10 essential tools to get your new web-app off the ground

If you have already created your awesome business plan, pitched your project and got some money from an angel investor or if you’re bootstrapping it and paying from your own pocket, now it’s time to get organized and create a project management strategy to get it off the ground.

There are many great and inexpensive tools out there that help you growing your idea into an actual tangible project. Yet outsourcing is not always the best option due to strategic decisions, we also present some interesting options to get feedback to your designs, PHP frameworks and the best way of handling your support tickets, all using 3rd party applications, which means less infra-structure and fixed costs for your company!

We hope you enjoy the list. Please comment if you know other/better tools.

1. Project Management with Basecamp

Basecamp has 1.000.000+ users and didn’t stop growing yet. What is their secret for success? The KISS factor (Keep It Simple Stupid).

The company behind this great Project Management Tool, 37Signals, focuses on the obvious and simplicity when providing you with an online app. This concept turns out to be great for online services and is why this app so widely used and loved by its customers.

• Smallest Package: $24/mo for up to 15 different projects
• Other paid options: ProjectBubble, Zoho Projects
• Open Source Options: PHProject (PHP), The Trac Project (Python)

2. Wireframes with Mockingbird

Wireframing your project is probably one of the most important steps of any online project management path, and becomes even more crucial if your development staff is working remotely.

Wireframes make you think before coding, they simulate the whole interface of your project before it even leaves the paper and makes it very easy to make changes to haven’t thought about before. It’s a great way of getting feedback and discussing features and usability elements before you attach a robust back-end to it.

• Smallest Package: $9/mo with 2 active projects (unfortunately their beta stage will be over after Aug 15th)
• Other paid options: Balsamiq, Jumpchart and 10 others here
• Open Source Options: Pencil Project, Denim

3. Crowd-source you logo and initial website design at CrowdSpring

CrowdSpring is an awesome (and relatively new) idea that brings thousands of designers and (mostly) small businesses together to provide custom logo design, web design and even writing services.

You just have to post your project briefing, all necessary assets (including wireframes if available), your budget for it and see the designs flow and pic a winner at the end of the time-line you decided on. It works great, it’s fun and you can get many quality designs using it!

• Smallest Package: every project has a minimum award (i.e. $200 for logos)
• Other options: 99Designs, BlurDesigns

Do you need something more professional or aren’t comfortable with outsourcing? Choose your agency at Sortfolio

4. Choose a great framework like CodeIgniter

Frameworks not only help you save a lot of development time, they also offer a stable environment and most of them have very active communities all around the World. CodeIgniter is our choice mostly because its extensive documentation and great community.

• Other great Framework Options: Zend PHP Framework, Cake PHP, Cappuccino Web Framework

5. Hire coders at oDesk

Hiring a freelance programmer can be a very elaborate task. There are many “get  a freelancer” websites out there, but some are hard to understand, some are tricky to navigate and find stuff and others are just too shady. With a network of 670.000+ contractors, oDesk – a marketplace for online workteams – takes freelancing very seriously and offers many great tools to control what’s being done and by whom, candidate reviews, cover letters, portfolios and so on.

• Other well known outsourcing marketplaces: Freelancer.com, Elance, FreelanceSwitch, ProgrammerMeetDesigner

6. Get your remote usability testing from the crowd (or privately) at ConceptFeedback.com

While developing a new product, it is interesting to notice how attached and used to it you become. o avoid this tricky situation, it is good to get some feedback from random people, like friends and family. Thinking of that, ConceptFeedback was born.

It is an online feedback service, where you post screen-shots of your new product and get design, usability and strategy advice from their community of online professionals. They offer three different levels of feedback: Public, Private and Expert – giving you different options of depth and privacy in the feedbacks you get. The most important aspect of this is that you don’t get only design, but also strategic and usability feedback on your future project.

• Smallest Package: FREE (if you review 5 or more concepts first)
• Other options: FiveSecondContest, PleaseCritiqueMe, FeedBackArmy

More on usability: 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines

7. Get a great VPS server at MediaTemple

Some say that their servers are slow, some say they are overpriced. So far we’ve had a great experience with MediaTemple and their support and knowledge base are exceptional. Therefore if you want and extensible and easy to manage server, I would suggest you to take a look at what they have to offer, including their new, raw, cloud veServer that offers integrated controls, or the option to quickly scale to multiple servers with instant provisioning.

• Smallest VPS Package: $ 50/mo (20Gb, 512Mb Ram, 1TB transfer)
• Other great VPS options: VPS.net, Linode
  

If you need a professional powerhouse, we recommend RackSpace Dedicated Servers.

8. Use an external like TenderApp to handle your support

While your grows it can become a real challenge to organize your clients support requests over time. Usually companies start handling those issues via e-mail, but it might get time consuming and quite chaotic as your company thrives.

Thinking of that, ENTP developed Tender Support, an online helpdesk application that manages support requests, organizes your customer care and help your customers help themselves, providing them with a great service experience.

• Smallest Package: $19/mo for up to 3 support staff
• Other paid options: ZenDesk, Mojo
• Open Source Options: osTicket, OTRS

9. Help your site generating more leads at Olark

Sometimes people come to your site and have a hard time understanding what it is all about or even having trouble finding some information. To avoid loosing those leads, products like Olark exist.

With real time tracking and chat you can make sure your customer gets everything he needs on your website, in real time, making it easier not to loose those expensive CPC leads you got.

• Smallest Package: $15/mo for 1 operator
• Other paid options: Pluggo, Meebo

10. Get Feedback from users with KissInsights

The best way of improving your user’s experience on you website is to get feedback. Thinking of that KissInsights was born. They offer you a tool to get instant feedbacks from your customers about a specific page or area in your site. They make it easy and fast for your customer, creating a rich database of desired or missed features and areas you could improve.

• Smallest Package: $29/mo with up to 1.000 responses per month
• Other paid options: UserVoice, CrowdSound, GetSatisfaction
• Open Source Options: Google Moderator

A little more about jwaldeck

Jan (which is more like "yawn" than "Jenn") has German citizenship (American too), was born in Colombia and raised in São Paulo, Brazil - where he spent most of his life. Jan has been a nerd forever. He strives for pixel perfect designs, great user interfaces & clean code, loves tennis and is currently exploring new pursuits such as blogging, photography and skiing.

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