As a designer, you want and need the best tools available. There are a ton of options out there for both beginners and experienced designers. We combed through the Internet to bring you this mix of free tools to add to your toolkit. Enjoy!

Brackets

This open source program was developed by Adobe to help designers edit code in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It’s great because it has a very clean look by not cluttering your workspace with a variety of buttons. Instead, it focuses on using shortcuts and live previews to help you throughout. There are a bunch of extensions as well, so it has become pretty useful for beginning and experienced designers alike.

OpenBEXI

The most unique feature of this WYSIWYG HTML editor is that it lets you drag and drop different elements. It’s really useful if you want to have a quick visual of what you are creating. This editor lets you edit CSS and add scripts as well. Not stopping there, it has an FTP client that will upload everything for you when you have finished your design.

GIMP

GIMP is a great free image editor. It has a variety of powerful tools you would find in paid solutions. For example, it provides great color editing tools, tons of special effects, photo retouching, and much more! Honestly, you will be surprised by how many features this free program has.

Firebug

This FireFox extension is one of the most useful tools I have come across for designers, developers, and anyone managing a company website. It lets you view the CSS and HTML of any page, while displaying tweaks in real time. You need to use an actual editor to change the code, but this is useful for playing around with layouts without accidentally making a mistake.

A strong online presence is an absolute must in today’s business world. People are using the Internet to find products they want to buy, not the Yellow Pages. There are a variety of marketing tools to get your name out there, but one of the best ones is SEO. Search Engine Optimization focuses on maximizing your rankings in major search engines like Google and Bing. So why do you need to make this a priority?

SEO improves ORGANIC search rankings, so you don’t have to spend as much on paid advertising.

Organic search rankings are the results that appear whenever you type a keyword into Google that aren’t paid ads. Your organic search rankings are absolutely free; you aren’t paying Google or Yahoo to place you that high. They are doing so because of your strong SEO. By building strong advertising you are able to forgo other options like Google Ads, which can run fairly expensive based on your budget. In the long term organic search is much more beneficial for your company, since most consumers use those results.

SEO improves brand awareness and recognition

SEO isn’t just about click throughs. It’s about getting your company name in front of consumers. Even if they don’t click on your website, they will have been exposed to your name and brand. Over time, this can greatly increase awareness and recognition. This is especially true if you build a strong SEO program and consistently appear on the first few pages, where most of the impressions are.

SEO improves brand credibility.

Besides improving awareness, a strong SEO program can improve the credibility of your brand. The higher you appear in rankings, the more consumers will trust you. Who do you think you would trust more: a company that appears on the 1^st page of results, or one that is on the 30^th page? Probably the former.

SEO can build traffic, leads, and sales.

Once you get down to brass tacks, SEO is all about creating more traffic. A strong search engine ranking means more click throughs, which your sales and marketing team can turn into leads and sales. SEO is critical if you depend on e-commerce, or if your online presence is important to your business. Keep in mind, SEO is not an overnight success. You need to stay persistent, and eventually results will come.

Once you create your initial blog schedule, get your ideas together, and start writing, you have to avoid making easy mistakes. There are a number of things you should NEVER do, especially if you want to use your blog to build traffic and online exposure.

Duplicating online content.

This should be a no-brainer, but you should never copy someone else’s content and try to pass it off as your own. This will not help your search rankings, because search engines look out for this sort of behavior and will remove your post from results. Also, you could get into some legal troubles down the road if you aren’t careful. When it comes to blogging, it’s ok to use other articles as inspiration, but it’s not ok to copy them word for word.

Ignore using social media to share your blog.

Blogs are meant to be shared, and social media is the best way of accomplishing that. If you forget to use social media, you are forgoing a free marketing tool that has unprecedented reach. You are limiting your blog’s exposure to its subscribers, when it could be reaching thousands, if not millions of people.

Forget to use analytics to track clickthroughs.

Using analytics is the only way to know which topics you are posting about are generating traffic for your site. Without proper monitoring you will never know which topics to ignore or focus on. There are a bunch of free options out there like bit.ly which you can use to track clickthroughs on URLs. Trust me, using services like these go a long way.

Forget to make content shareable on your blog.

Another easily made mistake is forgetting to include social sharing buttons/badges on your blog page. You need to make life easy for your users by streamlining processes. Many users might think your article is great, but don’t want to go through the ‘hassle’ of copying a link, logging into a service, and then sharing it. Social sharing buttons take care of this potential problem, and can help to create more buzz/traffic.

The storefront matters. It mattered when the only option was going to a brick and mortar shop, and it still matters today with online storefronts. The shop itself has an effect on the purchasing behavior of a consumer. If you were going to go buy a car, would you go to some back alley garage, or the trusted, local dealership?

Custom branding builds credibility and trust.

People trust people or things that look nicer. That’s why people get stressed out at 3 am when a homeless person is near them, but not when it’s a businessman in a nice suit. A custom e-commerce store allows you to implement things like custom branding. Being able to use your branding instead of a pre-packaged template can have a profound effect on consumers. They will see that you put time and money into the appearance of your store, and that builds credibility. The more credibility you have, the easier it is for the consumer to trust you, and then purchase your product.

A custom storefront means more functionality.

One of the biggest benefits of custom development is creating functionality where it didn’t exist before. Have a custom e-commerce store can be a huge asset if you need additional functionality now, or down the road. Some e-commerce solutions will have missing tools like mobile/social media stores or social check outs. With a custom solution you can circumvent all these issues. You get exactly what you need, with the ability to add whatever you want later on. Having the ability to add great functionality like social media checkouts can make the buying process easier and more efficient for consumers. Streamlining processes with a consumer-centric focus means fewer hoops to jump through for a user, and a lower rate of cart abandonment. And that means more sales.

Infographics are arguably the hippest way to consume information on the Internet today. They’re easy to digest, highly shareable, and packed with content. We have scoured the internet for the best web design infographics for you today. Some are serious, some are funny, and all of them are informative!

Web Designers Vs Web Developers (Via HongKiat)

This is a humorous look at the difference between web designers and developers. If you didn’t know how they were different before, you do now!

Designers vs Designers (Via SloDive)

This infographic is another humorous look at the design industry, with statistics for different types of designers including salary, job satisfaction, etc.

The Most Common Resolutions (Via Okilla)

A great infographic that presents a concise summary on the most common resolutions used by different devices today! Definitely worth taking a look at if you are building responsive sites.

Flat Design: Just a Trend or a New Staple of Web Design? (Via CreativeMarket)

A company named Usabilla conducted testing websites and surveyed web professionals to figure out what people think about flat design. The results are pretty awesome!