A Step-by-step Guide: How to Choose the Perfect Business Apps
Every year over 5 million new businesses break into the market. Unfortunately, 90% of them fail and don’t last longer than 18 months. The reasons are different, including everything from undigested marketing strategy to the inability to cover internal expenses.
One of the most common mistakes of young startups is ignoring useful business apps. Why pay for services if you still need to invest in your own growth? Well, like a newborn baby, a newborn company won’t be able to survive without outside help. There are things like analytics, financing, marketing, or task management that companies should think about even before they launch.
Table of Contents
Step 1. Getting ready for research
Step 2. Main categories of business apps
- Marketing apps
- Facebook App
- Google Ads
- Intercom
- Chatbot
- Demand-Side Platform
- CRM
- Task and project management apps
- Communication apps
- Accounting and billing apps
- Analytics
Step 3. Making a choice & Implementation
8 tips to help you choose essential apps for your business
Final Thoughts
In this article, we offer a step-by-step guide on how to choose and implement business apps that will help your company grow constantly. Ready?
Step 1. Getting ready for research
The good news is that the industry is crowded with useful and smart software. The market is filled up to the brim with paid business apps and their free alternatives. As a result, instead of hiring the right app companies, you end up wasting time on technology that turns out to be useless.
That’s why, before going straight to choosing the perfect business apps, you need to get yourself prepared. Define the main tasks that have to be completed, that you aren’t able to cover with your own resources.
Then divide these tasks into internal (that will help your company from the inside) and external (that will support your business outside). What do we mean here?
For example, your business requires payments from users. Hence, you need software to track, receive, and maintain finances. This would be an external task. Paying salaries and company bills will ensure healthy operating from the inside. The latter can be taken as an internal task.
“Don’t let your business fail. Start managing on ProofHub.”
Take a blank sheet and draw a straight vertical line. On the left side, put the list of in-house tasks that your team can’t handle by themselves. On the right side, write down a list of activities explicitly focused on business development. This list will help you discover a perfect business app for every task mentioned.
Now let’s move to the next stage and check out the main categories of business apps.
Step 2. Main categories of business apps
To start with, you should know that all business apps are united by categories. Each category is supposed to help companies deal with a specific range of tasks (and you already have a list of those). To help you with your decision, we have gathered six categories of apps that are essential for new businesses.
Marketing apps
In 2019, your digital market strategy should be ready long before the product launch. Even genius startups have to close up when they don’t have enough customers. What channels will you use for online promotion?
There are dozens of great business apps that will help you increase brand awareness and grow your audience from the first day.
Facebook App
Facebook gives you a platform to gather and communicate with your audience in social media. Create a free business page and start talking about your product. Tell the story of your brand, post useful tips and hacks, make your content useful, and people will appreciate that. If you need to achieve rapid results, go to your Facebook Business manager and set up paid ads. Facebook ads will bring more people to your website and increase conversions.
Google Ads
If you have a marketing budget (even a tiny one), you should definitely invest part of it in Adwords. Ads will be your touchpoint with a targeted audience spotted all over the Internet. To not waste your budget, think of accurate targeting to hit only those people who might be interested in your product. You can use dedicated affiliate tracking software so that all your advertising is effective and brings the results you seek with less effort.
Intercom
When added to your website, Intercom gathers your leads and helps turn them into your customers. Intercom ensures an excellent user experience by creating personalized chats and reaching out to your leads at the moment they are ready to buy. When it comes to lead generation, customer engagement, or automated chatbots, Intercom is a must-have tool for any business.
Chatbot
Imagine an annoyed customer that tries to reach out to your support team at 1AM. New: Well, it’s better not to. A chatbot is a magic wand developed by AI chatbot development company for your business 24/7. It is able to solve hundreds of requests per minute without distracting your team from work. Chatbot won’t let you miss a lead and will support your sales team at every stage of their relationships with customers.
Demand-Side Platform
Demand-Side Platform or DSP is an advertising platform that helps you set up and manage your ad campaigns and track performance analytics. With a DSP, you may enhance your social media promotion by hitting your intended audience at the moment they visit their favourite websites and apps. Many DSPs provide access to users’ data that makes ad targeting more accurate. What’s more, DSP is your gateway to millions of websites and mobile apps. And its programmatic technology ensures that you don’t overpay for ad impressions.
CRM
How do you manage your customers’ data? If you store leads in spreadsheets, please don’t answer. However, you should know that even the most desperate spreadsheet fans admit: hiring a CRM has changed their lives once and forever.
Customer Relationship Management or CRM software is a cloud solution that allows you to collect, manage and use customer data effectively. The Gmail CRM synchronizes your inbox with your client base. Once you receive an email, you already know the status and context of your negotiations with a specific customer (all without diving deep in spreadsheets). CRM not only saves your time but it also helps prioritize it. The benefits of CRM are numerous, including improved customer engagement, better data management, and increased sales productivity.
Why do we talk about CRM as an app? The top CRMs are always available on multiple devices.
You may think that CRMs serve better to large businesses and large teams, however, CRMs are equally useful for teams of 500 or teams of just 2 people.
Here are eleven of the most common reasons why businesses integrate CRMs
Most recommended in category: NetHunt CRM, Monday, Zoho, Copper.
Task and project management apps
Implementing at least one task management software is as crucial as hiring a CRM. Task management helps teams work as a single organism, instead of everyone on their own mission.
This category of apps assists coworkers in tracking their personal performance and improving productivity. When you’re not directly connected with sales, it may be difficult to measure the results of your work (software development, customer success, and other departments). With the right app, you can estimate, track, and analyze the results of all your assignments. You always know deadlines and the number of tasks to be accomplished.
Task management app is a perfect solution when you need to split complicated tasks into smaller ones to delegate them to different team members.
These apps visualize an overview of current task mode and level of occupation per employee.
Most recommended in category: ProofHub, Wunderlist, Todoist, Jira, Trello, Asana.
Communication apps
Discussing new product updates, setting up urgent meetings, or talking about the Friday party are only a few reasons why you should integrate a communication app inside your team. Communication apps are lifesavers when you need to get an immediate response from your colleague in another room. Besides, giving hilarious names to work chats is so much fun, isn’t it?
“Get your communication on point with ProofHub. Try here.”
You also need a separate app to handle communication, and calls with your clients. In this case, put your attention to Hangouts or Skype. They are free, simple to use and have everything that you need for effective and timely negotiations.
Most recommended in category: Slack, Hangouts, Skype, HipChat
Accounting & billing apps
Finances are one of the key parts of any business. This is why there is a wide choice of finance apps that take care of the company’s bills and expenses, process salaries and manage purchase orders.
When you finish implementing accounting and invoicing software internally, start looking for apps to receive payments from your customers. Make sure that the payment process is clear and easy for your clients. Otherwise, you risk losing your potential customers when they are only one step away from the purchase.
Most recommended in category: PayPal, Gusto, Zoho Books, Freshbook, Square Invoices, Xero
Analytics
To drive smart business decisions, make plans, and forecast revenue, you should be aware of the numbers. The easiest way to measure statistics is by connecting your website to Google Analytics. This is a basic analytic app that gives you insights about your audience and its behavior. With Google analytics, you may also measure the results of various marketing campaigns.
Google analytics delivers real-time statistics to your intuitive dashboard. Which marketing sources drive the most leads? What countries show better performance? Which month was the most successful in terms of revenue? The best part of it is that Google Analytics answers all those questions for free.
Most recommended in category: Google Analytics, Localytics
We’ve just gone through six primary categories of business apps. Of course, the list isn’t exhaustive, however, it has everything that you need for an excellent start. Choose one app from each category and move to the next step — implementation.
Step 3. Making a choice & Implementation
When searching for the right app in each category, you’d probably decide to start with the free ones. Even so, there are plenty of other details and capabilities to consider.
Reviews
Users’ honest reviews will definitely help you choose the best apps in each category. Head to G2, Capterra or Trustpilot where people publish their trustworthy feedback and thoughts on software products and apps. Two stars out of five? Well, now you won’t even waste your time.
Onboarding process
The process of adopting a new app may be time-consuming and frustrating. If the reviews say that it’s worth trying, then go ahead, otherwise, search for an app that offers a smooth and guided onboarding. Instead of bringing pain to your office, the business app should simplify and improve your teamwork.
Interface
In the era of human-centered design, smart and intuitive UI is a must. The interface should give you leads and hints on how to do your work better. If the user spends minutes to find a tab or a button, app developers should facilitate improvements. Meanwhile, you may test-drive more sophisticated alternatives.
Capabilities
The functionality of a new app should satisfy your main goals. If some crucial features are missing or ‘are just about to be added’, don’t take it. This is why a free trial in an excellent time to explore what’s under the hood.
Number of users
The price of the app may often vary depending on the number of people in your team. For example, many CRMs charge for every new user who joins a business account. Before hiring a new business app, think about how many team members will use this software in their everyday work. Does the final price for an app change when you handle a big team? Will this app serve equally good for a team of 5 and a team of 50 people?
8 tips to help you choose essential apps for your business
These eight simple hacks will help you make the right choice:
- Choose one person from your team to be responsible for app implementation
- Take your time to test the app and look around
- Get the entire team on board and listen to feedback about the new apps
- Sign up for a demo call or watch the tutorial to make the most of the app
- Use an app for at least two weeks before paying for it
- Try to integrate all necessary services with a new app during the trial
- Monitor changes that the app has brought into your everyday work
- Ask for a discount!
Nobody likes change, but everyone will get used to these apps in the end. When processing feedback from your employees, take into account only unemotional and proved arguments.
Final Thoughts
Business apps help companies and teams keep the chaos under control. They also have the power to save your time, resources, and budget. There are various categories of business apps that elevate the company’s work in different ways. Before choosing apps for your business define clear tasks that they should help you deal with. And then create a sustainable ecosystem where all hired apps stimulate your business growth.
Author bio: For the last five years, Nina Bohush has been doing marketing and PR for IT products and startups. Currently, she occupies a posting of Marketing Specialist at NetHunt CRM. She is an avid storyteller, traveler and reader.
If you enjoyed this…
Read the other articles:
If you enjoyed reading this article:
Clap: so others can find it
Comment: if you have a question/suggestion you’d like to ask
Follow: ProofHub to read all the articles
