5 Websites we find helpful for our startup business

Image from Foundr magazine website

When you decide to take the step and start your own business, it can be difficult to find resources or information on how to start your business.  There are so many questions that you need to ask.  How do I set-up my business?  What platform do I use to build my website?  What app or software can I use to build and scale my business? What do I do next?  What resources are out there to help me find the answers to these questions?

Here are several websites that we find helpful for our startup business.

Foundr – This magazine website is great as it provides entrepreneurs with resources to learn how to build and grow a successful business.  There are some great interviews with people such as Richard Branson, Joel Gascoigne (CEO of Buffer), Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma and Arianna Huffington to name a few.  The site also offers a great free tools guide which entrepreneurs are using that can help your startup business.  

GrowthHackers – This is a community where people can learn and share ethical online marketing techniques that drive effective, scalable and sustainable growth.  What we like most about this site is that when you enter the ‘Trending’ section you can search for articles on a topic that interests you like marketing, Instagram, SEO or analytics to name a few. 

Entrepreneur – This site is designed for entrepreneurs.  Here you will find articles that can teach an entrepreneur to how to start, run and grow a business.  There are so many topics that it is better used when you know what to looking for.

TechCrunch – This site is great in finding out about tech startups.  We use this site to find tools and to gain insights on tech trends.  With so many tech tools and apps being developed you need a site like this to keep track. 

Social Media Examiner – This site provides great tips for business and marketers on how to build social media presence.  What we like most about this site is that it provides a weekly wrap up of the changes that have occurred on social media sites.  It also provides case studies and research reports.

These are only some of the websites that we use as resources to help grow our business.  Do you use any of these websites?  Which website do you find useful in helping your business grow?

Are heat maps the best way to improve your business website?

Image of Heatmap website

When you begin a startup business you are always in testing and building phase.  It is especially important when you have an ecommerce site as you constantly want to improve it.  The hardest part about this is getting feedback from customers or website visitors.  So how do you overcome this problem and what tool or tools can you use?

During the course of setting up our website we came across the term ‘heat maps’. Heat maps to us are a way of analysing visitor behaviour so that you can find ways to increase conversion and improve the website.  Many people think that you need coding skills to set it up but you don’t.

There are two interesting free heat maps that we are using.  They are Heatmap and Hotjar.  Heatmap is mostly a click based heat map, while Hotjar works by tracking people’s eyes when they see your page and clicks.  So what is the difference?

The clicks are visitor actions completed on your page like clicking on images, buy button or social media icons.  While eye tracking is exactly that, tracking the eyes of website visitors as they look at information or images on the page.  The more traffic your site has, the better you are able to understand what visitors are looking for.  It also lets you analyse what is working on your site and why people click to buy certain items.

To install heat maps on your site, all you need to do is sign up and then get the HTML or Java script code.  Once you have obtained the code, you need to inject them in to the ‘head’ section of the website page that you want to track. 

For people who are using Squarespace, all you need to do is to sign in to your account and go to ‘settings’ and then click on ‘Inject code’ and then paste the code in to the ‘head’ section.

As to the question if heat maps are the best way to improve your website, the answer is yes.  Although we have not been using it long, we can see its value.  Facebook is one of the many tech companies who use heat maps.  So when you think about it, if they are using it then there must be some value in it.  Do you believe heat maps improve websites?  What heat map apps do you use or recommend?  Or are they a waste of time?