Being a web designer or web developer can be quite tricky these days. With the Internet having made its way into our everyday lives so thoroughly, the demand for high quality, interactive, memorable websites has increased. This is why, developers and designers have to constantly keep in pace with the changes taking place around them and make sure they’re always at the top of their game.
Luckily there are a number of tools available to help them along the way and we’ve complied a list of the top 20 for you to see.
1. HotJar Insights
HotJar Insights allows you unlimited access to information that lets you know how your web and mobile sites are really being used. By collecting this data as well as feedback from your visitors, you will be able to turn more of them into customers. Unlike its competitors, who offer selected services for registering data about your website’s usage, HotJar offers you insights for and unlimited number of sites and users for only $29 a month. What’s more, it gives you access to all the data you require in one unified platform. Amongst the features HotJar provides you, you’ll find heat maps that will help you understand properly what users want, are interested in and how they interact with your website according to their click, tap and scrolling behavior. You will also have access to feedback and exist polls that will help improve the performance and user experience by asking your clients what is it they expect from your website and what exactly stopped them from getting what they wanted. HotJar also offers you the option to create your very own online responsive surveys through their easy and intuitive editor. You can also see funnel and form analysis that will help you identify the page or step most visitors leave the site at most frequently, also view the fields of your forms that take too long to fill, are often left blank or make your client leave the page entirely. All this and more can be available to you as soon as you start using HotJar Insights.
2. Giverz
Giverz is the sweetest place on the Internet, it offers you countless giveaways on a regular basis and continues to keep you on your toes about what the next thing they’ll giveaway will be. The principle behind it is quite simple, the team over at Giverz scouts around the Internet to find the best deals and the services or producers most inclined to promote themselves through a giveaway, then get cracking to organizing their new campaign. Said campaign will reach you either through their website or by Facebook or Twitter and there will be a countdown before it goes down. What exactly happens then? Well, their entire mailing list receives an email letting them know that the giveaway is up for grabs and that the fastest people to click on the link they receive will be the lucky winners. Now, all that’s left for you to do is head on over to Giverz, subscribe to their mailing list and wait for all the awesome giveaways to come your way. Right now, they’re giving away an awesome pack for designers.
3. ZippyPixels
ZippyPixels is a community-based service that aims to provide the best graphic and developer resources available at reasonable prices. The team behind ZippyPixels set out to create what they had yet to find online: a platform that supplies digital resources that are both of high quality and within an acceptable price range. Browsing through ZippyPixel’s gallery you will find a variety of resources like mockups, prints and more that will help you really stand out form the crowd. ZippyPixels care deeply about their community and this is why the want to hear what you think and what your needs are and invite you to reach out to them in any way you’d like (be it email, Twitter or Facebook). As a result of this close relationship that they keep with their community, they have created the Grandé bundle in response to the needs of the many. The Grandé bundle offers 160 HD mockups that cover categories such as:
- Logos
- Books
- Flyers and advertisements
- Device
- Magazines
- Stationery and more
After all, they don’t call it Grandé for nothing.
4. ShrinkTheWeb
ShrinkTheWeb is a tool aimed at web and mobile application developers who need to take an impressive amount of screenshots daily. ShrinkTheWeb takes care to fully automatize the process of capturing, shrinking, cropping, saving, uploading and displaying screenshots. And all of this can be achieved by using an existing plugin or by writing one line of code. Suddenly, a lot of your time has been cleared up. ShrinkTheWeb offers the most dependable website screenshot platform available, and its API for developers is the most intuitive and well documented you’ll find. The quality of service from ShrinkTheWeb is beyond reproach, even if it’s a free software. This is why companies like Symantec, Technorati and Microsoft have used it in the passed. Moreover, this ingenious platform also offers its users other tools like URL to PDF Conversion, Custom Size Previews, Full-Length Previews and Private Label Service. All of these features, along with its legendary support, make ShrinkTheWeb one of the best services online.
5. Paddle
Paddle.com is an eCommerce platform that makes it super easy for digital content creators to sell their products online, like apps, games, eBooks, themes and templates. Setting up a checkout takes minutes; just name your product, give it a price, upload your file and you can literally start selling in minutes.
With Paddle’s “Overlay Checkout” you can create a truly seamless checkout experience, with customers able to pay for your products using PayPal or credit/debit cards on the same page, instead of annoying redirects.
What makes Paddle different is that they handle all of the complexities of eCommerce for you, including things like file hosting & delivery, payment processing, VAT, chargebacks and even customer support. Sellers can focus entirely on creating their products. And with the Paddle Dashboard, you even get built-in sales stats and analytics, along with an easy way to generate reports and manage customers too.
The entire service costs just 5% + $0.50 per sale with no startup or recurring fees; sellers will only ever pay that small commission per sale. If you want an easy and stress-free way to sell digital products, get started with Paddle for free today.
6. Stamplia
The Stamplia Builder editor has set out to be the easiest way to manage your email templates. With the help of this editor, all developers will be able to supply their clients with a variety of options when discussing an email template and they will be able to easily customize already purchased templates. Amongst the features that the Stamplia Builder offers you to help you manage your email templates are: drag & drop elements within your template, view changes in a real time visualization mode and access to a first rate, faster image editor. Also, the Stamplia Builder allows you to automatically export your templates to popular providers like MailChimp, CampaignMonitor and SendGrid. And the great news for developers is that if they create templates that are compatible with the Stamplia Builder, they will be promoted among the clients of these email providers. All you have to do in order to make your template compatible with the Stamplia Builder is follow the steps in this guide (https://builder.stamplia.com/doc/) and check the box ‘My template is compatible with the editor’ in the upload tab
7. DealFuel
DealFuel is the place to go in order to find the best we developer and web designer deals. This site has them all, from WordPress themes, software and website tools, to top rate designer resources like web fonts, icons, buttons and more. Whenever you’re looking to add something extra to your website, go over to DealFuel and browse their selection, you’re sure to find first rate solutions as well as amazing bundles that contain a collection of useful items. What’s more, designers and developers, even authors of eBooks and tutorials, are free to collaborate with DealFuel and have their products sold through this platform. DealFuel always takes care that its community has access to the best deals and towards that end manages to negotiate the best discounts you could think of. So don’t hesitate to head on over to DealFuel every time you’re looking for the best resources available for both your developer and designer needs.
8. RumbleTalk
RumbleTalk is the best service for adding and maintaining active chat rooms within your website. By adding an active chat room in your page, you will be able to enhance your visitors’ experience and make sure that they spend more time on your website. RumbleTalk offers you the most customizable social chat available with features like talk from your smart phone or tablet, customize the visual aspect of your chat room with CSS, group chat with your audience in real time, archive and search through old conversations, ban users by IP, range of IPs or user name as well as integrate RumbleTalk within your page by either embedding it or using it as a floating toolbar. Amongst other features you will have are: the ability for your chatters to add videos and images straight into the chat room, create your own chat theme, allow private chat among website visitors and more. RumbleTalk doesn’t involve any lengthy, complicated install process, it’s all as simple as one copy & paste, so what are you waiting for?
9. BrowseEmAll
Having one platform to help you deal with all compatibility issues that may appear in your website is a dream come true for most developers and designers. BrowseEmAll is the embodiment of this dream. This invaluable tool helps you track down all compatibility issues you might have. BrowseEmAll is a lightning fast desktop application that will both help you find and fix the cross-browser compatibility issues in your code. In addition to the diverse array of browsers it provides for you, it also offers mobile simulators that will be instrumental in your work to optimize your projects for mobile devices. What’s more, BrowseEmAll offers you the option to test both HTML and raw files, so you’ll be able to check your compatibility without having to upload your files to a server beforehand. Forget about having to test the way your websites look on a multitude of browsers manually, BrowseEmAll is the perfect tool to help you automatize the process and reap better and more efficient results in the end.
10. BrowserShots
BrowserShots is an online service that enables you to see your website on a variety of browsers that are used by visitors across the Internet. All you have to do is enter the URL to your website and choose from the list of browsers offered the one you want to view it in, then click Submit.
11. Luvly
Luvly is a premium digital download marketplace where you can find anything you need from graphics, to vectors and designs. Because it’s always important that your websites are visually pleasing for visitors, Luvly is the perfect place to turn to for all your graphic needs. This digital marketplace has everything you might need from icons, Facebook banners, logos, patterns or mockups. They also have a dedicated section for WordPress and Blogger themes that include some of the most elegant and highly functional themes available. You can be assured that all the resources available for purchase on Luvly has undergone a thorough quality assurance check that aims to only provide you with the best resources available. As a designer, you are free to submit your work to Luvly and start selling as soon as your item is approved. Also, Luvly is dedicated to growing alongside its community, so you’re always sure to find that they organize workshops, classes and tutorials to help you perfect your skills and acquire new ones.
12. CloudCart
CloudCart is the perfect service to help you on your way to creating your very own online store. By using CloudCart you can be assured that no aspect of what you need in order to create a successful online store will be overlooked. First off, CloudCart will take care to provide you with elegantly designed themes, a website that is completely optimized for both desktop and mobile devices, secure hosting and CDN, an integrated live chat and more. In addition to this, CloudCart will help you promote your store, get social and start selling your items right away. Through their integrated marketing modules, they guarantee that your shop will get the exposure it needs in order to become a success. You will also have an Advanced Reporting feature at your disposal that will help you have a complete overview of your online store at any time. CloudCart will also offer you secure payments and an advanced built-in checkout that will make your customer’s checkout experience simple and seamless.
13. Opinion Stage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7xKNlWbk0s
There are a lot of things you can do with an online poll, you can engage your visitors by asking them to cast their opinion on one matter or another or you can get feedback about the changes to your website you have already made or plan to make in the future. Opinion Stage is the best online service to provide you with first rate polls for your website. With Opinion Stage you can register for their service and have a poll up and running in less than 5 minutes. What’s more, the polls are completely customizable so you can define the way they look and behave within your website. You will have a complete overview of what is happening with your polls in Opinion Stage’s easy to use dashboard. Within this dashboard you will be able to filter the results of your polls through a diverse number of criteria, display them in nice charts and graphs and more.
14. WPEka Club
WPEka Club is a repository of over 50 premium WordPress themes, plugins and tutorials and their numbers are steadily rising. Why waste your time and stress yourself out when setting out to create a website for your business by having to scour the Internet for the best resources? WPEka Club offers you all the resources you need in order to create the best possible website and give your visitors a memorable experience. WPEka started off as a blog where the experienced team behind WPEka shared their lengthy WordPress experience. Then, WPEka Club was launched and it was meant to be the place that brings together all the WordPress plugins and themes the team designed. By becoming a client of WPEka Club, you will have access to one of the best support systems available online and all of this starting off at a monthly plan of just $27 as well as to 4 new releases every month.
15. jQAPI
jQuery is one of the most popular libraries for JavaScript used by web developers nowadays. However, its documentation can sometimes prove to be hard to leaf through. This is how jQAPI has come to be, it is an alternative jQuery Documentation Browser that will make finding all the information you need on jQuery easier and faster. The best part about it is that you have the option to browse it both online and offline by downloading it and taking it everywhere with you.
16. New Relic
New Relic is a software that allows you to have instant code-level visibility. With the information it provides you will be able to create faster software, better products and increase the level of user experience. With New Relic you can now have a better sense of how your software is behaving in live production and make decisions concerning its real time performance faster.
17. Inspiration Hut Download Archive
The Inspiration Hut Download Archive is a gallery that hosts some of the best web developer and web designer resources available on the Internet. The team over at Inspiration Hut search over the digital globe in order to find the best and most useful creative downloads for their community. Most of their collection is free, so be sure to credit when required. Equally, they encourage talented individuals, be they web developers or web designers, to contribute to their repository and add the resources they’ve created either free or premium, therefore increasing the total value of the archive. Amongst the categories you’ll find on the Inspiration Hut Download Archive there are actions, backgrounds, blurgrounds, brushes, fonts, free PSDs, icons, mockups, themes, UI kits and more. Head on over to the Inspiration Hut Download Archive and enjoy all the beautiful free and premium creative downloads that they supply. And don’t forget to check out their Design Deals section to find some of the best deals available.
18. OOcharts
OOCharts is the simple API designed to allow you to build your very own Google Analytics dashboard and help you make charts of your website’s activity. The tool is completely free and will allow you to queue your requests that will normally exceed the limits of Google Analytics and make sure you get your information fast and reliably. Start using it by signing in with your Google Analytics account and making an API key for your website.
19. Fiddler
Fiddler is a Web Debugging Proxy that is guaranteed to make your life a lot easier. It runs on any system, platform and browser and it will help you: capture web traffic logs, edit script rules for Fiddler, view traffic and make modification for .NET applications.
20. Web Starter Kit
Web Starter Kit is the tool you need when getting started with creating multi-device websites. Using this kit you will be able to use a visual design system for documenting your site’s components, live browser reloading, cross-device synchronization and more.