Here at Digital Giants, we use a variety of web development tools to turn our clients’ goals into reality. In this blog, we will share with you some of our most used tools and plug-ins that we consider must-haves if you want to build a website.
Hosting & Domain Registrar – Verpex
Our first suggestion is a to use a good website hosting provider. Digital Giants currently hosts our client’s websites as well as our own at Verpex. Their servers allow for excellent website speed and 99% uptime. They provide unmatched, quick support and are always available directly through their chat support in case any urgent matters arise.
Website Builder & Themes – Divi By Elegant Themes
Finding a great theme can be tricky, finding a website builder that’s accessible and powerful… even harder. That’s why our preferred website builder choice is Divi by Elegant Themes.
As one of the most popular WordPress themes and builders, Divi has the versatility to handle any project without any of the complexities of other platforms.
Here are a few more reasons why we love using Divi:
User-Friendly Interface: Divi offers a highly intuitive drag-and-drop interface that makes it easier for our clients to update their web pages once we hand them over.
Visual Builder: Divi’s visual builder provides real-time editing, meaning we can see the changes made to the website immediately. This feature allows for a seamless design process, as we can visually manipulate elements, adjust layouts, and experiment with various styles and designs effortlessly.
Pre-built Layouts and Templates: Divi comes with a vast library of professionally designed templates and layouts that cater to a wide range of industries and website types. These templates provide us with a solid foundation and serve as a starting point for building our client’s websites, saving them time and money.
Customization Options: Divi offers extensive customization options, allowing us to personalize every aspect of our client’s website’s design. Easily adjust colors, fonts, spacing, and sizes. It also provides advanced customization features, such as custom CSS editing, which enables more us to further modify and fine-tune the website’s appearance.
Responsive Web Design: Divi ensures that your website automatically adapts and looks great on different screen sizes, including smartphones and tablets. This responsiveness enhances user experience and improves your website’s accessibility.
Website Forms – WPForms
Our preferred form builder/plugin is WPForms. We use this on the majority of our website builds for a variety of reasons.
Integrations
Many of our clients come to us with some form of sales system or contact manager such as Hubspot or PipeDrive. WPForms has a number of add-ons that allow us to easily integrate the website forms into these systems which makes it easy for sales teams to manage.
Easy to build
The form builder itself uses a drag-and-drop interface which is very simple to use, giving our clients the ability to do this themselves when needed.
Advanced features
While the forms are easy to create, they also have a number of features such as conditional logic. This allows us to create dynamic forms that show fields based on the user’s input and needs. It also allows us to send the forms to the right contact based on the user’s responses, reducing work and response times for our client’s teams.
Language Translation – WPML
When we work with Canadian or International clients, one of their requirements is that their website must be multilingual. To do this, we use WPML – The WordPress Multilingual Plugin. This plugin allows us to translate our client’s website content automatically while allowing us the ability to manually edit what we need such as URLs, sitemaps, and metadata. WPML has an excellent support team that works with you to investigate and solve any issues that may come up.
SEMRush – Web audits / SEO
SEMRush provides us with the insight and data we need to design websites that are effective. We use SEMrush to research and plan out our primary pages, site architecture and future content. This allows us to prioritize the work that will have the largest impact for the client.
After we have completed the website we use SEMRush to audit and monitor site health. We look at everything that may impact user experience and search performance, such as broken links, page speed, and underperforming content. SEMRush allows us to keep our websites healthy and performing well to maximize their potential and deliver results to our clients.
What web development tools will you need?
These five tools have become essential for us at Digital Giants when it comes to web development. They have significantly contributed to the success of our projects and the satisfaction of our clients.
But don’t let this short list fool you, our toolbox is jam-packed with various tools to help our clients create beautiful websites on time, and on budget. Have a more complex website in mind? We will find the right tools for you!
Conclusion
By incorporating these five tools into our web development process, we have been able to deliver outstanding websites that align with our client’s goals and exceed their expectations. Whether it’s reliable hosting, intuitive design, efficient forms, multilingual support, or effective SEO strategies, these tools have proven their value time and time again.
If you have any questions or are considering a new website yourself feel free to schedule a quick call with us to discuss how we can help you.
