Web coding can be quite tricky at times, figuring out how you want your website to look and where your visitors are coming from. Here’s a compilation of the most helpful free tools on the web to make your website better.
Google Analytics
Google analytics is a web application which gives you an enormous amount of insight about your traffic and visitors, from what browsers they’re using to how long they stay on your site. It tracks data over time and lets you see how your web traffic has changed. It shows you where your visitors are coming from and more. I highly recommend using Google Analytics.
YSlow
YSlow, by Yahoo!, is a Firefox plugin which analyzes your websites speed and gives you tips on how you can improve its speed. It’s a nifty little tool and I recommend it especially if you’re aiming for speed.
Websecurify
Websecurify is a cross-platform desktop application which can rip through your web application, checking for security flaws and potential exploits. I strongly recommend using this if your web application is complex or was developed by multiple people.
IETester
IETester is another very useful desktop application for Windows. It allows you to view websites in Internet Explorer 5.5, 6, 7 and 8. This is a really handy tool when making sure your site is cross-browser.
Color Scheme Designer
Color Scheme Designer is a web application to pick out color schemes. It features several different types of color schemes and allows you to export your themes so you can show them to friends. In addition to all this you can see how the colors look to color blind people. I recommend this tool for web designers that need some color inspiration.
Mockingbird
Mockingbird is a web application that lets you create rough drafts of websites without any code involved and share it with other people. It’s a very neat application, ideal for communicating your website thoughts to others.
Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools is another web application by Google which allows you to directly interact with the Google search engine. For instance, you can submit site maps for the Google bot to index and you can see if the Google bot picks up any 404s or other errors while crawling your site. In addition to all this is lets you see your site’s keywords and see what people are searching that brings up your site. I recommend this more for bigger sites because it’s not very accurate for smaller sites.
I hope you discovered some new tools from this article!
5 Comments
thanks for sharing the IE tester, I have been looking for a better one to use
I don’t know where I would be without Google Analytics. Have been using it on an almost religious basis for the last 3 years and have discovered interesting traffic trends. For my current site I worked out that participating in traffic exchange sites was one of the major causes for the bounce rate climbing, and I have quite a few returning visitors.
Do you think there is a tool out there that will look at any given web page and tell you whether the given pages’ colour scheme isn’t suitable? Feel free to get back to me by visiting my sites’ “Contact Us” page or just email me directly.
Preferably, when you gain knowledge, are you able to mind updating your website with an increase of information? It is very ideal for me.
MockupTiger is a good html5 wireframe, you can host it on your domain, desktop, switch between hand drawn look, change fonts and prototype dashboard mockups with data
In case you want link to mockuptiger here it is mockups
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