Your website and blog are the holy Mecca of content marketing. That’s where you need to concentrate your efforts to attract traffic and convert leads. So if there’s any place you want to expend any extra creative communications juice, it’s there.
There are numerous creative communications tools on the market that will help you shave seconds off your loading time, give you clues about what your visitors like and don’t like, fix problems, and optimize your site for search engines. There’s so much competition for eyeballs and attention span today that you need every advantage you can get — and some of these sophisticated tools really bring it.
You probably don’t have the time or money (the premium versions are not free) to subscribe to all of them, but if you know that you’ve got a particular problem that one of these tools addresses — or a certain goal — what a bounty this could be for you!
14 Creative communications tools for websites or blogs you should know about:
1) Callrail: CallRail is a simple call analytics and tracking solution. It allows you to identify the marketing channels and campaigns that make your phone ring. You can track phone calls from anywhere, online and offline. They offer source-level call tracking and keyword-level tracking to cover all aspects of marketing campaigns.
2) Formisimo: Got forms on your website? Most people don’t fill them out. This tool helps you understand what stops them. Install a simple piece of JavaScript on your site and Formisimo will be able to track form interactions, providing information on how users interact with your forms. From the average completion time to the most corrected field, you’ll understand how your users interact with the forms on your website.
3) CrazyEgg: This is a heat map that shows you where your visitors are clicking on your site so that you can improve your user experience.
4) LuckyOrange: Lucky Orange also offers a heat map, but more. You can watch — in real-time — visitors’ mouse movements, or you can watch videos of their movements. And you can chat with them in real time through a chat box that pops up while they are on your site. You can also do visitor polls.
5) Both Visual Website Optimizer and Optimizely provide A/B split testing capability, which is the best way to determine which of two designs, landing pages or copy treatments work the best in converting leads.
6) GTMetrix: This tool analyzes your website for speed and shows you how to fix the things that need action. Speed is especially important now that so many people use their mobile device to access the web. They are not patiently waiting for your site to load!
7) Hubspot’s Free Marketing Grader: Plug in your URL and get a complete analysis in seconds! You’ll not only find out how your website, blog and social media stack up on a score from 1 to 100, you’ll get specific recommendations about what you can do to improve your score.
8) Smush.It: Smush.It reduces the size of your photos without changing their look or visual quality. This prevents them from slowing down your page loads.
9) Inkybee: This tool helps you with blogger outreach based on your most relevant keywords. It saves you time by finding and tracking your blogger relationships.
10) Broken Link Checker: Guess what that does? Yep. It also tells you exactly where they are in your code. And it’s free.
11) Open Site Explorer: This site allows you to check the domain/page authority of up to three sites per day. You’ll probably want to check your own and couple of your competitors’ sites.
12) vCita: A pop-up allows visitors to schedule an appointment with you right from your website.
13) PicMonkey: Pictures with text on them are more likely to be shared online. This tool allows you to add text easily and also to create collages.
14) Hellobar: This is a thin bar that appears across the top of your page after a time that you specify. You configure the text, the color and the call to action and have it up and running in a couple of minutes.
Now it’s your turn.
This is just a sample of the many creative communications tools to make your website and blog more engaging and profitable. Decide which ones meet your goals and work them into your marketing plan this year. Make one or two changes and keep track of your results. Over time, you will know what is working and what isn’t. That’s the way to see real progress!
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