This is often the area that is tricky navigate without the right expertise . Right from the day you start your business, you need a few basics and these only grow as your business matures.
Recommendations are from small businesses in New Zealand
Technology Expertise & Suppliers
Shopify - E Commerce Platform
Most business owners have heard of Shopify, one of the biggest e-commence platforms globally. Hear from a couple of users who share why they recommend it in the featured section below.
Jerrett Digital - Website Design
Jerrett Digital creates colourful, creative, and converting websites for mindful businesses. Run by Adrianne she passionately believes businesses can be profitable, environmentally friendly AND help people. Her goals is to help businesses stand out from the crowd online through thoughtful, conscious branding and a beautiful, user-experience-focused website strategy.
"Adrianne designed and created our website and really captured the essence of who we are and what we are about. We were thrilled with the outcome and would not hesitate to highly recommend her to anyone wanting a professional, well thought out website. Her attention to detail was fantastic and her wording was perfect"
Managed Hosting Partners provide a system to host your websites giving you in-house, specialist knowledge. They take care of the end-to-end hosting lifecycle with proactive concierge support.
"I can't speak highly enough about Matthew from Managed Hosting Partners. He's become my go-to person for anything IT-related. Matthew is incredibly helpful, and no task is too small for him to tackle with enthusiasm. Whether it's handling website issues, coding challenges, or optimizing our presence on Google, Matthew does it all, and always at reasonable prices."
Recommended by Aglow- NZ Made Superfood Supplements
Omnisend - Email Marketing
At Omnisend their mission is to help ecommerce businesses make their marketing relevant by sending personalised messages to the right person, at the right time, using the right channel. They integrate with the big ecommerce platforms and provide email, automation, forms, landing pages, pop ups, reviews and more.
"I started using Omnisend with their free option to test the waters and really loved the templates and functionality. It integrated into my Shopify store and was easy to use. I quickly signed up to paid version as it made me actually WANT to send emails. One of the best parts about Omnisend is the online help. The team are always available and so helpful. They solve your problem individually and really look into your issue rather than a generic response. I whole heartedly recommend them."
Capcutis a free all-in-one video editor for everyone to create anything anywhere. It has flexible editing, magical AI tools, team collaboration, and stock assets. Videos can be uploaded and downloaded and then selected on any social media platform to be used as content.
"I recommend using CapCut to edit reels. Is a great app to adjust the time and lighting but also offers a variety of templates for Instagram and TikTok."
Recommended by The Papery Studio - Planners and Diaries that work for you.
Uniqu - Phone Stands for Content Creation
Uniquprovide a range of equipment to assist with videos, photos and content creation. This particular recommendation is for the FlexiStand®
The FlexiStand® comes with dual lights for a professional-grade lighting solution. Whether you're streaming, recording, or simply using your device, the Flexistand provides the perfect lighting to enhance content. Its adjustable height and flexible arm ensure that your device is always in the right position.
"I bought the FlexiStand from Uniqu. It’s a great heavy duty stand with 360 degree rotation. It has light as well. I have tried others and this one is definitely a good investment."
Recommended by The Papery Studio - Planners and Diaries that work for you.
Shopify - Making Commerce Better for Everyone
Shopify is a massive global brand and has a huge market share so you may wonder if it's right for you as a small business owner. Shopify themselves say they are "supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs, the world’s biggest brands, and everyone in between". Hear from two users:
"I find Shopify easy to use (user friendly), adding or removing products is simple, you can export customers for email subscriptions. Shopify offers different discount options to create, pop up alerts. The con is the cost unfortunately."
"I've worked with a few different websites in my different roles and can honestly say that if you have an ecommerce business, then Shopify would be my first choice. Everything is done for you so it's easy to use. There are so many apps that can be integrated to get all the functionality you need. I also use the POS functionality with a Wisepad 3 terminal that I bought from Shopify when I go to markets. This all comes at a price but considering it integrates with everything seamlessly the time saving and automation is worth it"