My favorite business tools
Ecommerce
The world of eCommerce is ever-evolving and new technology comes out all the time. Here are my favorite tools so far.
Web development
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Shopify
I have seen amazing things built here, from start-ups to $MM operations. If you are starting out, I think Shopify is worth looking into. They have an app marketplace with apps designed just for eCommerce, vs other "all in one" solutions that may be more focused on blogging or on general informational websites.
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Google Analytics
Google Analytics -integrated reporting of your website conversions, audiences, traffic channels - especially important when you are running ads on multiple platforms and driving traffic from multiple sources like email marketing. If you are starting, I recommend getting your GA set up for your store in the right way from the beginning!
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Ahrefs
I have tried Moz before, and is it weird that I kind of prefer Ahrefs? Ahrefs is an SEO tool that you use to see what you can improve in your site when it comes to SEO, tells you all the technical issues you have, backlinks, and it gives you a health score that changes as you make changes to the site, pretty cool.
Customer Support
Customer support
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Zendesk
Zendesk is a customer service software I've used to consolidate all customer support tickets in one platform + add live chat & other helpdesk features to our sites. Zendesk has been around for a while and can integrate with most eCommerce platforms. Cons: The interface is bulky & outdated and their pricing model can be confusing.
Customer support
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Gorgias
A newer alternative to Zendesk, What I love the most about this platform is how intuitive it is to use. When it comes to its interface and some advanced reporting and tagging features, it is superior to Zendesk (in my opinion). Gorgias seems to have been designed by someone who has worked in customer support before.
Marketing
Klaviyo
If you are leveraging email marketing right, your emails are bringing probably 20%-50% of your revenue. I've tried multiple email platforms and after years of testing, I can say I am very impressed with Klaviyo. Especially, if you are running a Shopify store. The sophisticated level of integration between Klaviyo and Shopify is worth considering.
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Canva
A graphic design platform. Canva is a must for any graphic design for web, advertising, social media, flyers, and everything in between. Canva is easy to use, their interface is beginner-friendly and they offer multiple templates, guidance, and cool tools - a library full of icons, stock images, shapes, & background remover (for premium accounts only).
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Adobe Premiere Rush
I know... Adobe, right? Haha. Adobe Premiere Rush is a video editing phone app you can use to create videos for your social media. I learned video editing in Premiere Pro from my film producer days - so this phone version felt easy and familiar to me. Premiere Rush was intuitive, and I was able to finish quick edits with ease. Check it out!
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PickFU
This tool was a game-changer for me. PickFu is a polling platform to get direct feedback from customers - ideal for optimizing product pages & listings, deciding between split testing variations & customer research. You can also pick the audience for more relevant data. It is a little pricey but worth it - thanks Mina for the tip!
Amazon
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Amazon Seller Central
In my experience building and scaling an Amazon store, Amazon is a great eCommerce platform with plenty of upsides - and some downsides e.g. not being allowed to market to your customers outside of the Amazon platform. Make sure to set up your content A+, add as many product images as you can & use Helium10 for keyword optimization!
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ProductPinion
This tool is similar to PickFu when it comes to getting real feedback, but instead of a polling system, the customers record a video going through your listing and giving real-time feedback. This platform is advertised as only for Amazon, unlike PickFu. The founders running ProductPinion are also very nice, I recommend!
Seem Cool or Trying Now
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Copy.ai
For some, copy is one of the most painful part of the content creation process. Some of my team members love Copy.ai. This platform writes copy for you. You can add a few keywords and give Copy.ai some more information on your preferences, and it will "spit out" complete sentences created with artificial intelligence. Pretty cool.
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Termageddon
Termageddon is a privacy policy generator. They create and automatically update your privacy policy so it stays compliant with changing regulations. They also have helpful blogs with best practices when it comes to compliance of your eCommerce store. The company is founded and run by a privacy attorney who also serves as the Chair of the American Bar Association – ePrivacy Committee.
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Frase.io
This platform is neat to create SEO Optimized Content. Frase.io helps you compare your current content with the top performing content for a specific keyword, provide insight on what you need to add to make your content more relevant for Google, and also ranks your content on the spot as you change it with their recommendations. I wish I had spent more time on this platform, let me know if you try it.
Teams
The power of connected minds and hearts is exponentially higher when the right tools are set in place. Improve your team's productivity and increase connection with these tools.
Asana
I am a spreadsheet kind of person... However, when it comes to managing projects and teams Asana is really where it is at. A massive time saver, this platform provides a frame for everyone to engage with the short term "to do's" (tasks) and the long term vision (bigger projects extended over time). Lots of teams in our digital industry use Asana for project management.
P.S. I have tried the premium plan and I don’t think it is fully necessary - unless you want to create private projects and/or create milestones (which are pretty cool), but the basic free version of this tool is just awesome.
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Slack
Slack is a cool messaging platform to keep work conversations in one place - so you don’t have to try to find the latest conversations in your email, text, google doc comment, google hangouts. Perfect place to have quick conversations that don’t need to be an email or a meeting, and it also allows you to view the history of conversations, create threads of conversations for specific topics (channels), have private conversations, save files inside the platform. etc. I would say that it makes sense to start using Slack when your team starts scaling and/or projects start diversifying and you notice that it is hard to keep track of conversations and that are multiple meetings are happening to update different people.
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Google Sheets
Google Sheets is a spreadsheet, but in the cloud. The best part of using Google Spreadsheets is that you can collaborate with multiple people at the same time in real time. I LOVE a good spreadsheet, so I use this for most general planning and some team management, projections, forecasting, creating lists...
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Whiteboard (Surface Pro)
LOVE IT! Surface just gave me a tool for all my madness and sketches haha this is a great tool for whiteboarding digitally - you can export the work you did on the whiteboard as an image and share it with your team if you need to or archive it. No more saving huge paper pads, or taking photos of the whiteboard with weird glitches of light.
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Grammarly
Not sure if this goes in this category, but I have been using Grammarly since I came to the USA. Even if English is your first language, Grammarly has a free version that is useful to catch any grammar errors. They also even give you phrase recommendations so you can up your game in written English. 100% recommend
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Adobe Captivate
A cool choice for an LMS (learning management system) if you want to use it to train your customer support team - or for any other staff training. It may be a little pricey per user, so do your research beforehand to explore your options. I enjoyed their interface, the multiple options to add quizzes, videos, and track progress - a good Adobe product!
Health and ergonomics
We gotta stay healthy! On top of this, I recommend daily exercise to keep your body and your mind sharp, meditation to regulate your nervous system, exercise, sunlight, water, and deep sleep.
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10%
10% is a meditation app created by someone who wasn't really bought into the benefits of meditation. The founder wanted to make things simple, and provide science based education to the users of the app. I started meditating with this app and I am obsessed, I had it for years. No one can convince me that Youtube meditations are better!
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Polar watch
Polar is a brand of fitness watches (I prefer this over the Apple watch). I rocked this specific watch for a while to track my sleep and my daily activity, I am going a bit more free spirit lately, but it is a great tool for anyone looking to keep track of their level of activity and rest.
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Ergonomic keyboard
An ergonomic keyboard is a keyboard that is designed to fit you (the user), rather than you having to adjust yourself to fit the keyboard. This specific keyboard provides support to your wrists and the keys are laid out to avoid overextending your fingers. My wrists need some rest being on my computer 24/7 and this keyboard gave me exactly what I needed!
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Ergonomic mouse
An ergonomic mouse promotes a more upright hand and wrist posture (like a handshake) and help to better match our anatomy and put less strain on our muscles. The transition to a vertical mouse was not hard for me, I know it is for some people. I say, try it... and see for yourself if this provides relief.
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Why we do things matters. This is why I love building businesses. This is my story.
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