10 Important Tools for Beginner Startups
In the past, we already told the beginning owners of the business strategies and platforms for the first stages of promotion, and also listed a list of useful resources. Add to this a small set of tools that will help in the process of planning and design of the product site.
We learn from the bitter but useful experience of our predecessors. Startup Graveyard is a catalog of startups that failed and had to quit the game. The purpose of the project, as the authors assure, is not at all to stigmatize people for mistakes – on the contrary, an objective, in-the-face analysis of the factors that led a company to a sad outcome will allow “to remove the stigma from failure” and build a more open, thoughtful community. The medical history is presented in laconic, clear form: name, niche, years of life, investors and budget, competitors, the main causes of the collapse. Visitors are also invited to do their bit – make an autopsy of this kind over a project known to them (perhaps even their own) and send the results of the administration.
Do you offer something beneficial to users? Let them see for themselves. Outgrow offers ready-made solutions to add an online calculator to the site, with which you can make necessary calculations without leaving the cash desk (approximate cost of the service, saving money). The system allows you to build complex formulas that calculate several values at once and accompany the calculations with a visual graphical representation. Other types of interactive windows are also available – for example, questionnaires and questionnaires. According to the creators, the windows were designed to increase conversion and ease of customization – you can choose colors and add a logo to give them a more “corporate” look.
For young companies, any call, at least from potential partners and investors, even from a few clients – is worth its weight in gold. Netguru created a solution based on the integration of services Twilio and Slack, which almost does not leave you a chance not to pick up the phone. Alerts for an incoming call are sent directly to the specified Slack channel, anybody can reply to them directly from the web browser. All conversations are automatically recorded, so you do not have to bother with fixing key points on paper or in notes. When the conversation is over, a message appears in the channel from the service that the line is free. The creators emphasize that the Twilio + Slack + Callie tool set perfectly replaces the city phone. The program code is publicly available.
Tool for partial automation of selection of candidates for this or that vacancy. Vervoe makes it possible to write a script with basic questions and tasks that will be offered to the applicant online as the first stage of the interview. Different types of polling are available: simple text, questionnaires, questions with audio and video materials, the ability to upload files. To check test tasks in real time, no one will force you: all completed questionnaires are saved by the system, they can be estimated at any time. The dashboard allows you to track the overall situation with the applications and sort the applicants by results and statuses.
Even if your startup is still at the stage of a vague idea and a heap of mo caps, it is never superfluous to compile an audience and listen to what people think. Prelaunch Page is an online site builder who, in a couple of minutes with a little help of yours, will create a pretty exported landlord, sharpened just for that purpose. Tell the visitors about your project in a few words and suggest leaving an e-mail to keep them updated. The tool is simple, intuitive and free.
Aimed search for leads and contacts. If you need to know the mail of a particular person, the company’s corporate box or, on the contrary, to find out to whom the address belongs, this service will scan the Internet in search of mentions and give you all the results. Search is made by such parameters as name, surname, and domain; The results may include e-mail addresses, names, and positions of owners, information about the company and telephones. It is also possible to verify addresses for validity. The extension for the browser Google Chrome allows you to instantly upload all addresses associated with the domain. Those who have 150 searches per month can use the tool for free.
A platform for collaboration between bloggers and startup owners. By registering on the site, the first get access to fresh interesting ideas that other authors have not heard about in the niche, and the latter – the opportunity to “light up” and get advertising. The creators of Public fast do not boast of high-sounding names, but, on the contrary, stress that most of the partners are middle-level bloggers who are interested in finding promising and original projects that could light up for their audience. The service works with a wide range of social networks: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, and Periscope will also be connected in the near future. Set up campaigns, voice calls and deadlines, pay and track results can be directly on the site.
The tool for segmenting the target audience and e-mail marketing. The service creates a single contact database of customers and leads and tracks the behavior of each user (the frequency of visits, registration, purchase, and actions on the site). Based on the collected data, the system determines who and at what time to send one of the message templates that you have prepared – be it information about new acquisitions, a special offer or a reminder. A list of trigger actions you can ask yourself; Information about user actions and log reports are also publicly available. In particular, you can evaluate the effectiveness of the tool by looking at the statistics of user interaction with the letters.
A tool that allows you to expand the database of contacts for cold letters at the expense of the audience of social networks. At the moment, Pluck only works with Twitter. Users are selected to the contact list based on the relevant tags, words and phrases or addresses they are used, the list of which the user specifies himself – this may be the name of your own or a competitive product, mention of some event or problem. The command is called to find out for you the e-mail addresses of the selected users with the help of mysterious algorithms and daily to make them into a list that can be exported for subsequent mailing.
The service is built on a simple idea: “The fewer steps, the higher the conversion.” The solution from Hubspot allows you to execute the entire chain of actions right up to the target chain without leaving the original page, thus simplifying the life for both the client and the make-up artists. The interface element that the user will interact with can have different views (a drop-down banner, a pop-up window, a slider) and appear on the page under the conditions that you deem appropriate. Lead Flows also provides detailed reports on the leads that you can use to adjust the interface.
