Business owners know that the holiday season can be a stressful one. Everything has to run smoothly for the inevitable influx of paying customers. A lot can go wrong; so, here’s a short list of tools that will help keep you on track, and stress-free.
WPSpotter: For All Your WordPress Needs
If your business uses WordPress to host its website and/or blog, this service is for you – and it’s a good one. WPSpotter is a subscription-based service that allows you to shift the burden of WP maintenance and updates away from your business.
Use WPSpotter to submit tickets for any WordPress bug, update, or backup. Depending on your chosen subscription model, your issues will face an 18-, 8-, or 2-hour turnaround time, on all jobs. The service is 24/7/365–no matter when you have an issue, you have a solution. If you discover a bug on your site the night before your big presentation, you can trust WPSpotter to fix it in time for the event.
How does it work? It’s actually very simple; there are three steps: choose your subscription model, submit your job ticket through their portal, and let their WordPress developers take over (they’re actually quite fast). Having a reliable partner to fix your bugs means that you can fix, or even overhaul your entire website without lifting a finger. Some of the services that they provide include: increased conversions, improved branding, quicker load time, reduced bounce rate, and more traffic.
One huge benefit of using WPSpotter is that both technical, and non-technical people will find it useful – anyone on your team can use it. You can effectively say goodbye to the need to pull a developer from a project to fix a minor WP bug.
Slack: For Transparent Communication
Slack is a team collaboration tool that offers a chat room feature which is organized by topic. It also allows for private groups and direct messaging. One thing that is great about Slack: everything is searchable, files, conversations, people, and words, all through one search bar. It is a cross-platform application, so whether you have a Windows machine, an Apple device, a Linux laptop, or an Android tablet, you’ll be able to communicate transparently by using Slack in the office.
Some of the major integrations supported by Slack include: Google Drive, Google Hangouts, Dropbox, Heroku, Crashlytics, GitHub, Zendesk, Trello, Twitter, Stripe, and many more. By integrating all of the applications that you already use, you only need to go to one, centralized place for all the communication (and information) you need for your business to operate at peak capacity.
Perhaps the most innovative feature of Slack? Code snippets. Slack lets teams share and test code snippets in just a moment. Not only are these shareable, but they stay within the Slack portal for the team to go back to at any time.
KISSmetrics: For Extensive Analytics
With 82.8 percent of the market share, Google Analytics is by far the most widely-used analytics tool. But it’s not the best. You may be thinking, why wouldn’t I use Google Analytics? It’s relatively easy to use, and it’s free, yes, but it does not meet every business’s needs. The capabilities of Google Analytics are limited in scope, lack flexibility, and don’t provide options for advanced reporting. KISSMetrics, on the other hand, is one of the best analytics tools out there, especially if you’re a part of a marketing team.
KISSMetrics takes a different approach to analytics, by emphasizing each visitor as a customer, to show you how an actual user views and uses your website or application. It gives you everything you need in order to figure out who your customers are, and what works and doesn’t. The platform gives you the ability to look into past sessions and view the customer journey – from the moment they visit the website, to the moment they leave, and every action in between.
One particularly valuable aspect of the tool is its ability to tell you exactly where your high-revenue customers are coming from. Access to this information will help you design a plan to drive more profitable users to your site or application. Based on user identities, identified by KISSMetrics, your business will be able to make better decisions regarding increases in sales and conversions. In terms of systems that make getting to know your users easy, KISSMetrics is at the top of the list.
