Cheatsheet: 7 Most Helpful Web Development Tools to Assist Your Website Creation and Analysis

Alyssa Retza
Posted by Alyssa Retza on December 8, 2021
web_development_tools

A good website is a must. Everyone expects to dig out their phone and visit a site without any trouble. Your company’s website needs to deliver a smooth experience; if it doesn’t, your customers will look elsewhere.

Developing a website that flows seamlessly into a person’s day while still serving its purpose is no easy task, but it’s also not as difficult as it used to be. While coding experience is always beneficial, you don’t have to be an HTML or CSS connoisseur to successfully put together a great website. You just need the right web development tools!

As you work toward bringing your website to life, many items need to be checked off your to-do list

  • Design
  • Navigation
  • Loading speed
  • Mobile responsiveness
  • SEO value

These items and more must all be addressed during the development stage, and it can be done efficiently with the assistance of the right tools! To guide you along your website build, we’ve put together a list of 7 of the most helpful web development tools.

Tools for Identifying Issues and Verifying Changes or Corrections

1. HubSpot Developer Extension

“And if you scroll down, you’ll see the banner we added —”

“I’m not seeing that on my screen.”

Want to avoid this type of exchange with a stakeholder or client? Use the HubSpot Developer Extension to bust cache on pages you’ve changed before you show them to another user who might still be seeing an older, cached version. And that’s just the beginning of this extension’s abilities.

hubspot-developer-extension

If you’re using HubSpot for your website, this is essential to add to your toolbox. While HubSpot itself does not maintain this extension, members of its community do — which means you have those who are already knee-deep in HubSpot tools giving you a helpful boost based on their experiences and knowledge of how HubSpot systems work.

Other features of the HubSpot Developer Extension include access to tips from other developers, buttons for commonly used HubSpot Query Parameters (including the above-mentioned cache busting), shortcuts to common areas in HubSpot Dev Docs, and more.

2. Width and Height Display Extension

Some website development issues are specific to screen size. With the Width and Height Display Extension in your corner (literally), you’ll be able to troubleshoot those screen size errors and even plan ahead for specific screen size changes on your webpage mockup.

Width-and-Height-Display-Extension

No more guessing the dimensions!

The extension works by displaying the inner width and inner height of the screen in the upper right corner, letting you know how much space is taken up by the screen. Let this tool simplify this process so you can get on with your creations.

Tools for Collaboration and Building

3. Miro

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail,” as the saying goes. When a new site comes along, planning before launch is crucial. A lot of cooks are in that kitchen, and it’s important to get everyone working together in tandem during development. Miro is an online collaboration tool that allows users to put their minds together and hash it out on one easy-to-use whiteboard platform.

Conduct workshops and brainstorming sessions remotely. Visualize ideas and plans through agile workflows. Adjust website architecture. Produce a real strategy that’s more than just a few pages of general notes in a document or a hard-to-follow email chain. Miro, which offers a free version in addition to its paid plans, makes that all possible.

4. Adobe UI and UX Design Software & Apps

Adobe’s footprint in the world of technology is massive, so it’s only fitting that they’re included here. The Adobe UI and UX design applications are meant to bring out your creativity while developing your website to concoct something that stands out from the crowd. The user experience is top of mind with this suite of tools, bringing every facet of web browsing from a customer’s perspective to the forefront.

Adobe-XD-Software

Among several other lesser-known ones, three major applications are included in this suite: Adobe XD, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Photoshop. With Illustrator and Photoshop, express your style and give your websites a dose of razzle dazzle and engaging aesthetics. This is where you can let the artists on your team shine!

Adobe XD is the website design tool, giving you easy-to-use interfaces for designing sites that captivate visitors. Map out how your formats will look on desktop and on mobile with just a few clicks and drags. You can even share your work with other builders for their insights and updates.

5. BugHerd

In this online world, we may not use sticky notes for reminders and quick messages as much as we used to, but their influence lives on! BugHerd brings that office staple to web development, allowing users to stick comments and feedback directly onto a page. Imagine looking at a website on your desktop monitor, writing your thoughts on a sticky note, and slapping it right onto your screen. That’s what BugHerd is going for — digitally, of course!

What exactly needs to be changed on your mockup? If you go a more traditional way of gathering notes in one document or a series of emails, it can be difficult to match someone’s comment with what it is they’re commenting on. BugHerd solves this problem with its convenient visualization, making collaboration a cinch. 

Learn More: 10 B2B Website Design Decisions That Could Ruin Performance and UX

Tools for Analysis

6. Wappalyzer Extension

Any business needs to be in the know about what their peers and competitors are doing. Stay in the loop with the Wappalyzer extension, which lets you identify the technology stack of any website. 

Why does a website work so well? What are they using to provide such an exceptional experience? See what the website is built with and use that knowledge to possibly improve your own website using technology you might not have considered.

7. Ahrefs

You can’t build a website without considering SEO. Understand how your website is doing in its quest to land high on SERPs with the SEO Site Audit tool that Ahrefs provides.

The Site Audit tool crawls each page it can find on your website. Once that’s finished, it’ll score your website on how well it implements SEO tactics and give you visualizations so you can see your results more easily. Nip any SEO problems in the bud by fixing them right away. 

Ahrefs is also a good website competitor analysis tool, giving you an opportunity to analyze your competitors to learn where you stand when it comes to SEO. Maybe your website needs work in the keyword area. Which keywords relevant to your business are actually ranking? Find those and other insights with Ahrefs.

Free Website Grader

Now that you’ve put all that work into your website and published it to the masses, how is it doing? You can get a report card for your site using our free website grader!

Gain useful info on several important areas, such as:

  • Security
  • SEO Scores
  • Performance Metrics
  • Mobile Optimization

The report card won’t just give

you the raw data, however. You’ll also receive recommendations on how to improve in certain areas of opportunity we find. 

It’s free and easy to use. Just click below, and you’ll be well on your way to pushing your website to fulfilling its greatest potential!

Grade my website now

 

Topics: Marketing Technology, Website Design

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