Best Tools and Resources for Web Professionals in 2015
Looking for the right resources to help you satisfy the needs of your clients? On the lookout for the best tools to help you increase your revenue? Searching for the right software to help you improve your business? Well, then you've come to the right place. Take a look at this selection of the best tools and resources available for web professionals in 2015.
1. Stamplia
Stamplia is a powerful tool for independent designers who are looking for a marketplace where they can safely publish and sell their work. You can stop worrying about the time wasted on finding clients and start focusing on the things that really matter. By selling through this marketplace you will also have access to the Stamplia Builder that will allow you to create neat and professional looking email templates. The drag and drop feature guarantees a smooth creative process and the live preview allows you to see the changes you make in real time. Once you're satisfied with your work, it's on to exporting it into popular email providers like Mailchimp, SendGrid or Campaign Monitor. Stamplia emphasize professionalism, so you can rest assured that all templates are reviewed by their team. This way, as a buyer, you know you'll receive only the best quality, responsive templates. Anyone who is an expert in design and HTML templates can contribute to Stamplia. With over 6000 collaborators worldwide, you'll surely find something to your taste at Stamplia.
2. Notism
Notism is by far the best tool creative teams could use to speed up their work process. This design and video collaboration platform will help you share your project and receive feedback via sketches and notes. Notism also allows you to create different versions of a screen and you can easily switch between them in order to get a clearer view of your project's development. The screen history, instant notifications and project activity statuses are just a few of the features that will help you speed up your design process, enabling you to focus more on the creative part and less on the organizational one. Use this tool for website and mobile application designs to improve the dialog between your creative team and your customers. You'll never want to work on another project without Notism again. Your clients will notice Notism's value immediately and you will save time and money to spend on the things that really matter.
3. Fire Checkout
All online shoppers wish for a simple, easy and quick one page checkout to finalize a good shopping session. If this is not the case, they will not be likely to pay a second visit to the website, no matter how great its products are. If you are the owner or admin of an eCommerce website preoccupied with its success but who doesn't have hours on end to manage it to the last detail, we have good news for you - Fire Checkout. This is a cool Magento extension for your website that will keep both you and your customers happy. It only requires a one-minute installation with no core modification to your Magento files. Being completely AJAX based, it will run smoothly and make the checkout process faster because it will eliminate the need for reloading pages. Moreover, it will even increase your mobile conversion rates, because it works just as well for desktop and mobile devices. Your customers will be pleased to see that your website supports all the popular methods of payment and delivery and they will definitely appreciate the one-click order option available for registered customers. If you want to customize your store and make it truly unique, you can do so thanks to the wide array of options provided by Fire Checkout such as creating custom fields on the checkout page, varying the sort order of address fields, adding order details blocks and much more. There's even more good news: the extension is available in 11 languages.
4. Pintastic - The Pinboard Social network script
Pintastic is a Pinterest script that enables you to create a Pinterest clone website. With Pintastic you can monetize your business idea through your very own pinboard social. You will be able to create a website that you can easily monetize and, with it, a community of users that will freely interact with each other. Pintastic comes with a bundle of features that will make sure your website is both professional and top of the line. You will enjoy a 100% responsive design, multi-language support, faster smart search, a SEO friendly system and full integration with a variety of social networks including register and login options with Facebook and Twitter. And that's not all. Pintastic also has over 40 modules that will extend your website's functionalities and your ability to monetize it. Some of the most popular are: Auction Website Builder, Digital Marketplace script, Subscriptions module or Marketplace Script module.
5. IconBeast
If you're in the market for pixel perfect icons or symbols or if you simply want to add a personal touch to your website or mobile application, IconBeast is the perfect place for you. Their impressive collection of vector icons is optimized for iOS app development. They are available in 3 PNG sizes, Vector AI, Vector EPS, SVG, and PSD. At IconBeast you'll find more than 3000 iOS Tab Bar and Toolbar Icons and 500 free iOS Tab Bar Icons. The IconBeast Pro offers 3036 unique icons and symbols at only 75$. The vector source file allows you to edit and resize the icons, so you can rest assured everything will look just the way you want it. All the icons are separately saved in individual PNG transparency files and are available in black, grey and blue. You're not restricted in the way you use your icons, so it's up to you how and where you choose to use them, be it in your apps, on your website or in banners.
6. Getsy - The Multi Vendor Marketplace Script
Getsy is the best clone script money can buy for creating a multi vendor platform. With this tool you will be able to create a community driven website where your users will have complete freedom to set up stores, sell their items and review or rate other sellers and buyers. By using Getsy you will have a website that is both fully responsive and has an intuitive interface for browsing, listing and purchasing products. It also comes with built-in Facebook and Twitter registration, login and product sharing. Each of the items you have in your store can be liked, commented on and added to wishlists, as well have its own detail page. The admin panel will offer you complete control over the entire system, you'll be able to easily manage users, shops, products and content. Without a doubt, Getsy is the perfect combination of social network and marketplace script and it will help you turn your idea into a successful business.
7. Argento Template
Argento theme is the ideal choice for anyone looking for a responsive ready, easily customizable template for his or her eCommerce store. This elegant theme comes with more than 15 popular extensions for the Magento platform and also offers you the option of customizing essential home page elements by changing the look of the navigation menu, product blocks, custom blocks and so on. In fact, by adding a few widgets you will even be able to create themes and subthemes without having to modify core theme files. With Argento you will get retina screen optimization and a high SEO ranking, and on top of this you will also have a website that works quickly and runs smoothly because of the fact that Argento is only based on CSS sprite techniques, which means you'll be getting a reduced number of HTTP requests. There's even more good news: the Argento team added additional extensions such as Sold Together and Suggest Page, which will help you increase the average order size. Right out of the box you will also get the Magento advanced search suggest option. This theme is available in five languages and will fit all screen resolutions, including mobile ones (iOS, Android, Blackberry). Give your ecommerce store a boost with Argento.
8. actiTIME
actiTIME is a time-tracking software that will give your business a competitive edge. Regardless of whether you're a freelancer or a project manager, actiTIME will help you assess how you've spent your time up until now and how to plan it more efficiently in the future. This software offers you a friendly-looking weekly timesheet that's intuitive and easy to understand, no learning curve needed. What's more, with actiTIME you can use deadline reminders to notify your team when tasks are due, task estimate and budget control to keep your managers briefed on the current situation of the project and detailed cost and billing reports to calculate staff salary and issue invoices accurately. actiTIME is currently being used by more than 9000 companies worldwide helping make their business stronger and more prosperous.
9. actiPLANS
If you're looking for a software to help manage your employees' leave time, actiPLANS will be the right solution for you. You can forget about endless spreadsheets and annoying bureaucracy, actiPLANS will transform the entire process of managing leave requests into a simple task. This cloud-based software will offer you access to leave time charts, flexible approval rules, automated PTO accruals and multiple notifications that will help you be on top of employee leave requests. By using actiPLANS you will always have an overview of how much time off an employee has used and how much he or she has left. With this information, you will plan project resources efficiently and root out those who are abusing the company's time-off policies. The best part about actiPLANS is that it effortlessly molds to your company's specific leave time management process allowing you to create as many custom leave types and PTO rules as you wish.
10. PowerMockup
Turning your PowerPoint into a wireframing tool is just a few clicks away with PowerMockup. This incredibly easy to install add-on is all you need to create your own stencils and have your own wireframe tool for prototyping web, mobile or desktop apps. Enjoy hundreds of stencils, icons, different import and export options (PDF, PNG, EMF) and powerful drawing tools for grouping, aligning and layering shapes. If you've been looking for a way to spice up your projects, PowerMockup will offer you everything you need for creating amazing storyboards. It supports master slides, enabling you to create reusable templates. All of PowerMockup's elements (buttons, text boxes, menus, tabs and tables) are built on regular PowerPoint shapes, which means they are entirely editable. And since PowerPoint is used world widely, you can rest assured your colleagues and clients won't have any difficulties in using PowerMockup. Even first time users can create a presentation from scratch.
