Recommendations
See below for the best tools and services that I highly recommend. Using the right tools can really make a big difference to your business – such as increasing productivity, quality and customer satisfaction.
Website Hosting
Whether you’re an agency hosting sites for your clients, or you want to host your own business websites, quality website hosting is critical.
I’ve used Siteground for over 10 years now, across multiple businesses. They have been extremely reliable, with good quality and responsive support.
Website Analytics
Seeing who is on your website is critical. Google Analytics used to be king, but with ever changing data privacy laws, it’s no longer the preference for many.
I researched and chose Fathom Analytics in 2021 and use it on our own business websites, client websites and also this site! It’s privacy first, doesn’t use cookies and whilst it’s a lot simpler than Google Analytics, it still has the key features you need.
SEO Tools
If your business is a digital agency creating websites or doing search engine optimisation for your clients, having a great SEO tool is critical. Equally if you have an internal marketing team or skilled individual, you may required an SEO tool to use for your own business.
I’ve used SE Ranking for almost 10 years now, across multiple businesses. It’s got a wide feature set from keyword tracking, through to on-page audits and keyword analysis. It also includes reporting.
Graphic Design Software
If you’re an agency designing websites or other materials for your clients, having a quality graphic design suite is important. Whilst some free or very low cost options exist, these don’t always have full compatibility with the market leading tools.
For around 15 years now, I’ve been using Adobe Creative Suite. Now available as Adobe Creative Cloud, this is the leading package. It contains Adobe Photoshop (for photo editing), Adobe Illustrator (for illustrations), Adobe XD (for UI and web design) and more.
Project Management Software
For many types of businesses you need project management software to manage tasks on multiple projects for multiple team members.
In 2021 I led the evaluation of project management tools for our main business, as it was felt the existing system we used ‘Accelo’ was hindering us. After our detailed analysis we chose ClickUp. We’ve been really happy with it and love the way you can very quickly do things (e.g. create a task), whilst also having a lot of customisation and power with features such as automations.
