14 business tools we use day-to-day in our online business
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As designers helping others grow their businesses, we’re often asked what platforms we recommend for online businesses. In today’s blog post, we’re sharing our most loved business tools that we use day-to-day to sell, manage, and market our online business.
We choose to use these platforms in our business based on 3 key aspects:
1) Recommendations from trusted entrepreneurs
2) Cost
3) Ease of use (low learning curves for the win!)
Let’s get into it!
This post contains affiliate links. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links at no cost to you, of course!
01) EMAIL MARKETING
Email marketing gives you total control and direct access to your audience. Email marketing has been a game changer in our business — if you’re not growing your email list, take this as a sign to start today!
Flodesk (& 50% off promo code!)
Flodesk is an easy to use email marketing platform with beautiful pre-made templates that allow you to create and send emails in minutes. It’s by far the simplest email marketing platform we have ever used, AND we have a promo code to save you 50% off your subscription.
Use our code STYLEDSQUARE to get 30 days free AND 50% off your first year of Flodesk!
Mailchimp
If you’re not ready to invest in email marketing, we recommend Mailchimp. The platform is free until you reach 2k subscribers — it’s a great place to start!
02) GRAPHIC DESIGN & PHOTOGRAPHY
Adobe (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign & Lightroom)
As designers, we use Adobe software DAILY! We use these products to create branded content, photo editing, business proposals, client work, and everything in between.
Canva
Canva is a user-friendly platform that allows you to create beautiful graphics with the help of thousands of templates. Best of all? It’s FREE.
Creative Market
Creative Market is a marketplace for all things design related — fonts, graphic templates, icons, etc.
Moyo Studio
We love Moyo Studio for stunning stock imagery and mockups!
03) WEBSITE
Squarespace
If you didn’t already know, we love Squarespace! Squarespace is our website building platform of choice because it’s intuitive and easy to use! If you haven’t already, check out our library of premium Squarespace templates.
Fomo
Fomo is a website widget that showcases recent sales and incorporate live social proof on your website. We chose Fomo because they’re committed to honesty, meaning: no fake notifications.
Google Analytics
Web analytics are crucial to growing your business and understanding user behavior and experience.
04) CLIENT COMMUNICATIONS
Loom
Loom is a game-changing platform that allows you to record your screen and share with others. We use Loom daily to communicate with our team members and custom design clients.
Calendly
Calendly is a handy business tool we use to book client discovery calls and meetings.
05) SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT
Tailwind
Tailwind is a social media scheduling tool that allows you to batch work your social media content.
06) PAYMENTS & ACCOUNTING
Stripe
Stripe is an online payment processing platform for online businesses — it integrates directly into Squarespace!
Quickbooks & Wave
Accounting makes us yawn, but Quickbooks makes invoicing and bookkeeping easy! If you’re looking for FREE accounting software, we also recommend Wave.
