Have you ever looked at other’s businesses and how their overall look online is amazing? If I tell you today that you can get professional looks easily right from your own computer or even your phone?
It’s easier than ever to seem professional (even if you don’t feel like one… yet!). We’ve combined in this post a few free tools we like to use ourself all the time.
CANVA – Easy Graphic Designs
Canva is a graphic design platform, used to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents and other visual content. The app includes templates for users to use (with a lot being free to use!). The platform is free to use and offers paid subscriptions like Canva Pro and Canva for Enterprise for additional functionality (but you don’t really need it to do amazing graphics.
Whatever you need for graphics, Canva most likely have it. What we use it particularly for being for our social media posts. You can easily create visually appealing images that will certainly cap the attention of the viewers. Adding your own images will seamlessly integrate their platform so that you can save time making those unique posts.
SQUARE – Payment Processor & FREE website builder
Square helps millions of sellers run their business – from secure credit card processing to point of sale solutions to setting up a free online store. The best part, it’s free to use with no monthly fees! (Unless you pay to upgrade your account).
Basically, you can take payment anywhere with Square tools. You can even have a magstrip connected to your phone so that you can take credit card payments on the go. It’s great at markets, especially since nowadays, not everyone has cash on them. Therefore, you would still be able to get sales otherwise you might of not gotten. Of course, they have fancier tools you can buy, but generally speaking, you can get away with their free tools. Keep in mind you pay the fees below, but it’s next to thing if it lets you get payments you would of otherwise lost.
Inventory Management Tool
Another great feature is their inventory management tool. You can create, edit, & add all of your products information on the app so that you know what you have in stock at all time! It also serves as a double purpose to do this since you would be able to sell those items using their free website builder tool. (more on that below)
If you are like use, having a lot of products can be quite confusing. With Square, you will be able to put notes as to where they are (if you sell some in different stores). Let’s just say there’s lots of options to make your life a little bit more simple.
A few more options from Square:
Free Online Website Builder
Easily sell online and ship orders to customers, offer curbside pickup or local delivery – no matter what type of business you have. Plus, you can sell on Instagram, Facebook and more! Easily setup your website with no monthly fees, only pay when you make a sale – 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction. You can even upgrade your plan to get more features, but the free version already has a lot to offer.
You can create and publish your online store quickly. With the help of the site builder, you don’t need to know how to code. And your site will work well on any device.
REVERSO – Sentence correcter
As much you might be good at writing properly, you never know if you’ve made a mistake or not. Did you know it affects credibility to your brand if customers spots mistakes in your messages? It’s good getting it at least checked and a good tool to use is Reverso.
PEXEL – Free Stock Photos
Keep in mind, if you use pictures online, you might run into copyright legal issues. If you want to play it safe, using Pexel will keep you away from possible trouble.
BACKGROUND REMOVER – for products pictures
If you want to remove pictures, background for your products as an example, do so automatically in 5 seconds with just one click. Don’t spend hours manually picking pixels. Background remover really makes it easier to create awesome setups for your pictures!
TINYJPG – Downsize your image sizes without loosing quality
Sometimes, your pictures might take a lot of space of memory. What happens is that loading those images online for any user might take more time. There’s a way to optimize your images without losing quality! This is tinyjpg. You don’t need to optimize them, but it can be useful in the long term.
About The Author:
This article was written by Mathieu Hébert, the owner of The Acorn Studio. Visit the website to find more blog post & over 500 products 100% made in the maritimes!
