Web Design in Halifax Nova Scotia

6 web applications that are essential for our business

Posted On January 17th, 2010 Author Kyle Racki Filed Under Business,

For many web professionals, there are as many web-based applications and resources in one’s toolkit as there is traditional desktop software. I thought it might be helpful to share some of my favorite web-based resources with you. Keep in mind I’m not saying that any of these are definitely the best that can be used, they are simply my favorite. It is subjective to say any app is the best, so feel free to share your preferred applications in the comments below.

Project Management

Basecamp - For project management, Basecamp has little competition. It has defined the standard that many web apps are now measured by, and the creators have even built an open-source framework around the technology used to make Basecamp. We just love the simplicity, the great messaging/commenting system, to-do’s, milestones, and file-library functionality. Keeps us and our clients on our toes.

Email Marketing

Campaign Monitor - I have never used a better email marketing tool than CM. The templating system easily allows us to create editable newsletter templates for our clients, and even let’s them manage their subscribers, and view reports, seeing who opened and where they clicked on the campaigns. There is also a great feature which allows you to test your campaigns in a variety of email clients, and lets you know if it will get caught in spam filters.

Site Metrics

Google Analytics - The monster that is Google knows how to kill it’s competition, and one of the best examples is Google Analytics. Easy to install, and free to use, GA gives you advanced metrics, allowing you to see how many visitors are coming to your site, which are new or returning, where they are coming from, keywords they are using in search engines, where geographically they are located, which pages they click on, for how long…. the list goes on. This info is absolutely critical in calculating ROI for our clients.

Invoicing

Less Accounting - Less Accounting’s name says it all, you get to do less of what you hate doing. Great for freelancers (although adminittedly a bit slow and buggy as of late, which I am assured the developer’s are correcting), Less Accounting is a little lite for professional accountants. However if you want a tool to manage invoices and receivables, LA has a new and improved interface that makes it nice and easy.

Sitemaps

SlickPlan - A tool I learned of only recently, SlickPlan is awesome! It takes the pain and tedium out of creating sitemaps and flowcharts, allowing me to concentrate more on the actual structure of the websites or applications I’m planning. Best of all, it’s free (for now) and paid for by advertising. I use it for every new project.

Content Management System

ExpressionEngine - What can I say, we have completely adopted EE as our CMS of choice over the past couple of years. ExpressionEngine is the most well rounded CMS I’ve gotten my grubby hands on, being flexible, clean and modular, having a great support team, a fair price, virtually error-free code, a loyal third-party community of add-on developers, I just love EE. Our clients tend to love it too, as it hides a lot of the options some other CMS’s are plagued with (cough, Joomla!), and keeps the CRUD functionality straight-forward for novice users. For more advanced custom applications, we ues EE’s nerdier sister, CodeIgniter.

Honorable Mentions

While the aforementioned apps are my favorite and most critical for our business, the following applications deserve a mention. And yes, I know, not all of the following are technically speaking, ‘web applications’ and are more like ‘websites’, but enough semantics, on with the names:

Google Adwords Keywords Tool

- Before beginning a PPC campaign, or even organic SEO strategy for a client, we first check the keywords to see what the search volume is, how competitive they are to rank for, and get some ideas on alternative keywords for more targeted, long-tail approaches. There are tons of SEO tools out there, but the Adwords tool is great to get a high-level snap shot before you begin.

Better Lorum Ipsum

As a web designer, we use a lot of lorum ipsum, the classic ‘Greek Text’ substitute for content, when you need to style copy that doesn’t exist yet. Better Lorum Ipsum lives up to it’s name, allowing you to choose short sentences, long sentences, bulleted lists etc. It’s surprising how often I refer to this site when designing.

Good Password

- Another simple yet surprisingly useful tool. I often have to create passwords for clients that are secure, and Good Password quickly and automatically generates a secure password in just a few seconds. Better than mashing the keyboard.

Kuler

- A great design tool, Kuler is an Adobe product (and possibly the best example of link-bait ever!) which allows you to experiement with different colour combination. It beats simply messing around in Photoshop for two main reasons; a) it auto generates complimentary, triad, monochrome and analogous combinations, helping you instantly find colour combos that ‘work’. b) Kuler shows user-created favorites, and and is great inspiration when working on a brand project where you need a new palette and all you can think of is orange and blue.

IStock Photo

- Okay, I know, Istock is just a cheap stock photo site. But more correctly, it’s the leading stock photo site, and it’s quality can at times rival the expensive rights managed stuff. It’s also a great resource when you’re just looking for examples in a mock-up or mood-board to show the general theme or style you’re going for, even if you don’t use the photo in the end. More than photos, It’s also rich with icons, illustrations and textures that can be great to just get the creative juices flowing at the beginning of a design project.

Media Temple/Plesk/PHPMyAdmin

- Finally, the trinity of server management, Media Temple is our host of choice for the flexibility it offers, Plesk is the standard interface for managing domains, email accounts, and server files, and PHP MyAdmin is for managing databases on said server. The latter two are pretty standard on most hosts, but are nonetheless, critical for running a web business.

Hope this helped give a little insight into how we work and the tools we use. What are your favorite (and essential) web applications critical to running your business?