Free and Low Cost Web Tools

Effective Ways to Maximize Your Website with Minimal Time and

Resources(Quick Wins for your website)

January 28, 2009

Connecting Great Ideas and Great People

Agenda

Goals and Strategic Direction Measuring Success Tools

Visibility Content Community

When to Build it and when to Borrow it

Goals: A hammer is just a hammer

Web tools, free or otherwise, should have Concrete goals and objectives Measures for success A direct tie to your web/organizational strategy Appropriate exit strategies

Once you have a clear vision for what business need you’re trying to solve, the next step is to determine if you can use a readily-available tool or if you need to custom develop. We have some pros and cons of readily available tools to help you make your decision!

Pros of external tools

Many are low cost or free

Tools often have a low implementation barrier—quick to market

Road tested tools can have planned upgrades extending functionality

Many provide overall solid quality

Cons of external tools

Service may go down

Typically are difficult to integrate with AMS

Service may be discontinued permanently or changed without your knowledge or control

Some services use the data from your tools or become ad-sponsored

Is an external tool right for you? What is the risk if the service is

discontinued?

Does the tool need to integrate with your AMS?

If the service decided to charge, would you

be willing to budget for it?

Who owns the data and is that a good fit for your organization? 5

A basic web technology note, or, how technical do I have to be to make these tools work?

Most of these tools require access to the HTML (or PHP, CFM, etc) file to add code into the <body></body> or <head></head> of a page

How will you know? Ask your web team or site host

Another note on the tools in this presentation

The tools selected integrate directly into an association’s website. Several of these are also stand along applications, but our focus is on how these tools can extend the value of your website to your members and visitors

Ok, enough with the notes already…Let’s get to the tools!

Forms: Google Docs Web Forms

http://docs.google.com/ 9

Google Docs Web Forms: The Process

http://docs.google.com/ 10

Polling: Polldaddy

http://polldaddy.com/ 11

Polling: The Process

Polling: Polldaddy

Visibility: Add This Widget

Social Bookmarking for your site

Let’s visitors“add this” copyto the socialNetworking/BookmarkingSite of their choice.

http://www.addthis.com

Add This Widget: The Process

Copy the 4 lines of code and paste between <body> and </body> tags.

http://www.addthis.com

Add This Widget: Reporting

Reports tell you: Overall usage Popular Bookmarking

tools Popular content

http://www.addthis.com 16

Search: Google Search

http://www.google.com/sitesearch/ 17

Google Search: The Process & Pricing

http://www.google.com/sitesearch/ 18

Blogs: Movable Type

http://www.movabletype.org/ 19

Blogs: The Process

http://www.movabletype.org/

Blogs: Movable Type

http://www.movabletype.org/ 21

Blogs: WordPress

http://wordpress.org/ 22

Blogs: WordPress

http://wordpress.org/

MicroBlog: Twitter BadgesTwitter accounts:

Let visitors subscribe to real time updates via Twitter

Provide fresh site content

Can use account or # to pull in updates

http://twitter.com/badges 24

Twitter Badges: The Process

http://twitter.com/badges

Photos: Flickr BadgesFlickr accounts:

Engage members & visitors by allowingthem to uploadtheir photos

Provide fresh site content

Help staff captureevents and more

Tip: Before you start, determine if outside image hosting fits within your asset management plans 26

Flickr Badges: The Process

http://www.flickr.com/badge.gne

http://www.flickr.com/badge.gne 27

Flickr: Stats

http://www.flickr.com/badge.gne 28

Audio and Podcasts: Audacity

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Use a basicmicrophone

Record your tracks

Edit as needed

Export as MP3

Upload to a web host/server

Video: YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/

Video: YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/

Screen Captures and Demos: Jing

http://www.jingproject.com/

Create demosor FAQs for visitorsand staff.

Limit is up to 5 minutes per video

Jing: The ProcessDownload & install software; click capture

Set capture window

Select screen cap or video

http://www.jingproject.com/ 33

PowerPoint: SlideShare

Hosts and converts presentation slides

Provides interactive content and increasesvisibility via searches on SlideShare.net

Share and embed links letscontent go viral

http://www.slideshare,net 34

SlideShare: The Process

Copy embed code and pasteinto HTML file

http://www.slideshare,net

Upload PPT file

SlideShare: Stats and Options

Presentation packLets all slides from a conference show together

http://www.slideshare,net

Maps: Google Maps

Help members find your eventsor chapters or components using Industry standard mapping technology

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl 37

Google Maps: The Process

Help members find your eventsor chapters using Industry standard mapping technology

Locate the map you want to add to your site in Google Maps

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

Translation: Google Translator

Provides systembased translations.

Pros and cons of system translation: http://www.asaecenter.org/wiki/index.cfm?Page=Automatic%20Language%20Translation 39

Google Translator: The Process

http://translate.google.com/translate_tools

Chat: Meebo

http://www.meebo.com/rooms

Host a real time chat around a conference

Answer member questions

Meebo: The Process

http://www.meebo.com/rooms 42

RSS Analytics: FeedBurner

Where do you get the feeds?

Most blogging tools havebuilt in feeds (e.g. Moveable Type, WordPress)

Many CMS tools havebuilt in feeds(e.g. Drupal, Joomla)

http://www.feedburner.com 43

FeedBurner RSS: The ProcessPaste URL of the RSS Feed Get stats (below)

Get the ability to create a quick Spring Widget

FeedBurner RSS: Tracking

Provides a trend overview and helps you see what content subscribers are clicking on…

FeedBurner RSS: SpringWidgets

http://www.springwidgets.com 46

Link Checking: Xenu Link Checker

Spiders your site and finds your broken links

home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html 47

Analytics: Google Analytics

Provides overall trends, traffic sources,goal funnels, and content drill downs

http://www.google.com/analytics 48

Google Analytics: The Process

http://www.google.com/analytics 49

Usability: Five Second Test

Upload a screen captureof the site you wish to test.

Choose from up to 3 possible tests

http://www.fivesecondtest.com

Classic test: participant gets image for 5 seconds and then is asked…

Five Second Test: The Process

…which 5 things they remember about the site

http://www.fivesecondtest.com 51

Five Second Test: Results

Basic results: List viewExport to CSV

Paid reports in development

http://www.fivesecondtest.com52

Contact information:

Connecting Great Ideas and Great People

Peter HutchinsVice President of Knowledge Initiatives Phone: 202-326-9540E-mail: phutchins@asaecenter.orgWebsites: www.asaecenter.org

Amy HissrichDirector, Knowledge Initiatives Phone: 202-326-9532E-mail: ahissrich@asaecenter.orgWebsites: www.asaecenter.org

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