As the march of technological capability continues at a thunderous pace, its always wise to look around to see what you could use in your business.
The world is now awash with a cascade of free and paid software tools you can use to help run your business better. So, what can you grab today without pulling out the credit card? Here’s a few of the top free software tools for you to consider.
Google Analytics
Straight off the bat, Google Analytics for business is an immensely powerful but often underutilised tool. If you have a Gmail account and a website, you’ve got Google Analytics. But are you squeezing all of the potential out of this free tool?
Use it to map, report upon, and discover:
- website visits metrics
- social media marketing impact and results
- key demographics to target
- basic SEO tools
- marketing ROI
- customer journey insights and user behaviour
- general marketing performance and suggested improvements.
If you’re not fully exploiting Google Analytics to nail down your online marketing, gather data, and seek continual improvement, now is an opportune time to join the club.
Slack
To streamline all of your important (and not so important) business chatter and information sharing, why not download the free version of Slack?
The idea of Slack (and similar products) is to eliminate emails and text messages so you have one app to compartmentalise all of your business conversations – either with your team or even those outside of your organization.
With Slack you get:
- direct messaging
- group chats and channels
- file sharing
- screen sharing
- voice and calls.
By allowing threads of easy chats, with GIF and emoji reactions to speed things up, as opposed to the clunkiness of emails, you cultivate a quick and easy way of conversing with your team and suppliers.
Microsoft Teams
Replacing internet communications applications such as Zoom or Skype, MS Teams is a part of the familiar office 365 suite but is also available as a free small business-focused download.
MS Teams is a highly popular teleconferencing app which continues to dominate the market.
In a post pandemic world, we all know that video calls and teleconferencing are now an indispensable part of business life. With the popularity and technological advancement of MS Teams, it’s worthwhile having an account for all of your remote conferencing needs.
Yoast SEO
If you run your website on WordPress, then you already have access to a large range of free and paid plugins for better insights and functionality.
One of the best things you can do, particularly if you have a blog or lots of copy, is to plugin a free SEO content tool like Yoast.
This helps you target keywords, pick up on link or image inclusions you can consider, and tailor your writing to be picked up in a Google search. There are many free and paid SEO tools out there, some light-on and some incredibly in-depth. Find one that suits you to help your website content perform well on Google rankings.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
For even more structural SEO insights, as opposed to in-page content like the Yoast plugin, look to tools like Screaming Frog. Screaming Frog, and similar tools that crawl your website provide insights into:
- broken links
- site speed
- meta title issues
- XML sitemap and structural insights
Basically, these tools audit your website and show you where you have issues and where you can make improvements. This helps your site run better and encourages higher SEO rankings.
Hotjar
Hotjar is a fantastic website tool (with a free option) that shows you where people click and look when they get to your website. With heatmaps and visitor behaviour visualisation, you can easily see where you can improve page content to capture more visitors and lead them to a ‘call to action’.
Tracking your website traffic helps you improve your customer journey and digital experience while sharpening and better directing your marketing and sales funnels.
GST calculator
Any business above the GST threshold needs to be able to quickly calculate GST. Furthermore, when you purchase business supplies you’ll need a quick handle on GST as well. Simply jump on our GST calculator to make life easy.
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