Free Tools

Hi I'm Raphaela

Welcome to my Free Tools page. You will find links to brand and business building tools that I personally use and recommend to all of my clients. I hope that these links get you pointed in the right direction. I am always a fan of trying to do as much as possible with free resources before paying for anything.

To Your Success,

Raphaela Laurean

Customer Experience Designer (CXD)

Free Workbook

If you are not really sure where to start, check out my free workbook ‘Wish Upon A Brand’, which will help get you going in the right direction. No, I’m not going to make you give me your email address to get my guide. This tool is here simply to help you think about developing your unique brand as part of your overall customer experience.

Get To Know Me

Listen to my Podcast on YouTube and read my free workbook 'Wish Upon A Brand' that goes along with the first nine episodes. Create your own customer experience. 

Wish Upon A Brand
Your Customers Shoes Podcast On YouTube
YCS Digital Business Card

Free Tools Categories

Evaluating Your Competitors

One of the most robust free tools that I can recommend for all of the categories listed below are my free workbook ‘Wish Upon A Brand‘ and the first 9 episodes of My Podcast. They are designed to go together. They are both free and they will give you a wonderful starting place to begin creating your unique customer experience.

Understanding how your customers judge you against your competitors is an immensely important part of designing your customer experience. Check out my Rules Of The Click PDF and YouTube video to see what your customers actually do while evaluating who they choose to do business with.

Google and Facebook are the two best free tools that are at your disposal for evaluating your competition. Your potential customers will use these tools to locate vendors to provide them with the product or service that you are selling, so you should go through the same process that they will. For example, if you are local lawn service in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, you would google ‘lawn service baton rouge’ and see who comes up.

Then based on that search, look at the available vendors and ask yourself, “Who would I choose and why?” This is a wonderful exercise to go through to understand what the competition looks like for your business.

Learning About Your Customers
Keyword Tool is a unique tool that you may use to see what your customers are searching for on the top websites for your industry. For example, you may see what search phrases that your customers are using on Amazon, Google, YouTube and more to help you to understand what keywords to use on your website and what hashtags to use on your social media channels. Additionally, if you enter these keywords into Google and look at who is repeatedly listed, that is also a wonderful indicator of who your competition main competitors are.

Ubersuggest.com is a tool which is very similar to the Keyword Tool above, but you can see a lot more of the data without having to upgrade your account. The reason why I am listing them both is to give you a way to build a list and crosscheck it. If you see the keyword on both sites, then this is probably a good indicator that this is a solid keyword for you to address on your site.

Quora.com is a valuable tool to consider when trying to develop your list of keywords. You probably know this site as a place where you go to ask and answer questions about pretty much everything, which is exactly why this is a powerful tool. You may go here and type in your main keyword, for example ‘lawn care california’ and you will see what customers are talking about. This can provide you with an amazing list of blog articles that you could write. If it has a lot of votes, then you know that it is a popular topic and this is content that you should have on your site.

Creating Your Brand Name, Image And Promise
Wish Upon A Brand Workbook is an easy to understand and free tool that walks you through the 9 steps of developing and clarifying what your brand name, image and promise will become. There are podcast episodes to go along with each of the 9 steps. I would highly recommend this workbook and podcast for anyone who is developing a brand.
Finding Your Social Media Brand Name
Namechk.com is a very useful tool for helping you to quickly see what domain names and social media profiles are and are not available. Simply enter the name that you are considering and then you will be able to see instantly whether or not the domain name and social media channels are available.

WordHippo.com is another powerful tool to use while trying to name your business. When you put names into the site above and see that they are taken, simply take the words that you are trying to use and plug them into WordHippo. This site generates alternative ways of saying the same thing.

Creating Your Logo And Slogan

Canva.com is one of the most polished platforms that I could suggest to you for creating and editing high end images, logos, stationary and more for your business. They have so many ready to use templates that you may customize and use for free. This will become your go to site I promise. You may also hire someone for only $5 on Fiverr. This is what I usually do, because their work is unique and complete quickly. 

Slogan Maker is a good place to start when you are trying to write your slogan. This is a great tool to enter the word or emotions that you are trying to capture and have it generate some potential slogans for you.

For a list of low cost vendors to use for this service, simply visit ‘My Favorites‘ page to see who I recommend.

Finding Images For Your Website/Social Media Channels
Unsplash.com is in my opinion the single best resource online for gathering images to use on both your website and social media channels. You may use these images in conjunction with Canva.com to produce some very high end looking results for free.
Setting Up Your Email

Google’s Gmail is a good starter solution. I will say that depending on the kind of business that you are running, having a gmail email address could look a bit ‘fly by night’. Your customers want to do business with a company that seems stable, reliable and permanent. For that reason, I always recommend setting up a custom email address to match your domain name, but if that is out of reach for your right now, then Gmail is the next best option to get you started. That said, when you are ready to buy your domain name, your email address is included. 

Building Up Your Credibility
Google My Business is an extremely important tool for your business. When your website is complete, simply submit your websites information, hours of operation and more. This tool allows you to complete and verify your business listing with Google, which is an important step in making sure that your customers can find you.
Getting Found Online
Google Web Tools is a step that you do not want to overlook. This tool gives you the ability to submit sitemaps for your website, which make it easier for search engines to find. There are hundreds of videos on YouTube about how to create and submit your website sitemap and it is free and easy. When your website is ready, make sure that you take care of this step.
Evaluating Your Website
GTMetrix.com is a free resource for you to run a check on your website. I will lead by saying that a lot of what you see here may seem too technical for you to address. That said, it will give you a good working list of any major problems that you may need to fix on your website. It addresses things like page load times, optimization, errors and more. It is certainly worth a trip over there when you are finished building you website.

Where You Can Find Me

Watch My YouTube Videos

Connect With Me Online

Your Customers Shoes Social Media

Read My Blog

Listen To My Podcast

Your Customer's Shoes Podcast

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Want me to help you with your customer experience?

OFFICE

104 North Airline Hwy

#125

Gonzales, LA 70737

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