Online Resources, Tools, and Software
I personally use and recommend all of these online tools!
Project Management and Collaboration
37 Signals – Basecamp – Managing projects can be a tedious tasks. Collaborating with others on those projects can get confusing. Basecamp is an online project management and collaboration tool that keep everything in one place. Email, as reliant as we are, isn’t as effective when dealing with several contacts on a project. Basecamp will keep all of the information: messages, files, even to-do lists all in one place. Multiple users can connect and collaborate in an effective manner to accomplish a shared goal. Basecamp is super affordable with plans for several users.
Contact Relationship Management (CRM)
37 Signals – Highrise – Managing relationships with your customers can be intimidating, especially when you have several to deal with. Highrise will help you keep all of your contacts’ information in one place. You can track leads, referrals, and even your existing contacts and customers. I use it as a tool to document my dealings and progress, that way I can see where I’ve been and how to plan and process. Highrise is an affordable contact relationship management (CRM) system that works well with other 37 Signals products, like Basecamp.
Online File Backup
CrashPlan – Almost everyone has a backup or external hard drive. Once in a blue moon, based on your discipline level, you will backup all of your data to that hard drive in case your computer crashes. This is an excellent practice, but what it lacks is automation. CrashPlan is both an offline and online backup tool that keeps all of your data safe. CrashPlan backs up your files and data over your internet connection using an encryption method (so no one can look at it) continually as you work. If your computer crashes, you will have both your onsite and offsite backup. If house burns down, your data will still be safe since it is backed up on CrashPlan’s servers.
SEO Software and Tools
SEOmoz – If you don’t know already, I own and operate an SEO company in Las Vegas which specializes in ranking websites naturally in major search engines for keywords related to their business. SEOmoz is a set of SEO tools that tracks your or your client’s website in it’s rankings, keywords, crawl errors, and relative position to your online competition in Google, Yahoo, and Bing. If you are an SEO consultant, you can add the different sites you optimize to track those metrics for your clients, like I do. SEOmoz also has their own SEO blog and Q&A section to help others in the community achieve success with their websites.
Email Campaign Management
Mailchimp Email Marketing – Do you need to keep in touch with your customers and website visitors? MailChimp is perfect for keeping consistent contact with your list of contacts. You can embed forms on your website to have new users sign up for your newsletter or marketing list. MailChimp is very user friendly where they make it easy to set up a template and keep it consistent when you deliver new content to your subscribers. MailChimp also makes sure that your list and emails are compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.
E-Commerce Web Platform
Shopify – Selling products and services on a website seems like a difficult process to get off the ground. If you are looking for an out of the box E-Commerce platform, then Shopify is right for you. Customization is one of the many features available to you for your design, themes, payment gateways (like PayPal and Google Checkout) and products. Shopify has several payment tiers available based on the number of Product SKUs and other features you require. The Shopify service also offers SSL checkout, discount codes, and real time stats for your online store.
Web Hosting
DreamHost – Finding an affordable web hosting solution is nowadays an easy feat, but finding both a reliable and affordable web host is a different story. IT Rogers is hosted with DreamHost. We’ve never had any downtime over the last 2 years of our hosting agreement with them. DreamHost has month to month or yearly plans for dedicated or shared hosting services. All shared hosting accounts are offered both unlimited disk space and bandwidth for ultimate peace of mind. If you are a webmaster, DreamHost will allow you to set up your clients’ hosting under your account, and will allow you to charge whatever you want for it! I haven’t seen that offered from any hosting company!
File Syncing
Dropbox – Do you carry around USB thumb disk? I used to back when I was in high school. Once I lost it and wasn’t able to print out my report that was due that day. So much for preparation right? If I had known about it back then, Dropbox would have saved me from getting an F on my late paper. Dropbox is a file synchronization utility that keeps your files up-to-date with their most recent versions across all of your connected computers and devices. It also syncs with the “cloud”, so it is also acts as a file backup service. Not that I have needed it, but Dropbox saves multiple versions of files in case you make a mistake on one of your documents. Dropbox has both free and paid accounts based on the space that you require.