If you’re just getting started setting up your website and your design business, there are few tools that I’d recommend you set up.

Even if you don’t plan to use them now, they’ll be handy later on and you’ll be really glad you set them up sooner than later.

Google Analytics

The first tool I recommend you set up is Google Analytics and it’s free to use. If you sign up you can connect your Google Analytics to your website and it will allow you to track important data from your website.

For example, you will be able to see how many people have visited your website each day, which pages they visited, how many people signed up to your email list or opt-in pages, which pages are the most popular etc.

You can also dive in further and track things such as which page they entered your website on, how long they stayed on that page and then which page they exited from. It’s a powerful tool that will give you a lot of information and will allow you to see which pages on your website are working well, what’s not working, how many people are going to your website, how your website’s improving over time and much more.

It’s a tool that most business owners use on their website and I highly recommend it.

Facebook pixel

The second tool I want to recommend is installing a Facebook pixel on your website.  You will need to organise a business Facebook account but when you do you’ll be able to get access to your Facebook pixel.

Basically, what a Facebook pixel does is it allows you to track the people who have visited pages on your website, signed up to your opt-in incentives etc. and you can then target those people with Facebook or Instagram ads. Even if you don’t think running ads is something you’ll want to do, I recommend installing it sooner rather than later as the longer you have the pixel tracking your pages, the more data you will have to use to help sell your products or services should you wish to.  So if you were creating, for example, a range of products you would be able to show ads to people who had visited certain pages on your website or you could create lookalike audiences for people who have visited your website. It’s a really powerful tool for marketing.

You can also do the same with Pinterest. So you may want to also think about adding a Pinterest tag to your website will allow you to track and target people with Pinterest ads.

Email list

The thing I want to recommend is creating an email list of customers. Once again, this is something that is good to start sooner than later as you can start creating a list of potential customers and have a way of being able to connect with and share your products and services with them. The best way to get people to sign up to your website is with an opt-in incentive. That is when you ask for someone’s email address in exchange for something else e.g.  perhaps you’ve got a store and you offer 10% off their first sale, or you might offer a free downloadable or something like Creating an email list gives you a way of being able to contact and keep in touch with people that are interesting in what you do.

So that means if you’ve got a product that you’re going to release, are running a sale, or have some information to share you’ll have your own mailing list of people who are really interested in what you do that you will be able to share it with.

If you’re getting started with your business or perhaps you have already started and don’t have these 3 tools in place yet, I highly recommend setting them as you will be thankful for it down the track