Website Optimization: 20 Guaranteed Ways To Kill Your Site

problems, Website /
When it comes to running your own website, you will be inundated with opinions. Suddenly everyone is an expert and has little tips and tricks to try to improve the many things that you are aiming for.
That’s great, if you are avoiding the trappings that many businesses fall into when it comes to website optimization.
Here we have provided a list of 20 things that will kill your website, some of them you’re probably doing without even realising!
1. Ignoring Social Media
We live in a fast paced and rapidly changing environment. Instead of daily newspapers, people now have up-to-the-second information in the palms of their hands. Being able to react, engage and ultimately build brand awareness across social media platforms is an absolute must for any website trying to gain a foothold in the online world.
2. Overcomplicating
As much as we like to show off how intelligent we are with fancy words and long, artistic paragraphs, in general, your audience will lose interest quickly if you don’t get to the point. As mentioned in point one, the way we as human’s digest information now is very quick, if someone doesn’t get what they are looking for fast they will be exiting your site as fast as they entered. Don’t believe us? Check how long people spend on your webpages.
3. Not Using Pictures
Some websites read a lot like shopping lists, and who wants to read a shopping list? For better website optimization you should use a lot of pictures. Break up your blog posts with relevant pictures and increase reader engagement by doing so. Correct use of pictures should break up the text into easily digestible pieces of information. There are plenty of free picture resources out there, so you really have no excuse not to get your blog crammed full of interesting images.
4. Not Having a Subscribe Button
The goal of your website is to communicate with the wider world. To showcase yourself to a greater audience and to do it on a consistent basis. If you don’t have a subscribe button you are instantly missing a huge opportunity to generate leads and by default future sales prospects.
5. Inconsistent Blog Activity
Search engines love consistency, believe it or not, just because you hired a blogger to write 5 articles doesn’t mean they should be posted in one go. It is better to space out the publishing of blog articles at regular intervals. This shows search engines that you are regularly active and consistently updating the information on your website. It will really improve your website optimization.
6. Not Updating your Website
Do you still have the same website you started out with in 2010? Chances are that theme is looking at best a bit tired but at worst it will be looking dated. If your website looks old and tired, then that speaks volumes to visitors about your brand. It is best to review your website on an annual basis to ensure that everything remains fresh and up to date.
7. Less Than 300 Words on Pages
This isn’t a critical flaw, but it can have a substantial effect on website traffic. The reason being that search engines will sometimes require 300 words minimum to record the contents of that page. So if your ‘Contact Us’ page only have 150 words, that could be the difference between someone finding it on a search engine or not.
8. Not Tagging Images
Remember all those juicy and delightful images we told you to put on your blog? Well search engines want to find them too, except search engines don’t have eyes. You need to tag your images so that when search engines crawl your website they know what they are looking at and can bring your pages up in the image search results.
9. Not Having Call to Actions
It doesn’t matter what type of website you have, there will always be a purpose to it. Some people want to generate sales, some want a larger reader base, whatever the overall goal is, let your visitors know what to do. A simple “Buy now” button could be the difference between a profitable website and a non-profitable one.
10. Not Keywording
Like with the aforementioned tagging of pictures, not placing relevant keywords across an article makes it harder for a search engine to categorise exactly what your content is about. The key is to strategically target keywords to generate higher traffic to your site. Simple.
11. Keyword Stuffing
Point 10 was so simple right? Well, some websites go overboard on the keywording and it is a sure-fire way to turn off your next reader. While search engines won’t mind too much if a site has a keyword repeated endlessly your reader will. If they see content written for robots they will click away quick, this will have a detrimental effect on your search rankings as well because the search engines will see that people aren’t staying on your site long, so it must be trash.
12. Not Providing Communication Opportunities
Bit of a mouthful that one, but it is very straightforward. Having comment sections, opinion polls, user surveys etc allows your traffic to communicate with you. Yes, sometimes it isn’t what you want to hear, but criticism is always an opportunity to improve. Give your readers a voice and they will listen more attentively when you speak.
13. Spammy Adverts
It is very easy to get adverts onto your website nowadays. It can also be very lucrative and a great source of background income. But be wary of the type of adverts that users will see. Using AdSense and other ad programs can promote relevant products to your audience without detracting away from the content on your site. If you have a butcher’s website, do you really want a vegan diet advertised on your site? Be ad smart and make sure you know what is being advertised on your site.
14. Simple Isn’t Stupid
Earlier on we said how key it was to keep content simple. That doesn’t mean that the content should be poorly written. So many websites have blogs full to the brim with content that has poor grammar, spelling and in general are of low written quality. If you can’t write, use freelancing sites like Upwork to hire writers. Make sure your content reads well from start to finish and make sure it provides value throughout.
15. Being Too Salesy
Sounds counterintuitive to not try so hard to sell something that you want to sell. The key is to get clients and customers to buy into your products by showing them how much it is worth. No one likes a hard sell. If you want to keep your conversions low, then keep your sales pages being written as a sales page. If you want to increase conversions, then craft a sales page that gets readers interested in what the product can do for them.
16. Not Using Plugins
If you’re a WordPress site owner (the majority of you will be), be sure to utilise plugins to enhance your website. Some plugins are simple like displaying a button for social media; some are far more complex and run in the background to speed up page loading times. Either way, using plugins adds value. See our 20 Best WordPress Plugins guide here.

17. Lacking Direction
If you have a website, be sure to know what you want it to do. If you want to make money, make sure you have direct user journeys to your ecommerce store. Of course, you don’t want people visiting your blog and leaving empty handed. So make sure that you’re always focused on the overall goal of the website and plan each aspect accordingly.
18. Having a Poor Design
Almost as an addition to point 17, make sure that your website works properly. For example, having 404 (dead links) pages come up is frustrating for the user and will likely lead to them leaving the website. As well as making sure every link is working (there are plugins that do this for you) it is vitally important to make sure that your website is easy to navigate. A user should never be more than a click away from your home page, no one wants to be locked in a maze they can’t get out of. This point is really bad for website optimization.
19. Not Having Security Credentials
If you’re handling money and you are not providing encryptions or safety features for your customers, then they will likely not purchase anything. Something as simple as securing your transaction pages with the padlock icon will inspire consumer trust and have a positive effect on your conversions.
20. Negative Reviews
There is such a thing as bad publicity and it, of course, can bury a business or a website in an instant. If you are enabling people to review or you company is trading in a forum that can be reviewed make sure you stay customer focused. If you get the dreaded bad review, respond in a professional, courteous manner. Apologise and if necessary offer to rectify the problem. Pro-actively responding to the occasional bad review will show that you care. You won’t be able to please everyone all of the time; do what you can when you can.

Conclusion about website optimization
Hopefully you will have found this guide helpful, if you have made any mistakes on your website, remember, you can rectify it. Identifying the errors will now allow you to put right any wrongs. Be sure to subscribe using the icon above and make sure you get the latest information to make your website a success!

Reddit : How To Get Traffic Using This Resource

Reddit /

Anyone on the Internet had surely heard about Reddit.com – the place that seems to spawn most of the viral content you see. On the surface, the first impression about Reddit.com is not great. Most of the non-Reddit users see the platform as a disorganized junk of users where every good post is negated by a dozen bad ones.

To an extent, it is true. But Reddit.com has a lot of potentials, and with the right strategy, you can tap into it to drive traffic for your benefit. For those, who don’t know much about Reddit.com; let’s start with an introduction to it.

What is Reddit.com?
Reddit.com is one of the oldest social news platforms that still continue to function. Founded in 2005, Reddit.com likes to call itself the “Front Page of the Internet”. It seems like a tall claim, but Reddit.com justifies that tag.

According to the recent data, Reddit.com houses 234 million unique visitors and sees 8 billion page views every month. So if you think this website doesn’t consume much time of users, think again. Stats suggest that an average user spend about 13 minutes or more every time he/she visits the site.

If you have never been on this website, this video help you to know basic things:

Things to Know About Reddit
I have listed and described the common terms that exist in Reddit.com. Let’s check them out:

Redditers
The users on Reddit.com are known as Redditers. What makes Redditers stand apart from other social platform users is their dedication. The content on Reddit.com is created, curated and improved by the redditers themselves. Without any supervision, Reddit.com witnesses the best content on the Internet, all thanks to its users. Most of the viral content you see on other platforms like Facebook or Twitter originate from Reddit.com by these redditers. The best thing about redditers is that they don’t claim any copyright over the content they create; everything is free and open to the world.

Subreddits
The entire Reddit is divided into specific categories known as “subreddits”. Subreddits help to keep the content organized on the platform and help users find exactly what they want. The best part about subreddits is that anyone can create and curate them. There is a particular benchmark for a subreddit to be considered “active”, and currently there are more than 7000 active subreddits.

Karma
Your worth on Reddit.com is displayed by your karma. Karma is the collective score you get from your activity on Reddit.com. For example, if you get upvotes, post comments, create subreddits or engage users, your karma will go high. On the other hand, spamming or violating Reddiquette will push your karma score into the abyss. If you are hoping to have any impact on Reddit.com, you need to have a very high karma score. This means a lot of engaging and helpful content, and no useless stuff.

How to Drive Reddit Traffic?
Using Reddit.com for a marketing strategy is not the easiest of tasks, and surely requires a lot of hard work, but it could be done. Reddit.com can prove to be a treasure of traffic and you can divert all of it for your benefit. What’s more, you can get the redditers help you with it. Here is what you need to do:

Have a Presence that Counts
Simply having a profile on Reddit.com is not enough; you need to do more than that. Creating a subreddits (or more than one) is the right way forward, but some caution needs to be taken.

If you create a subreddit, you need to take care of it. Make sure it is around a topic that is informing, interesting and seeks user engagement. Be active on all the comments on the thread. Reply where you should, also upvote where you can.

You can create a subreddit around your business, but it should also be something that interests the users instead of simply being a marketing pamphlet. If you are moderating a subreddit, create a community feeling around all those who engage in it.

Entertain the Users
Unless you are Elon Musk or The Rock, people simply won’t care about your posts. However, they will care about the content you create if it interests them. Many organizations like, for example, Spotify hold monthly competitions that see a huge user engagement and, in turn, give free promotion to the company. You can do the same. However, it needs to be something really catchy and hold the attention of the users.

Keep Them Happy
Here is where your brand value really kicks in: customer support. Reddit.com might seem like a very unlikely place to provide customer support, but Reddit and Facebook see more customer-brand interaction than all emails.

On this website, you are both a person and a brand. This gives you a chance to interact like a person with your customers and solve their queries. Whatever it takes, keep them happy with your brand. Remember, in the digital world, your image means everything. Because of this, make sure you keep it spotless.

Holds AMAs
AMA, or Ask Me Anything, has proven to be a great marketing strategy in recent times. On the surface, it seems like a simple Q&A session with users. However, in reality, it is a great way to grab the attention of people towards your brand and gain extra traffic.

AMAs are so sacksful because it gives users a chance to interact with the brands directly- like two normal people do. People love being able to talk with big names like equals, so use it for your leverage. AMAs are usually centered on a theme, so chose a theme that is both relevant to your brand and useful to the Reddit users. So having one AMA every week should get the trick done.

Designate a Community Manager
Today, community managers are as important for a company as PR professionals. So if you want to establish your image on any social platform, you need a person who would be your voice on that platform. Look for someone who is passionate about interacting with others and always seems to have the right words to say. Platforms like Facebook groups, Reddit and Quora are essentially communities, so you need to find a person you can promote this community feeling and use it for the benefit of your brand. Community managers essentially make your brand “one of us” for the redditers instead of some alien entity.

Keep Them Posted
Why, you ask? Well, people crave to be ahead of the news everyone else is getting. If you establish Reddit.com as the primary source of info about your company, it will divert a lot of attention towards it.

Post about any new product, service or update regarding your brand on a regular basis. If not your brand, then keep posting news in the niche that concerns your brand. You need to give something interesting to the redditers every time they checkout your profile.

Moreover, Reddit.com can be a fantastic source for content ideas. Click here to know more.

Final Thoughts
So, as you saw, Reddit.com is less of the mess you thought it to be, and more of a golden mine of underutilized potential. With the right strategy, you can leverage all of that to promote your brand. All you need to do is create an effective strategy and follow the plan.

Top CRM Software for Small Business : features & pricing

Management /

How can a CRM benefit your small business?

We will show you how CRM software can improve your company in simple points to help you while deciding whether you will need to use one or not.

  • Contacts organization.

The contact management software will help you reach and categorize every content and related data easier. CRM will allow you to merge all associated data on each content in one place. These details include cell phone numbers, social media accounts, business information, emails, and many more.

  • Create a customer persona.

After gathering all your customers’ data in a single place, the CRM will help you learn more about them. You will know what type of persons are more likely to be your customers. This will help you to modify your marketing plan and use targeted ads to reach all potential customers. The identified persona will also help you deliver a more personalized experience for your user.

  • Monitor different operations.

CRM software produces reports monitoring your business performance in many departments. It will provide you with a detailed reporting system for things like sales, marketing, campaigns, customer data, and more. Reviewing these reports regularly will help you find problems and solve them, improve growth, and find out how the whole investment is doing. Information on sales and your trending products can show you how to get more from your current sales process.

  • Save time and money.

Using a good CRM tool will allow you to automate different processes that would usually take hours of paid work to finish. Tasks like data entry would be from the past, which will allow you more free time for developing your business.

The ability to monitor your business closely in terms of sales activities, customer support, and performance is a guaranteed way for fast growth and gaining more money.

We can safely assume that the CRM system lays the foundation of your business’s success.

If you are concerned about the budget, then don’t worry there are great free CRM software options. Later in this article we will show you a few of the best free CRM options. These options include agile crm, zoho, salesforce, and more.

Top CRM Software 4 Small Business

Creating a successful startup is a great challenge nowadays. You need to have thousands of clients and keep track of their interactions with your business simply.

This massive amount of data requires a way to be organized and processed in ways that increase the growth and sales of your business. CRM software is made for this purpose. Using CRM software in your business nowadays has become a necessity. Neglecting CRM causes you more losses over time.

The CRM does a great job in managing the customers’ data and the potential leads. This frees your time and energy to focus on improving your business in all other ways.

You don’t need to spend a lot on CRM; there is a lot of free sales management software. We will also show you cheap CRM for startups. CRM and sales management work together, a good and easy CRM system will improve your sales.

There is a lot of excellent CRM software out there and choosing among them is a difficult choice. We have gathered detailed information about 4 of the biggest CRM software providers in the market. We will help you compare CRM for small business.We will show you the features of each software to know how it will help your business.

After reading this article, you will find the best CRM software for your startup and the best CRM software for small business.

We will discuss the prices of each one and show you also the pros and cons of each provider.

Read the following details and make sure you study all the options before choosing the best available software for your business. …

Top CRM Software for Small Business : features & pricingRead More »

Best CRM Software for Small Businesses in 2021

Management /

Best Customer Relationship Management Software 2021

Few things are as important to a business as maintaining a relationship with its customers. Whether you cater to consumers or other businesses, it’s important to stay up to date on evolving conversations with existing customers while also effectively managing new leads.

Your customer satisfaction depends on your ability to offer attentive, personalized engagement with your clients, but your growth demands you continue seeking out new customers as well.

Customer relationship management (CRM) tools do just that, helping your sales team log communications, manage leads and even build marketing campaigns. In the past, CRMs were only available to large organizations, but the rise of cloud-based services has availed CRM platforms to businesses of all sizes.

Microsoft Dynamics

Microsoft Dynamics offers a look and feel familiar to Office and Sharepoint users, with a user interface that’s easy to use. This makes the software a great option for Microsoft users and it’s optimized for performance with Microsoft products, meaning that it can be slightly clunky if you integrate with other products.

The solution can be deployed via the cloud, on-premises or via a hybrid combination, but the on-premises option is great for companies that have data security concerns.

The range of functionality is comprehensive, but it’s a sophisticated product that can be difficult to use. It’s a better choice for companies that have well-defined processes. It’s great for companies that need contract management capabilities, but can be expensive and difficult to use for smaller companies.

vTiger CRM

vTiger CRM is an all-in-one option designed for small businesses. It offers sales automation, email, project and inventory management, forecasting, workflow automation, case and lead management and a customer portal. There are also training, migration and email marketing packages available separately.

 

vTiger easy to learn and affordable, with a tech support desk that’s quick to respond. The biggest drawback is that it can be difficult to customize.

Nimble

Nimble is a good choice for companies of any size that want to unify disparate data and improve their social media integration. Unfortunately, there’s no Facebook or LinkedIn message integration since these social media forums have removed API access, although Nimble CRM works well with Twitter.

The software automatically populates profiles and interaction histories from contact lists, email and social media. The interface gives a comprehensive view of to-dos, key deals, engagement opportunities and more. Best of all, Nimble has a rules engine that helps the software learn from user behavior and predict increasingly relevant contacts and activities.

Suite CRM

Suite CRM is an open source CRM that is scalable for any business size. Designed to offer enterprise-level functionality, the software can be deployed in a private cloud, directly on private servers, or on a public cloud.

Suite is highly customizable and offers a free option for sophisticated enterprise users. However, it takes considerable skill to administer and is only suited to advanced organizations.

Act!

Act! manages contacts and leads while offering reporting and third party integration that includes basic accounting, client history and pipeline reports. Available in a cloud version that requires no IT support, as well as in a server-based version. The software offers built-in email marketing tools and integrates with phone systems.

However, some users reported that the interface is dated, the software can be confusing to use and social media integration could be better. This difficult-to-use CRM is not for the faint of heart and feels more like a jazzed-up contact manager than a fully functional CRM.

Salesforce

Salesforce is an all-in-one, cloud-based solution that has everything you need in a CRM software. Although this software is typically associated with larger businesses and enterprises, Salesforce’s small business edition lets you take advantage of the product’s robust set of Customer Relationship Management tools and resources at an affordable, small-business-friendly price.

Part of Salesforce Small Business Solutions, the platform is very easy to use and includes key features like lead generation, contact and opportunity management, sales forecasting, workflow automation, and much more.

While small businesses can take advantage of the lower-priced tiers, the plans and features of the Salesforce system are suited for larger businesses.

Freshsales

Freshsales is a CRM helpful platform that is concerned with increasing the productivity of your teams, especially the sales team. Its CRM software offers numerous tools that help in many tasks as automation of workflow, lead conversion, email management. Freshsales is a CRM that also provides a great variety of integrations concerning productivity, marketing campaign, and team interactions. Freshsales is one of the best crm for startups.

Freshsales software is a simple one and easy to use. The platform gives you the freedom to generate your contacts as demanded. However, when you have your contacts, it gives you all you need to make the leads into sales and retained customers. Freshsales is one of the best crm systems for small business and offers the best crm features. Some may say that Freshsales is the best free crm for small business.

Freshsales Features:

1.Leads and Contact Management.

Freshsales offers a simple and straightforward display of contacts. It shows a lot of helpful information concerning all the activities of the connection. It shows the client’s data from the company’s website, their posts from social media, and their messages. It will also show you how this client is worth for your company. All this data shown in one place helps with customer service and satisfaction.

  1. Team Communication.

This is an excellent feature in Freshsales software. Its communication features will allow all the teams to communicate without leaving the software. The platform syncs with all primary email services as Gmail, syncing both incoming and outgoing messages. All emails are arranged automatically according to the clients for easy tracking. To make emailing more efficient, Freshsales offers email templates to make the process faster. You also can send bulk campaigns to any group of contacts saved in your database. The software will tell you who and when every email was opened in real-time notifications.

You can also add notes to each call log and save it to the contact who said it to be aware of what happened next time you call this client.

  1. Interface and In Use.

Freshsales software interface is very user-friendly, which makes you like the software instantly. You will find all the phone, email, and contact tools at the top of the platform.

The platform design and menus will make you feel fulfilled and make your job easier.

  1. Support.

Freshsales CRM gets a lot of support from the leading Freshworks company. You can call or email in any business hour from Monday to Friday, and they will follow with your request quickly. The platform also offers an extensive video library for any issue you face.

Pricing:

Freshsales have five different plans according to the size of your business. The first plan is entirely free and offers an unlimited number of contacts, integrated email access, and access to the mobile app. It is a handy free option for small businesses. The plans’ prices vary from $12 per user per month to $79 per user per month. Freshsales will offer the basic crm for small business and more.

Freshsales Pros:

1.Easy interface and mobile phone app.

  1. Automatic call recorder and a built-in phone.
  2. Double method email syncing and sending bulk emails.
  3. Fressales is one of the best client management software compilers you may use.

Freshsales Cons:

  1. Fragile lead generation methods.
  2. Few integrations with project management software.

Sendinblue

Sendinblue is mainly an email marketing solution that aims to help small and medium-sized businesses. It offers an easy interface and simple tools to help you manage email marketing, newsletters, task automation, transactional emails for eCommerce, and some basic CRM features. It also adds significant value to businesses depending on email marketing by offering SMS functionality. SMS marketing is an efficient tool necessary to increase sales and interaction with customers. They have an excellent live chat service that allows you to interact with clients and fans in a direct chat. Sendinblue is a tremendous free online crm software for small business. Even their paid plan is arguably the best low-cost crm for small business.

Sendinblue Pros:

  1. The software efficiently produces awesome emails that help your brand to communicate more effectively with the customers.
  2. Adding contacts and composing new emails is a lot easier than other competitors.
  3. Specific statistics and analytics help you to measure your growth and success accurately.
  4. Selective email sending to a group of contacts.
  5. Daily Free 300 emails limit so that you try it ideally before subscribing to a paid plan.
  6. Offers all the basic CRM features.
  7. A rich email processing with tons of features such as auto-responder and transactional emails.

Sendinblue Cons:

1.Poor customer service in the initial stages of using the product; this wastes a lot of unnecessary time.

  1. Laggy interface when creating email templates, and it cannot make a master template that can be used after that to make empty templates.
  2. Setting up the account for the first time can be time-consuming and difficult.

Sendinblue Features:

  1. Automated Marketing Communications:

Sendinblue marketing automation improves your contact management through specific workflows. It comes with several preset workflow templates to help you automate the marketing process and improve the customers’ service. The software offers templates for welcome emails, cart reminders, and many more.

2.Transactional emails and SMS.

3.Email marketing and SMS campaigns.

4.Dynamic list and order tracking.

  1. Newsletter creator.

Create new professional newsletters easily by just dragging and dropping your favorite blocks to build a well-designed newsletter in a few minutes.

  1. Attract target audience.

SendinBlue collects the email and contact information of the fans and potential customers. This data can be used easily to make targeting campaigns with high success rates.

Sendinblue Pricing:

All the plans include unlimited contact access, and pricing depends on the number of emails you need to send each month. The Lite plan includes $25 per month for 40,000 emails. The essential plan costs $39 per month for 60,000 emails. The premium plan costs $66 per month for 120,000 emails. Sendinblue offers a custom plan for enterprises with variable prices for companies who need more than 350,000 emails per month.

The free plan is surprisingly great; it is a free trial without a timeout period and does not need a credit card. You need to enter some basic information about your company and use the program for free.

In the end, we hope that this article has shown you the best crm for small business 2021 wise. Nowadays, using an online CRM system for your startup is mandatory. We have shown you a group of the best crm platforms for small business in 2021. Any promising startup should use sales management software.

There are many free crm systems for small business and multiple crm options for small business nowadays. If you like to develop your business, you also need to think about the best CRM for customer service.

Zoho CRM

Easy to implement, intuitive to use and inexpensive to adopt, Zoho CRM offers users lots of functionality at a competitive price point. While the customization options aren’t as extensive as some other CRMs we reviewed, there are still a lot of ways to tailor Zoho to meet your needs. Like Zoho’s other business apps, its Customer Relationship Management module feels modern, clean and immediately intuitive. Zoho also offers a bevy of click-to-install extensions through the Zoho Marketplace, and the easy adoption process make it possible for businesses to build out a customized CRM solution without a developer.

Zoho CRM is an extensive solution that’s ideal for just about every small business. It has a decent price point and provides good support to customers.

HubSpot CRM

HubSpot offers independent contractors and owners of tiny businesses an easy entry into the world of CRM solutions. The free version of HubSpot may offer enough functionality to improve processes and organization at zero cost. It offers users a wealth of training resources in its online library, including learning guides, invoice template generators, email signature generators, and marketing plan template generators. Motivated users have a great DIY buffet of options – without the need to spend money on development and training.

Of all the companies we reviewed, Hubspot has the best free option. This is ideal for very small businesses or other companies that have limited experience using CRM systems. Further, Hubspot has one of the most extensive online training libraries to pull from.

Keap

Keap is on a mission to simplify growth for millions of small businesses.

For 18 years, Keap has helped small businesses get organized so they can deliver great service and close more business. Keap’s award-winning CRM solution serves more than 200,000 users globally.

We’re in the business of helping you grow yours.

Step up to all-in-one sales and marketing software designed for growing service-based businesses, ranging from entrepreneurs and startups to larger teams. Keap’s platform organizes your customer information and daily work in one place, freeing you up from repetitive tasks so you have more time to focus on growing your business and delivering great service.

Less Annoying CRM

With just one subscription plan costing $10 per user, per month, Less Annoying Customer Relationship Management takes the complexity and expense out of adopting a customer relationship management solution. Less Annoying CRM doesn’t have the features competing CRMs have, but it simplifies the implementation process: You can expect to have the system up and running in hours. Anyone interested in Less Annoying CRM can check out a software demo online and view screenshots, without filling out a form or submitting a request.

It’s an approachable small business tool that can handle all of your needs from a sales and CRM standpoint, plus it’s easy to implement, whether you have experience in using CRM solutions or not.

Organizations use CRM solutions for a variety of reasons. Initially, though, the CRM industry was geared primarily toward sales and PR professionals, offering a convenient way to store information and track communication with customers. Today, CRM solutions straddle several areas of business customer relationship management, marketing, analytics, communication and even lightweight project management.

Some CRM systems even have built-in chatbot and calling capabilities, so reps can communicate with clients directly from the system.

Even small businesses can afford powerful CRM software, thanks in large part to the proliferation of affordable SaaS solutions, which deliver a lot of functionality without the fuss (or headaches) that come with a major software implementation project. Tiered pricing structures and lots of competition mean SMBs have their pick of easy-to-use CRMs that optimize the customer relationship management process.

Of course, when you have several options available to you, the choices can be overwhelming. Luckily, we’ve done the hard work of comparing and testing CRM products for you.

Here is a roundup of our best picks for Customer Relationship Management software and how we chose them. To help you find the right CRM for your business, read Choosing a CRM Software: A Buyer’s Guide, which answers your common questions and outlines the best approach for choosing and implementing a solution.

What to Expect in 2021

As CRMs have improved, they have become more sophisticated and integrated with a wider range of business operations. Social media and email integration, for example, have been hallmarks of the Customer Relationship Management evolution. And, with the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, CRM functionality only continues to grow.

In fact, AI use cases in CRM are expected to increase by more than 250% over the next two years. The top expected use cases for AI include customer segmentation and data modeling, programmatic advertising, media buying and personalization for specific channel experience. Generally speaking, AI will continue to automate key CRM functions, reducing the need for manual reentry of data and the potential for human error that comes along with it.

In 2021, look for more automation and integration to streamline CRM usage, boost productivity and widen the scope of business operations that CRM tools impact. The developers that tap into these trends in a way that maintains or enhances user experience will be poised for success in the new decade.

Customer Relationship Management Pricing

For our review of CRM systems, we payed careful attention to pricing. Most customer relationship management software is priced on a per-person, per-month basis, but companies typically opt for annual billing to simplify the payment process. With that in mind, these are the general pricing tiers you can expect.

  • $10 to $15: Inexpensive CRM products are a great option for tiny businesses with modest needs, and there are many services that charge $10 to $15 per user, per month. Affordable systems like these typically have very quick implementation times and don’t usually require much in-house tech support to get things up and running. If you want a fast solution with minimal hassle, this price range is a great place to start – just make sure the storage options are robust enough to meet your needs; low-cost CRMs usually cap the number of records they can store.
  • $20 to $40: For additional features and a broader range of integrations with third-party systems, a CRM priced in the $20 to $40 range will likely meet your needs. The majority of CRM software we reviewed falls into this price range, because it’s designed to meet the needs of the SMB set. As you peruse options in this price range, check for limitations on the number of users supported and storage caps that could force you to upgrade to higher-priced plans.
  • $50 to $75: CRM software that falls in the $50 to $75 range per user is typically intended primarily for enterprise use. Such systems often include options to integrate with legacy systems and allow for greater customization than other CRMs. As powerful as they are, systems like these are not necessary for most small businesses.
  • $250 or more: The highest-end CRM systems often include extensive training, customization and implementation services with the software. An additional reason behind the steep cost of these solutions is that they are not cloud services; instead, they can be hosted locally, which is a boon for organizations with unique security needs.

Most CRM services offer free trial periods for new customers, so you can test-drive the system of your choice without the risk of sinking a lot of money into a product that ultimately doesn’t work for you.