Free Tools Friday 5
This week’s roundup of free tools is dedicated to a good friend of mine who has jumped into the entrepreneurial deep end with both feet. We were talking a while back about online strategy in general and I realized how often this kind of stuff comes up with small business folks. Obviously I am biased here, but I really believe that a good web strategy can be a huge part of launching a successful venture. So here are some great free tools that help you get more out of your online presence.
Google Analytics – This is a really good place to get started with measuring your web site traffic. You sign up for a free account, and they will give you a little piece of code to embed in your site so it can do it’s Google-riffic magic. Once that’s there it will give you a sweet dashboard that will tell you where your traffic comes from, how much time people spend on your site, and how many pages they hit before they leave. If you don’t know how much traffic you’re getting now, how can you possibly know what is working to increase it?
WordPress – If you want to show your customer that you are committed to their success with whatever it is that you do, you should have a blog. This is my favorite blogging software. You can let them host it (free), or you can load it on your own site (also free). It’s hugely customizable and yet is very capable right out of the box. It is dead simple to get a great looking blog going in no time.
Feedburner – Another great free Google product, Feedburner will give you insight into how well your blog is doing. It will track your subscribers and give you insight into what you can do to optimize it. It will also sort of guide you along with different things you can do with your blog and your feed.
