Website trends come and go, but utility and ease of use are always in vogue. To ensure that your website is living up to its potential, you’ll need to incorporate a number of efficiency tools.
There are plenty to choose from! Here are the top twenty tools that you should use for your website.
Mailchimp
To do more than just launch your site, you want to have tools in place that will help it to grow. Mailchimp is one of these tools.
An enduringly popular tool which has grown and adapted over the years, Mailchimp provides a one-stop shop for marketing platforms. For everything from creative, effective landing pages to following up on your customer’s purchases with emails, Mailchimp provides a host of useful services. Well-known for maintaining affordability, they have different pricing to meet different needs and budgets.
Sumo
If you’re looking to build your email lists out and keep in close contact with your customers, Sumo is the “#1 free email capture tool” that will help you to do this.
We all like free software and tools, so there’s no reason not to give this tool a try on your site.
Crazy Egg
Website optimization is important and continues to grow in importance as you find more and more competition for your site. Crazy Egg breaks down your site tracking information with graphics like a heat map to register the highest clicks per area in your site, allowing you to see what areas are getting more use and activity, and which might need some tweaking.
Another heat-map type of graphic tracks scroll depth, which helps you to find the perfect spot to include your CTA.
There are a host of other helpful tools included in Crazy Egg, as well.
Chatbot Builder from Hubspot
Chatbots are an important source of not only helping customers but also to improve branding experience, especially when the AI is fully developed and the bot itself is designed with your site in mind.
Hubspot has provided a free builder for site owners to cobble together their ideal bot, customized to their needs.
NameQL
If you want to launch a site that is easy to find and easy to remember, your domain name is a significant factor in this. NameQL is a tool that is designed to help you to save time in this endeavor.
It runs through tens of thousands of possibilities for the best domain name for your site, and provides you with a list of the top options which are available for purchase.
Rank Math
This is a very popular WordPress plugin tool which is touted as the most powerful WP plugin available.
It’s easy to use, but delivers complex results and helps your site to perform even better in search rankings.
HelpJet
Concerned about keeping your customer service up to snuff, but also about whether you have the manpower to back it up?
Give HelpJet a try. It’s a knowledge based software that is designed to give your customer service a leg up by using automated responses to help visitors to your site find answers to their questions.
PiktoChart
If you’re not an advanced graphic designer, you may struggle with creating charts, infographics, and the like for your site. Or you might feel that you need to hire these tasks out.
But before you spend the money on a graphic designer, consider using PiktoChart for simple graphics. It has easy tutorials to walk you through the process, plenty of free graphics and templates, and a simple drag and drop mechanism.
PageSpeed Insights
Another analytic tool, this Google-run insight tool tracks your page loading times and offers suggestions and tips to optimize that timing.
Privacy Policy Generator
A mundane aspect that might be almost overlooked as you create your site, privacy policies actually are an important way of keeping your site up to date legally, which protects both you and your visitors.
This free Privacy Policy Generator can be customized to your needs and used throughout your site.
Google Analytics
Regardless of the type of site you run, Google Analytics is the granddaddy of all insight tools.
If you want to track your traffic, audience demographics, how long they spend on individual pages on your site, conversions, unique visitors, engagement, or practically anything else, Google Analytics proves itself as a worthwhile tool again and again.
SE Rankings
We can always use more help with our search engine rankings, which is where tools like SE Rankings come in. To track your rank stats, monitor the competition, check up on backlinks, and more, this is a great option to optimize your optimization, so to speak.
Ahrefs
Used by big companies all over the world, Ahrefs is a one-stop-shop for SEO, including backlinks and keyword search to ensure that your content is fully optimized.
With competitive pricing for different budgets, this may be your ideal SEO tool.
Regardless of what platform you choose to build your site on, WordPress has some awesome tools to offer in building, launching, and maintaining your site. If nothing else, due to the highly customizable nature of WP’s platform and the extensive range of helpful plugins, consider using WP for your site-adjacent blog.
SEO PowerSuite Toolkit
Search engine optimized content, or SEO content, is a popular subject for web owners and maintainers today because it is constantly evolving.
To get the most bang for your buck, SEO-wise, the host of tools that are found in this suite will make sure your SEO is covered from front to back. Rank checking, keyword research, content auditing — it does it all. You can try it out with a free version first.
Awario
To run a brand successfully, you need to be aware of what your customers and visitors are saying about you. But it’s hard to keep on top of that everywhere; there just isn’t enough time in the day!
That’s where Awario comes in. It tracks mentions of names and keywords associated with your site, giving you the opportunity to respond, show appreciation for positive feedback, and acknowledge mentions in any language across the web.
Grammarly
Grammarly has made a name for itself by being indispensable for all written content creation on the web and off.
To ensure that your site has meaningful, impactful content, run your articles and headlines through Grammarly before publication. You can also run it as a free Chrome extension to check content as you write it.
HootSuite
Managing a growing website often also means managing social media platforms to promote the site and your brand. If it seems to be getting a little too complicated, turn to HootSuite to calm things down.
This tool works with tons of platforms, from FaceBook to WordPress. It allows you to schedule posts on multiple platforms, as well as providing insights and suggestions for new content.
Stripe
Running an ecommerce site has its own set of difficulties and challenges. One of the main issues is often managing transactions in a way that is safe and effective for both you and your customer.
Stripe offers a simple embedded checkout, and can process payments for all major debit and credit cards. The tool is built around the idea of making payment processing easier for you as the site manager.
Website Grader
Another free tool that is designed to keep your site as effective as it can possibly be, Hubspot’s Website Grader grades your overall site performance against different factors and competitors, pointing out potential weak spots so you can act to correct them. It’s a great tool for helping your site to continue to develop, well after the initial launch.
Author Bio
When not working on website projects, Cynthia Adam loves to write about web design, web development and how to market them. Her writing aims to ease the process of web design and web development for other website owners.