7 Free Digital Marketing Tools to Optimize Your Coworking Space Website

So you’ve got a website up and running for your new coworking space.

What’s next?

Perhaps you’re asking yourself,

• How do I maximize the number of visitors to my website?
• Have I structured the site with a clear user journey in mind?
• How do I know if anyone is visiting my site in the first place?

We’ve compiled a list of seven powerful digital marketing tools for coworking spaces to help you take control of your website experience and maximize the value you are generating from it.

In this post we are sharing these tools with you along with tips on how to drive more traffic to your website.

What digital marketing tools does every coworking space need?

The world of marketing tools, otherwise known as martech, is vast. Deciding what to invest your time and energy in can be overwhelming.

Here are the categories of digital marketing tools that we most often see coworking spaces investing in:

• Content refinement
• Speed testing
• Data and analytics
• Heat mapping
• Paid traffic

These categories of digital marketing tools give you a good overview of what kinds of things you can use to optimize your coworking space website. You can always add more, but it’s better to stay lean as you’re just starting out, especially as you’re just learning the tools.

Best free digital marketing tools for overall coworking space website optimization

1. The Hemingway App

Best for: content refinement

Content is a great place to start when investing in improvements to your website.

Every word you choose has the potential to influence people’s perception of your brand and the experience you have created in your space.

Hemingway is a free web-app that “makes your writing bold and clear”. Here’s how it works:

• Visit hemingwayapp.com
• Copy and paste your website content directly in the platform

It’ll then give you guidance on your writing including readability, use of passive voice and adverbs, and more.

The more you use Hemingway, the better your writing will be in future first drafts.

Pro-tip: Web copy that is written at a Grade 8 level or below perform best. Keep this in mind when crafting your content, and always opt for simpler language alternatives and sentence structures.

2. GTmetrix

Best for: speed testing

Website speed is one of the most important SEO factors when it comes to ranking in Google.

Testing your site speed using a tool such as GTmetrix can yield insights that drive results almost immediately.

There are a lot of tools out there, but GTmetrix offers a free, comprehensive report. Simply enter the URL of your coworking website and within seconds you will see a number of suggestions.

Some will be immediately actionable, while others may require the support of a more experienced web developer. Regardless, you will likely find there is a lot of low-hanging fruit for you to tackle on your own.

Pro-tip: Be sure to analyze more than just your homepage. Your homepage may be the least data-intensive page on your site, making it naturally the fastest. It may also not be as important as you’d assume, depending on how traffic flows into your site (i.e., the majority of your traffic could be landing on your blog or the page for your events space or coworking memberships).

3. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test

Best for: website responsiveness

Now that mobile internet activity represents more than 50% of all web traffic, it is imperative that your coworking website be mobile-friendly.

A simple Google search for “responsive design test” will generate many tools to help you understand what your website looks like across dozens of different screen sizes. One test you can’t afford to miss is the Google Mobile-Friendly Test.

This tool shows you if Google considers your page mobile-friendly or not.

• If you get a green checkmark, then congratulations! Your site is optimized for mobile
• If not, then you’ll see the reasons why your site failed so that you can take action

Your page will be bumped down in the mobile search results in favor of similar pages from other coworking websites that are, so it’s important to take this digital marketing tool seriously.

Pro-tip: Spend some time reviewing Google’s Mobile Playbook. This guide is packed with insights, tools, and tactics to help you in the process of enhancing you brand’s mobile experience.

4. Hotjar

Best for: understanding user behavior

Hotjar is a heat map tool that tracks users movement through your website. It helps you visualize the user journey on your website so you can see:

• How far down a page someone scrolls
• What CTAs they click on most
• What pages they click on from the homepage most often

You can then use these insights to optimize your website for conversions. For example, if you see that everyone only scrolls down 25% of your homepage before exiting, you can move your most important CTA to above the drop-off point and see if that affects conversions.

Pro-tip: Hotjar is best known for their heat maps. However, they also offer a recordings feature which allows you to record an entire user’s journey from the minute they land on your website to the minute they leave.

Best free digital marketing tools for coworking spaces to drive traffic to their website

5. Google Analytics

Best for: traffic analysis and page performance

Google Analytics is a free tool that allows you to measure the performance of your website.

It’s simple to set up, and once installed, will provide you with a wide range of valuable data.

It can help you answer questions like:

• How many people visit my website over a given time period?
• Where are my visitors located geographically?
• What other websites send traffic to mine?
• What marketing tactics drive the most traffic to my website?
• Which pages on my website are the most popular?
• How many visitors have I converted into leads or customers?
• Where did my converting visitors come from and go on my website?
• What blog content do my visitors like the most?

With answers to questions like these, you can gain insights that wouldn’t otherwise be accessible.

Google Analytics is simply a must for any operation serious about the performance of their site.Here is a Google Analytics beginners certification course from Google to help you get started.

Pro-tip: Set up your conversion “goals” (e.g., a new coworking member signing up through your embedded sign-up tool) as soon as you can after installing Google Analytics. This will ensure you are tracking the most important data points as early as possible.

6. Google Optimize

Best for: A/B testing

All successful digital marketing efforts involve a significant amount of testing.

Google’s Optimize platform is a remarkably robust tool that you can access free of charge. Set up is easy and once it’s installed, you can begin running A/B tests on copy, imagery, and formatting alternatives to understand what drives your desired user behavior.

Imagine certain visitors with specific traits viewing a tailored version of your website. You can set up “personalization features” on your website using Google Optimize. Use this to:

• Display customized content depending on where users come from
• Show differing imagery to users coming to your website from an affiliated blog
• Present a different set of information to return visitors

You can essentially make it so your website is unique to every person who visits it.

Pro-tip: To avoid getting overwhelmed, start simple. Try experimenting with different CTA copy to see what language results in more visitors clicking your sign-up or “book a tour” button. Google Optimize will provide you with a great framework and helpful tips to make sure your experiments are properly set up.

7. Google Ads and Meta Business Suite

Best for: paid traffic

Many coworking spaces are turning to digital advertising in order to stand out.

Google Ads and Meta Business Suite are free platforms you can use to host your digital ads. You’ll have to pay for clicks on your ads of course, but using the platform is completely free.

Not sure where to start with your digital ads? One strategy you can employ to maximize your ROI is to create a hyper-localized set of ads, presenting your space to anyone searching within your neighborhood.

According to a global coworking survey led by Deskmag, 61% of coworking members cite “location” as their favorite aspect of their coworking space. Knowing how important location is in the decision-making process, you can avoid overspending on ads by narrowing your geographic focus from your entire city to specific neighborhoods.

Pro-tip: Both Google and Facebook have detailed instructions on how to set up these localization options. You can view the instructions for Google Ads here, and for Facebook Ads here.

These seven digital marketing tools will go a long way towards ensuring you’re unlocking the full potential of your coworking website.