Cool Technology Stuff For You And Your Business

Recently, I’ve been thinking about some interesting websites that can be of use to small businesses, especially when it comes to getting organized.

Survey data can tell you a lot, and what better way to collect that data than through the web? At Clarity Jane, we use Survey Monkey for both market research and client satisfaction surveys. This is a great site and we’ve found it very useful—you can gather information both from your website-visiting public and by emailing a survey link to specific individuals, and download the data for whatever use you want to make of it. The basic account is free, but a small fee gets you more professional customization abilities.

If you’re running a business from your home but don’t want to use your home address, Earth Class Mail is a perfect solution, and it also gets rid of the paper process. How does it work? Your mail goes to a PO Box address, and Earth Class sends you an email with an image of the front of the envelope, at which point you can either ask them to open and scan it to you, or have them shred it. Once you’ve received the scanned contents, you can request they send you the original, or else you can have them shred it (while you either print the scanned version for yourself or store it electronically). It’s your own personal scanning and shredding service, combined with a PO Box address!

Got V Mail is another great small business tool to make your home seem like an office—it lets you put a really professional face on your phone service. You can get a 1-800 number or set it up with your existing local phone number. Create multiple extensions, have your voicemail emailed or texted to you, set up customized voicemail messages, have music on hold, offer callers the opportunity to dial by name directory, and more. Surprisingly, the fees are lower than you’d expect, and quite within reach even for a very small business.

Finally, there’s Vulocity. Many small business owners do not track their mileage properly, and this provides a simple solution. It’s a simple gadget that you plug into the car lighter adapter of your vehicle. It does all the tracking and sends a detailed report to your email address. It’s simple and saves you time on trying to calculate your mileage yourself. Here’s a fact to remember: the tax man can’t negotiate on real data.

Hopefully, one or more of these sites will help you give your small business a really professional step forward, and free up some time for you to grow your business.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 8:30 am and is filed under service websites, websites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.