Part One: Essential Software to Help You Run Your Business

Ifyou want your website to go that extra mile and really work for you byincreasing sales, you need to integrate other software into your site togenerate more leads, engage your customers and ultimately make more sales.

Thereare a huge number of tools out there – including email marketing tools, socialmedia scheduling tools and sales tools.

Butin this article we are going to be focusing on some of the tools to help yourun your business more effectively, from project planning to schedulingmeetings, which free up more of your time to focus on sales and growing yourbusiness. We’ve also got some of the best customer service tools to help youbuild your customer base and turn website visitors into repeat business.Finally, to run a really effective online business, CRM (customer relationship management)tools are essential for connecting with and keeping track of your prospects andtaking away a lot of the hassle of running your business.

Socheck out our list of some of the very best software, to find out what wouldreally work for your business, whether you are a small start-up or about tomake your millionth sale.

Wewill share some of our other tips, including advertising and sales tools andsocial media scheduling tools in future articles.

All pricing is correct at the time of posting. We have keptprices in the currency in which they are advertised (often dollars), ratherthan take a guess at what it might be in pounds, based on current conversionrates.

They might not seem like the most obvious tools to boost your sales, but software that can help keep your business organised will take the pressure off and allow you to focus on the important job of building your customer base and generating sales. There are plenty of organisational tools to choose from, so here’s our round-up of some of the best.

Plutio has a huge number of functions to help your business run more smoothly, including managing projects and tasks, collaborating with your team and clients, creating proposals and contracts and getting paid online. It cuts out the need for multiple apps, multiple subscriptions and time consuming duplication of data, so familiar to many small business owners.

Plutio’s aim is to make running a business less hassle and more pleasant, which would definitely sounds like a positive. It features a customisable platform, which is helpful whether you are just starting out or are looking to take an existing business to the next level.

Plutio is constantly releasing improvements and new features. The ‘studio’ package, which includes collaboration with as many clients as you need, is priced at $20 per month. If you think it sounds like it could be useful, you can try it out for 14 days for free.

Zapier is a really powerful tool that helps you to get organised and focus on what matters. With Zapier, you can get all of your software to work together automatically, which makes running a business a whole lot easier.

Zapier helps you connect email, spreadsheets, CRMs and more – and you don’t need to write a single line of code. Trigger a real-time notification for your team to get in touch with your leads, automatically import new customer information into a CRM spreadsheet or automate an email through MailChimp, you can do it all with Zapier.

Zapier has a free package which allows you to complete up to 100 tasks per month. Its starter package allows up to 750 tasks per month at $19.99 per month, while the professional package takes your work to the next level at $49 per month. All packages are available on a free trial.

Optinmonster is lead generation software which integrates with all major email marketing and CRM platforms to grow your email list and ultimately increase your sales. With Optinmonster it is easy to manage, share and capture leads on your website.

Features include split testing, to help you optimise your campaigns and offers, and MonsterLinks two-step opt-in technology and pop-ups to encourage sign-ups, and Exit-intent technology to grab visitors’ attention just before they leave your site.

With Optinmonster, campaigns can be targeted in a number of ways, including by location and activity. Analytics let you know which pages are performing best and what can be improved for even better results.

Optinmonster offers a range of packages priced from $19 per month to $49 per month, depending on your number of sites and page views.

Paymo works with over 100,000 small businesses and freelancers around the world. It is a useful project management tool for helping your team to work together, thanks to its planning, scheduling, task management and time tracking features. A team that works well together, avoiding stress, poor communication and bad planning is going to be focused on your key aim – increasing sales.

Paymo keeps your team on track throughout a project, from the earliest stages right though to invoicing. Tasks can be assigned to one or more team members in just a couple of clicks. Employees can see all of their tasks in one place, while managers have separate views for their own and the team’s tasks.

There is a free version for freelancers and a 15 day free trial for the ‘small office’ and ‘business’ versions, priced at $9.56 and $15.16 per user, per month respectively.

Samepage is collaborative software to keep your whole team on track and focused on your tasks. It combines everything from real-time document collaboration and team chat to video conferencing and task management in a single cloud-based workspace.

Samepage makes it easy for teams to work together even in different locations and works just as well on smartphones as it does on desktops and laptops. It includes a range of options for communicating with colleagues, including group chat, team chat and instant messaging, as well as voice or video calls.

Samepage integrates with over 1000 essential business apps, including Dropbox, Google Drive, Facebook and Twitter.

There is a free version for small teams and a ‘pro’ version for larger teams, priced at just $8 per user, per month. A free trial of the pro version is available.

If you want your visitors to stick around and become customers, and your customers to go on to become repeat customers, you need to treat them right. Keep your interactions with your prospects and customers on track and make sure everyone is singing from the same song sheet with this range of customer service tools.

GoSquared is our top choice for an all-round tool in a single platform that allows you to manage everything in one place to grow your business. It is so good that we couldn’t really decide if it was a customer service tool or an organisational tool, because it does pretty much everything you need.

It has everything you need to capture leads, engage customers, close deals faster and drive loyalty. GoSquared includes a Live Chat function to help you connect with customers and prospects and answer their queries, as well as real-time analytics to help you make informed decisions.

GoSquared prides itself on its low pricing – leaving you free to invest in growing your business. It includes completely free analytics and Live Chat functions. Its most popular package is £79 per month, which includes a large range of features. This is available on a 14 day free trial.

GoSquared is our top choice for an all-round tool in a single platform that allows you to manage everything in one place to grow your business. It is so good that we couldn’t really decide if it was a customer service tool or an organisational tool, because it does pretty much everything you need.

It has everything you need to capture leads, engage customers, close deals faster and drive loyalty. GoSquared includes a Live Chat function to help you connect with customers and prospects and answer their queries, as well as real-time analytics to help you make informed decisions.

GoSquared prides itself on its low pricing – leaving you free to invest in growing your business. It includes completely free analytics and Live Chat functions. Its most popular package is £79 per month, which includes a large range of features. This is available on a 14 day free trial.

Vectera is an effective way to hold client meetings online, with video meetings. It allows you to give the personal touch and take away the uncertainty of a telephone or email conversation, while cutting out expensive and time-consuming travel.

Video meetings with Vectera are stable, and allow more interaction with co-browsing and whiteboarding, so that meeting participants can work on the same document at the same time. Vectera easily allows you to pick up a conversation from a previous meeting.

For regular meetings, Vectera can take away the time-consuming processes of scheduling, uploading documents and data entry.

Vectera is price from €8 per month and you can try it for free.

Appointlet helps you turn more prospects into customers by making appointment bookings hassle-free. The simplicity of online appointment bookings will increase your customers’ confidence in your business and help you stand out from the crowd.

By keeping your bookings page up-to-date and sharing it with customers, they can book an appointment directly, saving on endless emails and phone calls. Being able to book a customer appointment easily and exactly when they want it can increase your sales by up to 300% and cut the time spent on organising meetings by 80%.

Appointlet can be used on any device, can include a whole team’s availability and will automatically send out email reminders.

Appointlet has a free version, which includes all of the main features, and a premium package with extra features, priced at $8 per month.

Calendly is an appointment scheduling tool, which connects with your team’s calendars to check availability and help you connect with customers and prospective customers. It helps speed up sales by cutting time wasted on scheduling appointments.

It works for all types of meetings from one-on-ones to large team meetings, scheduling meetings based on team members’ availability.

Calendly has a free version, including key features, or premium and pro versions, priced at $8 per month and $12 per month respectively.

Outplay is a multi-channel sales tool to ensure customers don’t get forgotten or left behind, whether they are interacting by email, phone, text/SMS, LinkedIn or Twitter.

With Outplay, you can make and receive phone calls through the platform and turn emails into a live chat conversation. Its meeting booker facility ensures meetings are booked efficiently without emails to and fro, reducing wasted time. Email tracking tools mean you can be sure when emails have been opened and links have been clicked, plus you have the option of scheduling emails and sending reminders.

Outplay is one of the more expensive tools out there. It has just one package – priced at $70 per month per user. A free 14 day trial is available.

Paperform is an easy way to create online forms, payment and product pages. Creating forms is quick and intuitive and doesn’t need any technical knowledge.

Forms are completely individual and can be customised with images, video and beautiful fonts. Every form has its own unique URL, so you can share it either with or without your website.

Paperform allows you to send custom emails to the customer, yourself and anyone else. Forms can be connected to lots of other apps, including Mailchimp and Google Drive, or to over 1000 apps when combined with Zapier.

Priced from $12.50 per month for the ‘essentials’ basic package. A free 14 day trial of Paperform is available.

CRM (customer relationship management) tools are absolutely essential for connecting with and keeping track of your prospects. Find a good CRM that works for you and it will take away a lot of the hassle of running your business.

HubSpot is a fantastic free software package for small businesses. It has a range of free tools and HubSpot CRM (customer relationship management) is one of them.

It is a great way to organise, track and build on leads. You will have the time to focus on sales, as you won’t need to manually update reports. HubSpot keeps track of interactions automatically, so you can target them when the time is right.

With the HubSpot dashboard, you can see team and individual sales performance in one place.

SharpSpring is a complete sales and marketing platform which has its own CRM, but can also be integrated with all of the most popular CRM lead management tools. This means you can manage data on sales leads across multiple platforms.

SharpSpring is a powerful tool with a large number of functions, including campaign tracking, dynamic landing pages, a dynamic form builder and a blog builder.

It tracks customers and alerts you to where they have been on your site, so you can send them targeted content and emails based on their interests, to increase your chances of making a sale.

It isn’t a cheap option, so this is definitely one for bigger businesses. Its most basic package, with the full set of features and unlimited users, is priced at $450 per month.

SharpSpring is a complete sales and marketing platform which has its own CRM, but can also be integrated with all of the most popular CRM lead management tools. This means you can manage data on sales leads across multiple platforms.

SharpSpring is a powerful tool with a large number of functions, including campaign tracking, dynamic landing pages, a dynamic form builder and a blog builder.

It tracks customers and alerts you to where they have been on your site, so you can send them targeted content and emails based on their interests, to increase your chances of making a sale.

It isn’t a cheap option, so this is definitely one for bigger businesses. Its most basic package, with the full set of features and unlimited users, is priced at $450 per month.

Contactually is a way of organising your contacts in Office 365 or Google, so that you can segment them and ensure you are getting in touch with the right people, about the right things at the right time.

With a single click you can connect your email accounts and Contactually will sync your contacts and communication history. It helps you to stay in touch with current prospects and rekindle your relationship with former clients.

It will remind you to connect with the customers and prospects essential to your business growth and keep track of conversations by email, phone and text, so you always have up-to-date information to work from. Email templates make it easy to automate personalised messages.

The basic ‘professional’ plan costs $69 per month and a 14 day free trial is available.

OnePage CRM is a simple piece of lead generation software, ideal for new or small businesses. It takes leads from Gmail, social media and LinkedIn and integrates them into your CRM.

It gives you a clear action plan with no distractions and promises to help you make sales using its efficient process, which keeps users on track with leads, actions and follow-ups.

A good value option for SMEs, OnePage CRM is priced at just £9.75 per month per user and comes with a 21 day free trial.

As you can see, there is a huge range of software available to help your business succeed. Many of these tools have similar functions, so take advantage of the free trials and look at the pricing to see what would work best for you.

If budget is tight, you need to be aiming for the packages which give you the biggest wins, which might be software to track sales, tools to generate emails or social media scheduling tools. Every business is unique and you need to take the time to find out what will really make a difference for your company.