The 7 Best Gifts for a Web Designer in 2017
Do you have an important person in your life who happens to be a web designer?
It can be your boyfriend, girlfriend, brother, sister or maybe your best friend. But what really matters here is that you need to find the perfect gift, and worry not, because this new blog post will take you by the hand and show you the 7 best gifts for a web designer in 2017.
I can tell you with confidence that any of these gifts will make that important web designer in your life be pretty happy, and of course, appreciate you even more than now.
#1 – Crazy Egg: Way More than a Simple Gift
Data is worth its weight in gold, especially when it is super-accurate, and that’s exactly what Crazy Egg offers.
This amazing tool allows you to analyze what visitors are doing on your website, and you may not recognize the value of this, but your web designer surely does!
By knowing how visitors interact with a website, how long they stay, which areas they visit the most, how they are reacting to CTAs (calls to action), which operating system they are using, their screen resolution and many other important factors, a web designer can improve a current design in order to achieve a higher conversion rate, reduce bounce rate, increase time on site, etc.
This kind of gift makes a web designer’s life much easier, more practical and of course more profitable. Therefore, if you can to gift something that actually serves a very important purpose and provides so many opportunities for growth, then Crazy Egg is exactly what you are looking for.
Although there are many other services and software that can bring you a heatmap, Crazy Egg is ahead of the curve. It’s simply the best the market has to offer.
#2 – Clicky: A Superb Tool
It is hard not to fall in love with Clicky, because it comes with so much data that it allows you to easily improve a web design.
It is very similar to Google Analytics, but it comes with many interesting features. Moreover, you should know that many web designers, who also happen to be SEOs, want to keep Google’s eyes away from their sites as much as possible. That’s why alternatives like Clicky are ideal.
One of the most useful features is the ability to “spy” on your visitors in real time. It allows you to see what page they are visiting, their operating system, etc. Everything in real time.
You can also see how visitors are reacting to your content, because you can see the actions they perform, something vital in improving your current web design for a better performance.
You can also get accurate data on how much time each visitor spends on your website along with the bounce rate, everything presented in a nice visual format.
And finally, you also get the heatmap feature. It is not as good as Crazy Egg, but it gets the job done.
Without any doubts, Clicky makes an amazing gift for any web designer out there!
#3 – ClickTale: Making the Invisible Visible
ClickTale is one of the best tools in the market for any web designer, because it provides plenty of opportunities for improvement.
Every serious and professional web designer knows that there is ALWAYS room for improvement, but you cannot take the right steps towards that direction unless you have plenty of good and rich data to guide your actions, and that’s where ClickTale comes into play.
As suggested by Matt from SEO Heroes Bangkok an experienced web design agency in Bangkok, “If you want to boost the engagement of your visitors with your website, then you need to bring an excellent UX, because without it, people will leave your site in no time”.
It is very similar to Crazy Egg, but thanks to ClickTale you can watch video replays of visitors’ click-through. It is similar to what SmartLook.com offers, but here it is coupled with the heat-map feature, which certainly makes things better.
Therefore, if you want to skyrocket conversions through the roof, then ClickTale is the way to go. It’s one of the best tools any web designer can have, because the data it supplies is simply priceless.
#4 – Affinity Designer: Better Than Photoshop?
Many web designers use Photoshop, because it is a great tool. It can even be used to create WordPress themes, but it still lacks of several features that would make a web designer’s life much easier. And that’s where Affinity Designers comes into play.
One of the features that make it a solid piece of software is that you can use an incredible 1,000,000 percent zoom, which is much better than Photoshop’s (32,000). This allows you to get really close and take care of those little details that will cause a great impact in the final result.
I must also tell you that the undo and history features are top of the line, because you can go back over 8,000 steps, and this is simply amazing.
Another incredible feature is the ability to create non-destructive and adjustable layers. This makes it possible to adjust vectors and images alike without damaging them.
And finally, even though the platform is very similar to Photoshop’s, it looks better on my opinion, because it reduces distractions and allows you to focus on what you are doing right now.
Therefore, if you want to gift something truly useful, then Affinity Designer is a great choice!
#5 – Macaw: Let Creativity Flow
Stop writing code, start drawing it. It pretty much summarizes what this tool does: it allows you to create beautiful and fully-responsive designs without writing a single line of code.
But before we move any further, let’s address the most widely-known problem of this type of apps: the code they create is often not good, but Macaw is completely different.
It is surprising to see that the code output is so well structured and constructed, because again, most apps of this kind tend to be weak in this aspect.
Macaw brings you plenty of options to customize your designs and achieve exactly what you are looking for. Therefore, it makes an excellent gift, because it helps you to save plenty of time and to let your creativity flow.
In many senses it feels and looks like Photoshop, but here you won’t need any kind of app or software to convert your PSD files into code. It’s excellent for creating landing pages for a funnel or developing a pretty big website.
#6 – WebFlow: Drag and Drop to Design
Similar to Macaw, WebFlow allows you to design and develop websites at the same time. It is pretty easy to create enterprise level websites, and that’s why web designers love it.
Unlike other similar apps, the code output is very clean. It doesn’t matter if HTML5 or CSS3, the output is top-notch. That’s why it is used by big names like MTV, HP and IBM for several of their web design projects. For real, the ability to create responsive websites of this app is simply mind-blowing!
Even though they have a free version, it doesn’t really cut it, especially for a professional web designer. That’s why it is here: only the paid version makes sense, and hence, makes an excellent gift.
This software can be used for small and big projects alike. But again, the real power of this tool resides in its paid features.
#7 – Webydo: Web Design Made Easy
We have already seen two great options that offer the solution: write less code and design more. But Webydo is worth mentioning, because it has many interesting features to offer.
One of the things that makes this app stand out is that they provide cloud hosting, which means you can put your website live a few seconds after finishing your design. This makes things easier and more practical.
It also comes with an infinity of open-source fonts for your designs. The library is so large that you will never run out of options.
It also offers you the incredible parallax scrolling animator, something that adds that special touch to your designs and makes them more engaging.
The code output is also pretty good, which means it will come well-structured and constructed, so you don’t have to spend time fixing it. And yes, the designs you create with Webydo will be responsive and will work across all browsers, devices and screen resolutions.
Another idea? How about a wireless driveway alarm?
Conclusion and Final Words:
We’ve arrived to the end of this article.
Now you have 7 amazing gift ideas for a web designer in 2017. Any of these gifts will add tremendous value to any web designer’s life, and you have plenty of options where to choose from now.
You can gift something that makes the designing process easier, or something that makes the conversion rate optimization process easier and better in all senses.
You can even gift two of these tools as a bundle: Crazy Egg + Macaw, ClickTale + Web Flow, etc. It’s up to you now!