1. Team Communication: Slack

    Slack allows us to use instant messaging so that we are always able to be in contact with one another. Unlike Facebook, Slack allows us to create channels to organize our conversations, add threads to those conversations and archive our channels so that we always have an easily searchable record of previous discussions. Slack integrates with Google Docs so we can share files easily.

    A potential problem is that it may be difficult to find conversations when there are alot of different channels and private messages

2.Document Sharing: Google Docs

Google Docs will allow us to quickly and easily share documents between each other, but only to those who need them within the company. Google docs allows us to edit a document together in real time while see what others are doing and easily Add notes or comments when needed. It saves automatically so work will never be lost to the void; and in the case, it malfunctions we’ll be able to see our revision history sorted by date and who had made changes. As mentioned above it also integrates with slack; making it that much easier to share.

The only potential downsides are the need for a g-mail account and that larger documents tend to lag on older computers.

3. Version Control: Github

Github is built to push and pull code on a whim and therefore will allow us to easily share different versions of our code. It keeps a history of who has received the old code and what changes they made; making it easy for as to go back to an old version of our website if we ‘junk it up’ as the kid’s say. There are some time management and communication elements already built into Github. Namely it has the ability to post issues in the code with labels, so they become easily searchable later.

Github is a little convoluted and may be confusing for the uninitiated. It also may get confusing where to look for information on the project (slack or Github) although this problem is easily avoided by not using the communication features on Github.

4. Prototyping: InVision

InVision is a easy to learn tool we could use for prototyping that is completely free. You can give access to individual project boards, organize them with headings and add comments seamlessly. It just simplifies the whole prosses and gives you a clean image board you can even show clients.  

5. Time Tracking/ Project Management: Asana

Asana will make it easy for us to send and receive tasks and has build in organizational elements such as: different boards, check lists, timelines, etc. Of course the main fuction of Asana is to be a time tracking platform  which is does wonderfully. On top of having an app for ease of access it also integrates with slack so we won’t have the possible confusion of where to look for info on the project as we did with github.

7. Code Testing: Selenium

Selenium is an open-source code testing tool. It will make it easy to test our code over all popular browsers. It also has the ability to show us live automation test right on our screen. Selenium supports a number of different computer languages including but not limited to: JavaScript, Python and C#. We won’t have to worry about which computer you use as it’s supported on Mac, linux, Windows, etc.

8. Digital Marketing Analytics: HubSpot

Hubspot is a piece of software that we can use to manage  all our social media accounts web content and even has the ability to create landing pages; however it’s most important feature is it’s ability to showing us the success of our advertisements. It has the traditional digital marketing stats such as page views, bounce rates, etc. as wells as stats like visit duration and the percentage of visitors that are completely new to the page.

9. SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Moz

Moz is the self-proclaim “most powerful rank tracker in the industry” and seems to actually keep up with that claim. It has the ability to track millions if not thousands of keywords from just about anywhere on the internet. It also boasts feature such as: technical site audits, SEO insights and site reporting, daily tracking, local/mobile SERPs and real-time distribution.

10. Page Speed Testing: Google developer: Page Speed Insights

Page Speed Insights will test our webpage on both mobile and desktop devices which is a feature I haven’t seen too often. In it’s most basic sense Page Speed Insights will test our page and provide us with a score as well as a summary of our page; which will tel us what we need to fix.