Top 5 Low-Cost Must Have Tools for Small Businesses

As consumers, we’re adopting cloud-based apps and tools rapidly. But we’re still at the beginning of the curve in applying the same kinds of low-cost tools to running small businesses. I managed about two-thirds of all of my work at my previous company, Mint.com, on inexpensive web applications. At my new company, it’s closer to 100%. Why? There’s been an explosion of well engineered, secure apps that facilitate almost all of my accounting, marketing, project management, and other business tasks at a small fraction of the cost and time required by their enterprise predecessors.   Here are five cool tools I’ve learned to love that cover some important bases for any business — from basic file sharing and team communication to user testing and content management. Are there countless others worth trying? You bet. But here are a few I consider keepers.

1. Ethnio, & 2. Usabilla

Why you need it: Without an intimate understanding of users, our businesses wouldn’t thrive (or even exist). User feedback is the most valuable dataset we can get our hands on. As a one-two punch, Ethnio and Usabilla deliver great insights quickly and cheaply.

I recently had lunch with a product-VP, and we both had a good laugh over the fact that it used to take him nearly four days to set up a single day of product usability research. Between the manual labor of finding and qualifying the users, then organizing the process, it had become one of his most time-consuming and expensive tasks.

Ethnio allows us to grab and vet potential candidates through website pop-ups. Usabilla then pulls the best candidates from the Ethnio session to work through questions, product concepts and sends feedback and analysis to the business.

Set up properly, this nifty duo works almost entirely hands-off, allowing the site to motor along while continually mining data. And it keeps our top research and product talent focused on interpreting the results – not collecting them.

What it replaces or complements: Focus groups, traditional user testing

Cost: Ethnio: Free to $800/month; Usabilla: Free to $139/month Read more at mashable.com