In the current down economy, generating sales leads is the key to business’s survival. Discover how to turn prospective clients into customers and drive a sustainable growth to the business. Are you sure that your business website is working as hard as it can to keep you well armed with the viable new leads? Let’s look at some of the tangible strategies that smart firms are using to generate more leads using their websites:

1. Strategy One: Collect usable contact data from people who leave comments on your blog. WQXR, a public radio station in New York, does this on its blog, where visitors must enter their email addresses before their posts are approved and posted. WQXR then emails them invitations to subscribe to the station’s email newsletter, attend special events, become corporate underwriters, and donate to the station.
2. Strategy Two: Let visitors sign up for something that is attractive and free. AAA Service, a company that offers electrical, plumbing, and heating services in Arvada, Colo., lets visitors sign up for an informative homeowners’ newsletter that includes coupons. The company’s appealing sign-up page is very well done and well worth looking at. On your site, you could also consider offering whitepapers, coupons, or an invitation to a free webinar.
3. Strategy Three: Cultivate the leads you get by moving them through a “sales funnel.” The steps in this process can be to: 1) strengthen your relationship by offering potential customers something valuable and free; 2) test the waters by offering a special offer at the reduced cost or on a trial basis; 3) offer a service free of charge; 4) make a full sales call. Note that each step in this process could be important in cultivating a lasting and profitable relationship.

Make Sure that Images and Copy You Find Online Are Safe to Use

When designing a website or putting up marketing emails, many companies today seem to think it is permissible to use others’ images or text from other websites. The fact is, it’s just not safe to use. According to Digital Renovators, an agency offering local web design in Halifax, here are some common assumptions that could put your company at risk of legal actions:

• “One of my business partners used an image, so I have the right to use it too.” There is no guarantee that your partner went through the proper “due diligence” steps to obtain permission. There is still the chance that the person who took the photograph or created an illustration will contact you to demand a fee for its use.
• “It is safe to use anything the government publishes, without getting permission.” Some companies assume that if they “borrow” an image from a government website, they are safe from copyright violations. That’s not always the case. There is still the chance that the person who took the photograph retains ownership of it.
• “I found this material on a website where it was used without giving credit, so it must be safe to use.” The fact that one website doesn’t display a permissions line below a photo or other material doesn’t mean that you are safe to reproduce it too.
• “As long as I give credit, I can’t get in trouble.” Other people believe that they can use any image or reprint any article, as long as they link back to its original source online, or give credit. This practice has gotten to be common in our Internet age – yet it is always safer to ask permission.

In many cases, companies will give you permission to use their articles, opinions, graphs, or other illustrations if you ask ahead of time. Getting permission doesn’t require a big commitment of time – simply email the owner of the material you want to use in your online advertising or marketing, get a reply, and be sure to keep those emails on file in case of disputes later arise.

Required steps to take before using photos, graphs, or illustrations . . .

• TinEye.com is an online ownership checker for pictures. You either upload the image that you want to check or enter its URL if it appears on a webpage. This checker displays all the other websites where the image has been used.
• PicScout’s Image Exchange is a downloadable application that lets you enter an image or an image URL, and then gives you information on the holder of its copyright, if any.

Required steps to take before using articles or text . . .

• Use Google Search – simply copy the portion of the text you want to use and hit the search button. You’ll see the search results on the web where the exact text has been used.
• Use EduBirdie, an online plagiarism checker. The application was designed to help college professors and students make sure that their assignments have not been copied from other sources.

The internet technology is developing at breakneck speed with each passing day. Therefore, entrepreneurs always look for professional web designers and developers to get their websites, eCommerce portals, business websites, blogs, etc, created in an easy way so that they can run a profitable business within a short time span.

At first glance, it seems like a decent idea that designers and developers should work together to complete the web development projects easily and quickly. The designer creates the design of the elements, chooses the color palette and typography, while the developer writes the code and prepares the materials to be used on live websites.

In most of the cases, they work on the same project in different manners which leads to disagreements between these two professionals. It creates needless hurdles in web development projects and causes delay in its final delivery to clients/customers.

If designers and developers work on the web development project in consultation with each other, they will be able to develop websites and web applications with good aesthetics, coding, and user interface.

It also helps them to reduce the amount of manual work and alterations and enables them to complete web development projects with a fast turnaround time without compromising the quality. All leading WordPress web design companies emphasize on a healthy collaboration between web designer and developers so that they can easily meet the growing needs of their clients and customers.

So, do you run a web development company? Are you looking for some tools to promote the collaboration between web designers and developers? If yes, then we have researched deeply and prepared a list for you. Just go through them one by one and pick the tools you deem suitable:

1. Trello

Cost: Free

Trello is actually a great project management tool which allows you to easily collaborate with professionals working on your web development projects from distant locations. It has a customizable to-do list interface which allows you and your contributors to add different tasks that need to be performed without fail during the various stages of web development projects.

It comes with a progress meter, check-lists, and due dates. All these features help you to easily monitor the development of your project. Based on the report, you can easily estimate when you are going to complete the web development projects. The tool gets integrated with Google Docs, DropBox, OneDrive, etc. Furthermore, it has mobile apps as well, enabling you to supervise your web development team through mobile devices.

2. Invision

Cost-Free

Do you run an IT company that provides various services? Feeling problems to manage the contributions of web developers and designers? If yes, use Invision-the world’s leading prototyping, collaboration, and workflow platform- without having any second thought in mind.

This tool has commenting functions, design prototyping tools, boards, etc, which allows you to share valuable ideas with your team, seek their suggestions and complete the web development projects easily and quickly. It contains free user testing tools, which allows you to test websites/web applications from different angles (for cross-browser compatibility, mobile responsiveness, UX/UI issues, 404 errors, navigation, etc,) and deliver the best-quality websites/web applications to clients.

3. GitHub

Cost: Premium

While working on web development projects, web developers create chaos many times. It negatively affects the usability and performance of websites/web applications in the long run. Why do you face such hassles when you the luxury of GitHub?

Actually, GitHub is a development platform where you can share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, etc, seek their views, review code, manage projects, and create software in consultation with other web developers. It also has GitHub apps and an intuitive API, which allows you to customize your web development projects and offer the desired stuff to your clients/customers.

It is very useful for new coders. They can get in touch with millions of other coders on the platform and easily learn how to write clean code to create amazing websites in an easy way. If you create WordPress templates for web design company with a business purpose, there are a lot of things you can learn from fellow coders and web developers.

4. Cage

Cost: Free (14 Days Free Trial) and Premium

Cage is a simple and easy-to-use collaboration platform. It allows you to share, comment, manage and approve all web development projects easily from one place. You can make comments on web development projects, track the revision work, and update your clients regarding the progress of their web development projects. This increase collaboration between web developers and designers and they become able to complete the web development projects in a timely fashion.

5. Zeplin

Cost: Free (for one project) and premium

Zeplin is a very useful Collaboration app for UI designers and frontend developers. Using this tool, both web developers and designers can work closely with each other, share design wireframes, give valuable suggestions and recommendations on web design projects, and ensure that every web design meet the specific needs of clients, customers, business organizations, and firms. The app easily gets integrated with Photoshop and Sketch, which facilitates two-way commenting with developers & designers and reduce the time required to complete the web-development projects.

6. Conceptboard

Cost: Premium

Conceptboard comes with the basic feedback features and an attractive board system with simple drawings, simple post-its, and images. Using this tool, you can give feedbacks on web development projects and get updates regarding its actual progress. The feedback system has social media capabilities which allow web designers and developers to conduct video calls, review projects and supervise the work easily and quickly.

Final Words

In order to complete different web development projects easily and quickly, a healthy collaboration between web developers and designers is mandatory. But, due to the different working style of web developers and designers, bitter conflicts take place on the workplace. It causes unnecessary delay in the completion of web development projects.

By using the above-mentioned tools, you can easily maintain amicable collaboration between web designer and developers and get projects finished in a timely fashion. You may go for WordPress design and development services if you need a helping hand that could create professional and eye-catching WordPress websites to propel your web-based business.

Author Bio:

Kerin Miller is a Web expert, associated with Stellen Infotech one of the best web development company wordpress theme providers around the globe. She has a lot of experience in development cust om WordPress and magento Themes. She has delivered an numerous range of quality products related to this. She has a strong passion for writing useful and insights about WordPress tips and tricks.