A practical eBook for the owner who knows they need a few good tools to run their marketing, but is tired of being sold a different one every week. The job here is to give you a short, sensible toolkit and the rules for keeping it that way.
Members ebook·7 chapters· 35 minute read
Chapter 6
Analytics, Payments and Admin Tools
The unglamorous parts of the toolkit that keep the lights on and tell you whether the rest is working.
Analytics, payments and admin tools are the part of the toolkit you barely think about until something goes wrong. Then they're the only thing you think about. A payment tool that holds money for a week, an analytics tool that shows the wrong number on a Monday morning, an admin tool that loses a customer record - any of these can do more damage than a botched social post.
The good news is that this part of the toolkit doesn't change very often. Once you have a sensible setup, it tends to last for years with small tweaks. The bad news is that getting the setup right takes a bit more thought than the parts of the toolkit that are visible to customers.
This chapter walks through the small set of analytics, payment and admin tools that work for almost any small business, and the questions to ask before changing any of them.
The full chapter sets out the analytics you actually need, the payment tools to default to and the admin tools that quietly save hours every month, with a one-page setup checklist.
Analytics - what you actually need
For most small businesses, three numbers are enough to run on. How many people came to the site this week. How many of them got in touch, booked or bought. How many of those turned into actual paying customers. That's it. Everything else is interesting but optional.
Google Analytics 4 covers the first two. Your booking, payment or order tool covers the third. There's no need for a third analytics product at this scale. If you're considering one, the question to ask is which decision the new product would help you make differently. If you can't answer, you don't need it yet.
For a more useful view of what's actually happening on the site, a tool like Microsoft Clarity (free) lets you watch anonymous recordings of real visits and see where people get stuck. An hour of watching real visits teaches you more than a month of staring at numbers.
Payment tools
For most small businesses, the right payment tools are Stripe for online payments and a card reader from Stripe, SumUp, Square or your bank for in-person payments. Stripe is the modern default for online - it integrates with almost everything, the fees are clear and customers are familiar with the checkout. SumUp and Square are reliable for in-person, with low or no monthly fee and a small per-transaction charge.
PayPal is fine as a second option if your customers ask for it, but it's rarely the right primary choice for a small business website now - the fees are higher and the checkout is clunkier than it used to be. For invoicing rather than card payments, GoCardless for direct debit and Wise for international transfers cover most cases at sensible fees.
Default payment setup for a small business
Stripe for online card payments and subscriptions
SumUp, Square or Stripe Reader for in-person payments
GoCardless for recurring direct debit on services
Wise for international payments where it saves real money
PayPal only if customers actively ask for it
Admin tools that earn their keep
Three categories matter for most small businesses. Accounting - Xero, QuickBooks or FreeAgent depending on country and accountant preference. Cloud storage - Google Drive, Dropbox or Microsoft OneDrive, picked once and used everywhere. Document signing - DocuSign, Dropbox Sign or PandaDoc for the handful of contracts that need a real signature each year.
Don't try to do all of these well at once. Pick the accounting tool first, because it's the foundation of everything else. The cloud storage choice usually follows from your email provider - if you're on Google Workspace, use Drive; if you're on Microsoft 365, use OneDrive. The signing tool only needs to be in place when there's a real contract to sign.
Connecting the boring tools to the visible ones
The connections that matter here are quiet. Stripe should write to your accounting tool automatically so you're not retyping figures. The booking tool should send the receipt by email and store it in the cloud. The customer's record on the customer list should know whether they've paid. Each connection saves a few minutes per transaction. Across a year, that adds up to days.
If you can't get the connections to work, that's often a sign that one of the tools is wrong for your size. Don't fight a tool for months. Switch to one that connects easily.
Security basics nobody enjoys
Two basics every owner should have in place. Two-step sign-in on every important account - email, payment, customer list, website. A password manager so the passwords are long and different on every site. Bitwarden and 1Password are both fine. The cost of either is tiny next to the cost of one account being broken into.
What to do this week
Open Microsoft Clarity (it's free) and install it on your website. Wait a few days, then watch ten anonymous recordings of real visits. Note every place a real customer got confused or gave up. Each one is a small fix that costs nothing and earns money quietly for years.
Recurring principle for this chapter: review results and improve the system. For more on what to do with the numbers once you have them, look back at Website Analytics. For the next step on keeping the toolkit small as the business grows, look ahead to the final chapter.
The rest of this chapter walks through the practical steps, the templates and the checklists you need to put it into action. It includes worked examples, copy frameworks and the small decisions that make the difference between a plan that sits in a drive and one that gets used.
Inside you'll find a step-by-step playbook, a downloadable template, a checklist you can run this week and a short list of common mistakes to avoid before you start.
The full action plan, broken into weekly steps.
Ready-to-use scripts, templates and checklists.
Worked examples for different sized businesses.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them.
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