From visitor tracking to the analytics of your site, the Internet and its users have seen a lot of changes. Many online entrepreneurs have really put themselves out there and produced an array of extremely useful products and operations that make a web developers life just that little bit easier.

Before I go on, it is important to note that the list below is just a list of tools that I find useful. I am in no way suggesting that these are anywhere near the only good tools that everyone should use and there are many tools which I use everyday but aren’t on the list.

On to the list…

1. Google Analytics
   That’s right, let me start of with the obvious. Aside from its incredibly popular and ever so useful functions of tracking visitors and providing us with more than enough information to know just where our website stands, Google Analytics has been increasing its capabilities and expanding its uses over the years and is one of the best ways to get started in analyzing the visitors your website gets.
   
   The Analytics feature from Google is arguably the best analytics tool out there and is definitely one of Google’s more prominent tools and with a wide range of features from the “Site Overlay” to the world map visitor specifier, who wouldn’t want to have this tool up their sleeve?
2. BrowserShots
   Moving on to one of the more hidden and not so known tool, BrowserShots. Basically this tool allows you to enter a URL and choose certain browsers over different Operating System’s to preview that website under. This is a great tool for any web developer and designers as it allows them to see exactly how and what their website will look like on different browsers or Operating System’s that may not be available to them.
   
   Providing a huge amount of options from you to choose from, this tool is definitely something that I will most likely end up using on all of my projects. What I love about BroswerShots is that they take the painful and time consuming task of testing the rendering of your site across different platforms and situations and project you the result without you doing anything at all!
3. YSlow + Firebug
   So the resourceful web developer already knows about Firebug right? Well one of the useful things about Firebug, is it’s capability of further customization via plugins and extensions. If you don’t have Firebug installed, then YSlow will not function and you can read further about Firebug at my post about popular Firefox add-ons and extensions.
   
   So basically YSlow is all about analyzing the content on your site and web page itself to give you some hints and pointers into making that particular page quick and easy to load.
4. Feedburner
   Have a feed that you want to set on fire? Then simply submit it to Feedburner and site back and let the fun start. Feedburner is possibly the most popular feed manager out there at the moment. With it’s superior design and ingenuity, Feedburner offers more than we could have asked for. Complete management over your feeds is vital in the upbringing of any site. Feedburner is essentially the Google Analytics for feeds.
   
   The web-based tools of Feedburner really help bloggers, podcasters and publishers to promote, deliver and profit from their content. Here is a fun fact for you: “According to Nielsen/NetRatings, FeedBurner is growing faster than MySpace and Digg with 385% traffic growth.”
5. ClickHeat
   Heatmaps are a great way to see where users are clicking on your page. They are fun but at the same time benefit you greatly in terms of media, link and advertisement placement. Seeing where users click in a wonderfully setout map of your site is really a treasure and ClickHeat offers this for free!
   All it takes to get started is a simple and quick download of the software and the easy installation of it on your site. All you have to do is include and external Javascript on your website and before you know it you will begin to see the power of click tracking!

There you have it. Five extremely useful tools that every web developer and designer should have bookmarked and saved, ready for use. I use these tools nearly everyday and they all help me to push and market my websites to their fullest potential and without them, well that would be a different story!
Share your opinions and knowledge:

• Have you used these tools before?
• What were your experiences like?
• What other tools do you use?

Come on, let’s hear it!