My top five... websites

1. http://www.constantcontact.com
Already used by lots of arts organisations, this is a great, cost-effective, e-marketing solution where you pay a higher subscription as your email database grows. You can segment your database, import email addresses or input manually, fully customise a good selection of e-bulletin templates in line with your own brand guidelines, then track response rates when the emails are sent. There’s a free 60-day trial, so what’s not to like?!

2. http://www.surveymonkey.com
Another great online resource, this time for undertaking surveys. For most arts organisations, Snap survey software is an expensive and complicated sledgehammer to crack the nut of simple audience/customer research, and by comparison Survey Monkey offers fantastic value for money. You can manually input data, but it’s designed primarily as a web resource that automatically gathers responses and enables a decent level of analysis and reporting. Also priced in US dollars, it’s particularly good value at the moment.

3. http://www.google.com/analytics
When it comes to website statistics reporting, I don’t think you can beat Google Analytics. First, it’s free of charge to use, and the functionality is excellent. Then there’s a very clever and fully customisable ‘Dashboard’ that displays the tracking information you are most interested in. Reports can be tailored to your own requirements and emailed to you as often as you like. It takes a bit of setting up, but once it’s done, you can reap the rewards.

4. http://www.download.com
This website is a very useful one-stop shop for software utility programs. For example, you might need a simple tool to create thumbnail images or a free piece of encryption software. The solution to these and thousands of other requirements (as well as lots of fun stuff) are all on this site, sometimes free, sometimes not. There’s a good scoring system based on both an editorial rating and a user rating, and an indication of how many other people have downloaded each piece of software.

5. http://www.freelanceuk.com
Freelance UK is aimed at those of us who are self-employed and working in the media, creative, marketing and PR industries. As well as providing an interesting round-up of news stories and updates, there is some very useful advice and contacts on areas such as tax and finance. They also send out a weekly e-newsletter that usually contains at least one interesting nugget.