No matter what industry you work in, the business world is incredibly dynamic. Companies are constantly being faced with new shifts, challenges, and trends, and it’s vital to stay ahead of the curve to keep up with the competition.
One of the best ways to keep your business competitive and maintain modern workflows is by trying out new web tools, software, or a chrome extension and or apps on the market. Many businesses operate with a “if it isn’t broken don’t fix it mentality,” but this can really hinder them from realizing their true potential. The truth is, you never know what tool will come up that will completely change the way you do business. For example, Liveflow’s current method of consolidating P&L has redefined business accounting.
If you’re looking for a unique web tool to try out, this article is for you. We’ve curated a selection of the top five irreplaceable tools for businesses out there at the moment. Whether you’re interested in ux testing, eye-catching infographics, collaborative content development, a social media solution, or improved internal communication, there’s something for you on our list.
1. Maze: Run rapid, remote testing
If you need help with remote usability testing, Maze is for you. Maze’s software is truly revolutionary. It’s particularly popular in design, manufacturing, IT, and product management because it allows remote teams to easily build and share tests, collect user feedback, and incorporate the resulting valuable insights into their development processes.
Maze is one of the best UX research tools out there because it can truly be used throughout all the different phases of a project. Use their concept testing, prototype testing, content testing, and user survey functionalities and you’ll be able to monitor your project’s strengths, weaknesses, and general results throughout its development cycle.
Product managers, product designers, product marketers, and user researchers also love using Maze because of how easy it is to share tests with users. All you have to do is simply copy a URL. Maze tests also work across all browsers and devices, so you won’t have to worry about limited accessibility.
Maze is already being used by over 40,000 brands, including big names like Uber, Greenpeace, and Logitech. If you’re interested in trying it out for yourself, they have a free plan that provides basic functionalities. After that, their paid plans start at $49 per month for individual designers.
2. Piktochart: Create memorable graphics
Piktochart is an infographic maker that helps businesses communicate information in a visually pleasing, dynamic way. We’ve all been presented with text-heavy, dense information in a professional setting and found it hard to stay engaged. Piktochart allows businesses to convert boring, text-based content into elegant infographics, brochures, posters, presentations, and reports, making for interesting and memorable content.
We love Piktochart because it’s a breeze to get started creating incredible graphics. It’s designed to be used without any training, so anyone on your team can use it. They have a wide range of professionally-designed templates at your disposal, which are easy to customize with your brand’s logo, colors, and fonts with just a few clicks.
Piktochart also really sets itself apart as a presentation tool. Instead of relying on the same boring old slides, you can turn dry information into a visual story. For example, you can convert data into interactive maps, charts, and graphs. To make this even easier, you can link an Excel or Google Sheets file straight to your account.
Piktochart is already being used by well-known brands such as Typeform, Disney, and Booking.com. You can start exploring their features with their free plan, and their paid plans start at $25 USD for individuals.
3. Slite: Collaborate on documents, knowledge bases, and beyond
When it comes to working collaboratively online, Slite is an absolutely irreplaceable tool for your business. It acts as a centralized workspace where your team can securely store and work on content and documentation. Even better, it’s always updated in real-time and can be accessed by team members anytime, anywhere. Think of it as Google Docs levelled-up.
One of the best ways to use Slite is as a knowledge base tool. Their software is intuitive and easy to use, so your team won’t have trouble working with it, regardless of their technological abilities. It’s also designed to make it simple for project managers and other leadership positions to develop internal knowledge bases that are dynamic and useful tools that will be referred back to again and again.
Slite goes much further than just being a knowledge management solution, however. In fact, that’s one of their biggest strengths. Their platform is perfect for assembling all kinds of important documentation. Even better, they have a wide range of free templates that you use to get oriented and save time when you’re getting started. Some of their templates categories include:
- Project management
- Human resources
- Marketing
- Design
- Engineering
All in all, Slite is the perfect solution if your business works on any kind of content development remotely. They’re passionate about helping teams work together better, and would love to help you do so.
Slite has a free plan that’s perfect to use when getting started. Once you want to take advantage of their full range of features, their Standard plan starts at $6.67 per member, per month.
4. Hootsuite: Unify your social media presence
Nowadays, social media is the pillar of many companies’ marketing strategies. In fact, a Hubspot 2021 report showed that 73% of marketers thought that social media marketing had been “somewhat effective” or “very effective” for their business.
As a result of this, many businesses face the problem of being overwhelmed by the multitude of social media platforms out there. Even though Facebook is still regarded as the leading platform for social media marketing, most businesses have presences on at least a couple additional platforms. It can certainly be a complicated and time-consuming job to organize content for multiple different platforms at once.
Hootsuite is a web app that helps companies solve this very problem. It unites all your social media campaigns on one platform, allowing you to plan your content, create your posts, and develop a social media calendar for your business. This allows you to stay organized, monitor your posts’ effectiveness, and adjust your social media strategies accordingly. It also helps marketing teams collaborate on social media campaigns seamlessly.
Hootsuite can also help you out with customer communications, as it allows you to manage your inbox, monitor user activity, engage at scale, and build a content library that’s ready to share.
Hootsuite can be used with over 20 social networks, including:
- YouTube
If you want to give Hootsuite a try, they have a limited free plan. If you wanted to use their wider range of tools, their Professional plan starts at 39 EUR per month.
5. Slack: Level-up your team communication
One of the biggest hurdles in any business is organized communication. We’ve all experienced the frustration that arises while searching for an email in a jam-packed inbox full of a mixture of internal communications, client messages, and document attachments. Not only is it annoying, but it’s also a huge time waster and results in mistakes and oversights.
Slack is a great tool that any business can use to avoid these kinds of frustrations. In fact, 91% of users reported that Slack made it easier for them to work remotely. It’s a platform that’s designed specifically for professional communications. It allows teams of any size to exchange messages, files, audio calls, and even video chats. You can also organize your communications into channels, which can be kept internal or shared with external teams when necessary.
Basically, Slack brings the best of email and messenger together, allowing teams to keep all their professional communications in one easily accessible place.
Best of all, Slack’s wide range of integrations make it even easier to exchange information. Some of the most popular choices include DropBox, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Loom, and Asana.
If you’re a small business that wants to get a feel for Slack, they have a free plan available. To take advantage of a wider range of their features, their paid plans start at $6.25 per month.
BONUS: Social Champ (All-in-one social media management tool)
Since businesses nowadays are entirely digital, social media managers need to have a powerful social media management tool by their side. Social Champ is one such robust media management and automation tool that can help you to automate all social media postings. The tool comes in with automation support for all the prominent social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Google Business Profile, and Pinterest. With Social Champ, you can schedule all your posts across social media platforms.
Social Champ is fully-loaded with premium features like Auto-RSS, social media calendar, sentiment analysis, bulk upload, monitoring analytics, multiple integrations, team collaboration, and recycle content. The tool also offers a chrome extension to use on the desktop. You can download Social Champ’s mobile application as well to handle the social from mobile. Social Champ is affordable, powerful, and a great helping hand to all the digital businesses in the market.
Social Champ has also launched an absolutely free plan where nothing is locked, and you can use all the features without paying a single dollar. The monthly pricing plan starts from $29/month.
Running a business of any size isn’t easy…but luckily there’s an incredible variety of irreplaceable tools out there that can help take your business to the next level. In order to use them to their full advantage, all you have to do is keep an open mind, tap into a little creativity, and give them a try.
Whether you’re looking for a new software tool to try out as part of your business model or are gathering ideas for the future, keep this article handy to refer back to to get you inspired. Consider which of the five web tools we mentioned aligns best with your business and give it a whirl.
You never know which solution will become integral to your business workflow!
