In the world of internet search there really is only one player of note in the 21st century – the almighty Google. But Google offers a lot more than a quick way to find a great place for lunch and many of the tools available from the Colorado based giant can be extremely useful to startup businesses, especially since the vast majority of them are free.
Google Website Optimizer – Your company’s website likely plays an integral role (or you want it to) in the day to day success of your start up business. Every small business owner wants to be ranked as high as possible on a Google search and actually the company itself is willing to do that. The Google Website optimizer is free to use and uncomplicated enough that anyone can pick up the basics of its use in a very short time. But why should you be using it? Google have a 5 minute video tutorial that explains all you need to know.
Google Analytics – There are a number of good paid analytic software on the market but why spend money when the free Google version provides quite enough tools and tricks for the average start up business’s needs? It lets you monitor site traffic in great detail, allowing you to see in real time how well every aspect of your website is performing and you can also compare your results to those of your competitors, potentially giving you a real edge.
Google Docs – Google Docs is a fantastically under rated tool that can really help a startup business. Google Docs is Google’s “software as a service” version of an office suite. Documents, spreadsheets, forms and presentations can be created within the application itself, imported through the web interface, or sent via email.
They can also be saved to the user’s computer in a variety of formats (ODF, HTML, PDF, RTF, Text, Word). By default, they are saved to the Google servers. Open documents are automatically saved to prevent data loss, and a revision history is automatically kept. That feature alone has saved the skin of many a small business owner.
Another great feature of Google Docs is the ability for multiple users to view and edit the same document at the same time. There are other similar cloud computing solutions out there, but the best thing about Google Docs is the price – $0.
There are many other free tools, not all of them from Google, that a startup business can use to help their everyday productivity, these are just a few of the must – trys. Not everything that your start up business needs to succeed is going to be free, you still have to spend money to make money in the 21st century but anything you can get for less is certainly always a bonus