The Tools You Need to Launch A Successful Online Business

Maybe you’ve been dreaming of starting a blog, a website, or a side hustle. But when you want to start an online business, you need to have the right platforms in place. So – what tools do you need to launch an online business and which ones can you skip?

Have no fear, friends – the answers are here!

Whether you’re first starting out or if you already have an existing brand, this post is for you.

I’m Danielle, a growth marketer with two decades’ experience, and I’m here to walk you through it.

It seems like a new platform, social media network, or tool is popping up every day.  It can be SO easy to get distracted and pulled in a million different directions. How do you pick?

Luckily, there are three platforms that typically drive the most impact, growth, and traction.

So, what are the big platforms should you have in place for your online business?

1. A website
2. An email tool
3. 1 – 2 social media platforms

Now, you might be saying “but I need ALL the social media accounts!”, or “my friend’s cousin told me about this new platform you NEED to be on!”.

Remember two things:

One, every platform and tool you use takes time to manage. We want you to be successful, which means putting your time and energy on the marketing tools with the biggest impact.

Two, you want to earn dollars, not likes. Yes, some social media tools seem flashy, but think about all the effort needed to finally start seeing money from all those hours.

Ultimately, a website, an email tool, and 1-2 social media accounts have the potential to drive a huge chunk of your business.  Let’s dive into each and why these three have greater than average results.

1. A website 

Your website is your home base. It’s where you build your business, your brand, and your happy fans. It also shows people that your brand is legit.

Building a website isn’t super complex – pretty much anyone can build a website today! 

There are two parts: the website host and the website platform:

• The website host is responsible for just that: hosting your website and registering it on the world wide web. 
• The website platform is also called the CMS (Content Management System) – it’s where you design, write, and publish pages on your website itself.

You have lots of options when it comes to where to host your blog, both free (like wix.com) and paid (like HubSpot.com, Webflow.com, or WordPress.org).

You’ll be tempted to pick free – but do not do it. 

Free hosting sites severely limit earning potential, storage space, and design options.   You’d also be stuck in their template, unable to move things around, and potentially an unprofessional site name like yourwebsite.wordpress.com. 

The best paid one in my opinion, is WordPress.org.  Don’t confuse it with the free WordPress.com which has way less to offer.  WordPress.org is used by roughly 1/3 of ALL the world’s websites.

And in order to help out my fellow online business owners, I hooked you up with a 50% off deal with WordPress.org. Just head over to Bluehost (their official domain hosting partner), and score a site at a big discount.

HOT TIP: Pick the 3yr plan.  It’s way cheaper, and you won’t have to stress about renewing.   

Don’t Forget Your Free Email Address

After you register your domain (aka website address), don’t forget to claim your FREE custom email address.   

Examples: 

• [email protected]  
• [email protected]  
• [email protected]  

The good news? You can do this for free with Bluehost!

The Next Steps in Building Your Website

After you register your website, you’ll need to prep it for going live:

1. Design your site – here you’ll design & decorate your site! You”ll pick a theme, design your main pages (home page, about page, contact page, etc.) and get it ready for going live. This can be a fun stage, just don’t spend too much time tweaking until it’s “perfect”.
2. Add plugins –  these are the tools that let you customize your site without coding. Things like adding your social media accounts, connecting Google Analytics, adding email integrations, performing automatic backups, etc. Here’s a great list of plugins to start with.
3. Create your first 5 posts – Before going live, you should have minimum 5-10 blog posts on your site.  It makes you look professional, allows readers to click around and explore, and is a good kick off to your SEO efforts. So think about what topics would help solve reader problems, and get to work. Be sure to optimize for SEO in your writing!
4. Create a content plan – Think beyond your first 5 posts and ensure you have a plan for the next few months to ensure you don’t disappear. Know your plan for how you’ll post on your blog, social accounts, and emails.

2: An Email Tool 

When looking through what tools do you need to launch an online business you might not think email would be top of the list.

But did you know that the average return of email is 40 to 1? That means for every $1 you put into email marketing, you get an average of $40 out of it.

Simply said, having email set up is vital. 

One of the most important things your website will do is capture email addresses. 

Why? 

Because then you can communicate with those people and share when you have a great product ready to sell (like a template, printable, e-book, course, physical product, etc.) We have a whole post on what products you can create and how to do it – check out the Sell category under Entrepreneurs in the menu above.

To do so, you’ll need to give them an incentive to leave their email address. Typically, this is by offering them free, high-value resources. 

Think: downloads, short ebooks, templates, printables, quizzes, or other freebies, that help make their lives easier in some measurable way.  

It’s actually pretty easy to set this up automatically, so your email list grows in your sleep. 

How to set up email on your website: 

1. Set up an email tool: I pick a free one to start (as of this writing, Mailchimp.com and Sender.net both have free options up to a certain number of users). 
2. Create your freebies: I usually do a 3-5 page PDF or printable, like checklists, templates, or guides.  Make sure they’re super valuable and worth taking the time to download. 
3. Create your welcome email series: 1-5 emails that get sent when someone downloads your freebie.  The first email includes the freebie, the others deepen the relationship with the reader, talking about things like why you started your website, links to top blog posts, and things that help them.
4. Set up automation: so when someone enters their email address, they get the welcome emails. You’ll need to integrate it with your website, but luckily the email tools offer great instructions to do so.

There you go!

Once you hit certain subscriber thresholds you’ll have to pay for email tools, but some have great intro plans, like free for the first 1,000 subscribers and 10,000 email sends per month.

That allows you to email readers up to weekly, and when you have a product ready to launch, enough space to email them multiple times during your launch week. 

Then, as you’ve started generating decent revenue and your email list grows beyond the free threshold, it won’t feel so painful to have to pay. 

3: 1-2 Social Accounts 

Nowadays, no website is complete without also claiming your social handles.  

You worked hard to create your content, but if you don’t share it out to the world it’s like it never happened.

“If a website launches with no social posts, did it really happen?” is like the millennial version of “if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it really happen?”.

Sharing it brings people back to your website, where you can eventually make money.

Even though I don’t recommend regularly posting on every social media profile, you’re going to want to claim your @account on every account. The main reason is you don’t want someone else to start posting under your brand name. Just claim the name, so nobody else takes them.

That said, do NOT plan to regularly post to every social platform. 

You’ll burn yourself out and get way too distracted.  Simply pick the 1-2 that your ideal reader regularly uses, and start there. 

To figure out which social media platforms to use, ask yourself:  

• How old is your target market?   
• Where do they live?   
• What do they spend their money on?  
• Where do they go online?  
• What is their demographic? Are they single/dating/married?  Any kids?   
• What problems are they trying to solve? 
• What do they want to learn how to do / what are they Googling?   

If you’ve already created your buyer persona, you likely know these already (and if not, go back & do it – it’s super helpful to get inside the mind of your ideal customers).

These questions will help you determine which social platforms to pick, which content to write more of, and which social platforms to use.  

Once you’ve decided which ones are for you, go to those social media accounts and start sharing your first 5 posts (spread out over a few days or weeks).  You can also pepper in some motivational quotes or photos if you need filler – just be intentional about how it will look and perform in your feed.  

HOT TIP – Have you considered Pinterest?  Most people who think Pinterest is just for wedding boards could not be more wrong.  It’s a powerful marketing tool that when used correctly can get you more than half of your website traffic. 

Health Checks for your Online Tools

There you have it! The top 3 platforms to set up and what tools do you need to launch an online business.

Now, if you already have some of these set up, you’re going to want to check some basic stats to see how each of these are performing.

That’s where the health check comes into play.

Here are the main stats you’re going to want to keep an eye on when it comes to your website, social media, and email, to see if you’re being successful on each or if you need some tweaks.

I’ll go through the top stats here, but we have way more on measurement and benchmarks on the Expand section under Entrepreneurs in the menu above.

1. Website Stats

Is your website successful? What makes a good vs. poor website?  What stats should you monitor vs. ignore? 

Don’t worry, I’ve got you friend! 

There are so many things you could watch for your website, and as a professional marketer, I keep an eye on dozens of them on a weekly basis.  But I don’t recommend those for everyone.  As usual, I recommend you focus on the most important pieces.  

The most important website stats for you to keep an eye on are: 

1. Performance stats – go to Googles Page Insights and input your website. You will see your scores for the top 6 metrics and whether you’re in the good, medium, or bad zone for each. 

2. Traffic – you’re going to want to see what your traffic is per channel. Go into Google Analytics (takes a little time to set up but it easy and powerful). You’ll be able to see how much traffic you’re getting and from where, over time.

3. Bounce Rate –  Bounce rate is the % of people who land on your website and leave without clicking on any other pages of your site. Ideally this is a very low number, but can vary by industry. Average bounce rates are between 20-70%, with the lower the better.

4. Exit Links & Broken Links – Exit links are the pages that your audience leave your website from. Sometimes it’s the page they landed on, in other cases they browsed around for a while and left on that page. What you want to watch out for are broken links, aka 404 links, and fix them ASAP.

2. Email Stats

When you’re figuring out what tools you need to launch an online business, you’re going to want to make sure your email stats are on point, as these users are most likely to convert to paying customers.

There are 4 email stats you should keep an eye on: 

1. Open rate – this is the percentage of people who open your email. You should be looking for over 20%.  That might seem low, but consider how many emails you get in a day! Using compelling subject lines is the best way to increase this stat. 
2. Click rate – this is the percentage of people who actually click your email. It should be at least 2.0%.  Including interesting/enticing the links can help increase click rates.
3. Unsubscribe rate – this is the percentage of people who unsubscribe. Aim to keep this below 0.5%, to show that readers care about your content. 
4. Sent stats – you’re going to want to ensure you’re sending a consistent number of emails per month, and that the number of people on your list is steadily growing over time. 
   

3. Social Media Stats

So much of social media is vanity metrics – metrics that look good, but don’t actually equate to any dollars in your pocket.   

As they say, “likes can’t pay the bills”! 

If you’re growing your business, you can look at these stats – just know they matter far less than website and email stats. 

1. Follower growth per channel – this shows you’re reaching more people, though it’s not guaranteed they’re your potential customers. 
2. Engagement rate – the percentage of people who like, comment, share, etc. your posts.  
3. Conversion rate – this is the # of readers who actually go to your website from the platform. You’ll find some social platforms are better than others (e.g., Pinterest is often way higher than Instagram). 

The Tools You Need to Launch an Online Business

The most important platforms and health checks to do for your online business and what tools you need to launch an online business. 

Remember – there are so many more platforms and health checks you can dive into. 

There are new social media tools popping up every day, new ways of sharing, and seemingly endless ways to promote your business. 

There will be time for all of them down the road. 

Do not let all the shiny things distract you from the most important things.  A website, email platform, and 1-2 social media platforms are the most important pillars of your business. 

If you’ve been doing these and are ready for exploring more, you can check out section 4 on expanding your business – but not before you have these basics mastered consistently for at least 3 months and have a product launched.  

Until then, everything else is noise. 

Now – get to work on these three key platforms, friends!