.
3. Freshbooks
Managing finances and invoicing is difficult for any small business, but app-like Freshbooks assist small business owners in doing it correctly. Setting up and using an account and invoicing program for small businesses is simple.
The Freshbooks software tracks company costs and generates invoices. Users may use this software to create personalized and bulk invoices for their businesses. Furthermore, the user may monitor the progress of the invoice.
4. Hubspot
Hubspot is an excellent Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform integrated with various tools for scaling small businesses to pilot sales, marketing, and customer success.
Hubspot CRM for enterprises makes it simple to enhance lead conversions, campaigns, and processes using CRM data, resulting in more effective and impressive work from your employees.
You can connect this CRM with other significant business applications like Salesforce, Microsoft 365, and Google Workspace.
Hubspot-free version comes with limited features:
- Content Hosting
- Sharing of Documents
- Scheduling Meetings
- Sending Sales Quotations through Chatbots
- Email automation and tracking the engagement rate.
While Hubspot Enterprise CRM is a comprehensive software solution with five components:
- Marketing Hub
- Sales Hub
- Content Hub
- CMS Hub
- Operations Hub
Either buy each product individually or all the five elements as part of the CRM Suite, which gives you access to every Starter, Professional, and Enterprise feature at a discounted price.
Overall, Hubspot is likely not the greatest at any specific function it provides. But the entire collection it provides positions it as the apparent market leader and the best at what it does.
5. Buffer
Social media is used by about 60% of the world’s population and impacts 71% of purchasing choices. What’s the bottom line? Social networking is critical to selling your items and creating your brand.
Managing your brand’s social presence takes time, effort, and ingenuity. That is why many marketers utilize social media management tools such as Buffer.
Buffer allows you to manage your social media networks from a single app. You may work on postings with your team and then analyze their efficacy once they’ve been sent.
6. Evernote
Evernote is a popular program built specifically for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Using this app, you may preserve your business ideas in voice, text, or photographs.
It assists you in restoring all of your incredible business ideas if you require them for future business advancement. This program is accessible on various devices, and you can use essential keywords and tags to search for your saved notes or ideas.
This tool is quite valuable since youthful business brains generate fresh ideas daily, and you can effortlessly sign in using Google.
This software is free for basic plans; however, upgrading to a business account costs $14.99 per user per month.
7. Slack
Slack is a popular commercial communication program on the market. It is simple software with a clean UI that provides an excellent user experience. With Slack, you can effortlessly interact with anybody, organize meetings, send group messages, and even conduct one-on-one conversations within a Slack channel.
Communication is essential to business success, and Slack allows you to interact with your teams while preventing team member misunderstandings effortlessly. Slack allows focused channel communication, and the most significant part is that it is available for free so that everyone can use it.
8. MailChimp
Email marketing creates a buzz as one of the most powerful digital strategies when many marketers witness the KPIs of this strategy, contributing the lion’s share to ROI on Digital Marketing budgets.
MailChimp is an email marketing automation application used to send, create and analyze your overall email campaigns. MailChimp enables you to track emails, measure click-through rates, produce custom reports, and manage email subscribers and unsubscribers.
Mailchimp allows you to develop personalized templates and offers pre-made themes for campaigns.
MailChimp has several price options for its various products:
Mailchimp Marketing Software:
- $0 per month for free
- $11 per month for essentials
- Standard – $17 monthly
- Premium ($299/month)
Mailchimp Commerce & Website:
- $0.00 per month
- $10 per month for Core
- Plus – $29 monthly
Email automation can be simple. Mailchimp is the ideal mobile app for new companies looking to succeed in email marketing.
9. Shipstation
If you run a small online business, the Shipstation app is ideal for you. It is a cloud-based tool that allows you to handle online orders, print shipping labels, receive order alerts, and process your purchases online, among other things. They provide services that will make your business easier and save you time.
Shipstation customizes the order process systems to meet the demands of your company. This tool also assists you in producing unique shipping labels that showcase your company’s logo.
This software is compatible with a variety of e-commerce platforms, including Shopify. The plan for using its services begins at $9.
10. Trello
Trello is a free project management and team communication program that may upgrade to a premium version. Trello’s popularity stems from its ease of use.
Trello uses cutting-edge methodologies and technologies to manage projects and teams successfully. The manager may use this app to assign tasks that include a file attachment, photos, and deadlines. Not only that, but the manager can quickly follow the progress of each work with this software.
Furthermore, it may be combined with various other programs, such as GitHub, Google Drive, One Drive, Slack, and others, to provide users with a seamless experience.
11. Canva
Good graphics may assist firms in increasing brand visibility. Every business needs high-quality pictures.
With Canva, you can create attractive designs for your social media, website, and all the visuals you require.
Furthermore, the software is free (but a paid membership is available) and features a drag-and-drop interface, allowing users to design anything from their smartphone or PC effortlessly.
12. Square
Square is a payment gateway app that enables users to make payments through different modes using their smart devices. ECommerce ventures can take advantage of this by making online payment easy for their users.
Square’s revenue model is commission-based. It does not charge a fee for its services. Instead, they deduct a portion of the money received, which begins at 2.6% for every transaction.
In today’s society, when everything is digital, digital payment is also quite widespread, and cash transactions are no longer necessary. Furthermore, Square provides credit card processing services anywhere, so you may accept credit card payments from anywhere.
13. StudioCloud
StudioCloud is a multi-purpose cloud-based tool used to manage various functions such as reviewing marketing campaigns’ performance, watching working professionals’ capacities, or issuing invoices from anywhere using any device.
StudioCloud comes with a free desktop version for one person. But for using it on iOS devices and Android Devices – the plan varies as per the number of users, like $10/month for a single user, $35/month for two users, and $65/month for three users.
One of the significant benefits of this app is that it can easily migrate with other helpful business apps like QuickBooks, Google Calendar, and MailChimp to see the best out of each application.
Grow small businesses with the Tools for Small Businesses in 2024
Sifting through a profusion of mobile apps may be time-consuming, but the right business apps can save you a lot of time.
Every small business owner might consider hiring top mobile app developers to integrate and manage this third-party business
applications that help elevate small businesses into big corporations.
Only expert mobile app developers can help you achieve your objectives through various business applications. App developers assist you in finding the correct connectors to manage the overall functions of your business. Hope you found the read worth spending time on!