Having free tools to enhance your website can greatly assist you in projecting a more professional business presence. There are many free tools available to help you in enhancing your website but there are some tools that just stick out from the competition. The companies discussed below have designed some free and useful tools to contribute to your website:
1. ShareThis
If you are looking for a way for your website users to easily be able to share your content and pages, adding a ShareThis button to your website can make this happen with just one mouse click.
2. DISQUS Comments
Allowing users to provide feedback and comments pertaining to your website is essential. Adding DISQUS comments to your website allows your users to post comments easily as a guest or with their Facebook or Twitter accounts.
3. Validate!
It’s important to make sure your HTML does not have any issues and is working properly. Validate! will pinpoint any issues you may have and assist in repairing your HTML. You can also validate CSS with this tool and ensure your RSS feed is working properly.
4. PHPBB Forums
Adding a forum to your website where your visitors can engage in conversations is a must. PHPBB Forums allow you to add free, high quality, personalized forums to your site.
5. Lightbox 2
If you are in need of a JavaScript powered image gallery, Lightbox 2 provides a free service to add smooth and visually enhancing galleries to your website.
6. Wufoo
Form building to create registration forms, surveys, order forms and the like is important to effective gathering of information from your users and customers. Wufoo offers a free service to build online HTML forms for your website.
7. BoldChat
If you are looking for a way to chat live with your visitors, BoldChat offers a free service where you can do just that.
8. Scrub The Web – A key feature every website should have is a search tool. Scrub The Web offers a free and professional looking search engine option you can add to your site.
9. MicroTicker
With some websites, having a micro-ticker to display important and updated information is pertinent. With MicroTicker you can create a customized ticker for your site and edit it to display the information you need.
10. USA Today
If your website relates to key issues in the news, you can sign up with USA Today’s Headlines Program and bring headlines straight to your site.
11. XE
offers a currency converter you can easily add to your website, which can be a necessary tool if you deal in international currencies in the course of doing business.
12. SitePal
Looking to add some character to your website? SitePal allows you to add a talking character to your website which virtually interacts with potential customers.
13. 5 Second Test
User feedback is imperative to maintain a successful website. 5 Second Test offers a unique way to gain feedback by allowing you to upload an image that will then be shown to internet users for 5 seconds. Users then click on the areas of the image that caught their attention the most.
14. Crazy Egg
This tool allows you to track your visitors by seeing how they are interacting with your pages and what links they have clicked on.
While most people are familiar with free tools like Google analytics and webmaster tools, there are a considerable amount of users who have never heard of the tools that were just described. While all of these tools may not be essential to you, hopefully at least a few of them will help you in your efforts of providing useful, relevant, and a more interactive web presence to your visitors.
