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?

Is Squarespace the right website builder for your business?

Image of Squarespace website at night

When you are starting out to build your business, most people will either hire someone to build a website or build it themselves due to fact that they do not have enough money to hire a designer.  There are several website builders such as Wix, Webydo, Weebly, Light CMS and Wordpress.  We tried Squarespace’s trail period as a website builder for our startup business.

Squarespace was launched in 2004 by Anthony Casalena.  It is a content management system that was originally composed of a website builder, blogging platform and hosting site.  Since then it has evolved to include ecommerce with Stripe, Google Business apps (optional) and it contains several analytic reports that is very handy for a startup business.

We decided to do it ourselves as we didn't have the money to hire a designer.  Our designated designer found the drag and drop feature very responsive after a while.  The use of blocks and images made the layout of the pages easy to manage and manipulate.  The ability to add our social media channels also gave us more scope to broaden the design of the website.  What we liked most about the system is the ability to see what it looks like on desktop, tablets and smartphones in real time due to the responsive screen feature. 

After a week in to the trial period, we decided to use Squarespace.  Although Wix and WordPress are free to use to design a website.  When we reviewed some of the products out there, we found Squarespace had more features and value for our business.  We decided to take advantage of the service and paid the annual fee. 

We would recommend any business that is starting out and looking for a platform to build their website to use Squarespace.  What website platform builder did you use when you started your business?  Would you use Squarespace after this recommendation?