Over the years of working with clients and running a multitude of different types of projects through the agency we’ve come to use a variety of tools to make our lives more efficient and therefore provide better value to our clients. We’re discovering new tools all the time – which are absolutely amazing and often free. I thought I would therefore share a few of my favourites with you.
Tools
Basecamp – Ow what a surprise – The project management software supremo. Clean and simple to use ideal for collaborating on projects, sharing to do lists, collating notes and setting in timeframes to deliver projects. Sometime we use it a little and sometimes a lot – Easy to use and always useful.
Toggl – We’ve looked at a variety of time tracking software over the years. This one is so simple to use even the designers don’t mind using it! It’s all up in the cloud and it enables us to keep track of time spent on a project. Helping us to learn lessons on the time projects take to deliver in reality.
Dropbox – I know there are a few options out there now including Google Drive and Sky Drive. This though is the one we started with and stuck with. Again easy to use for us and our clients and an ideal to share the sometime massive design files we create for web design or print projects. It also helps with the collaboration and of course back up of files.
Sanebox – Brings sanity to my inbox – literally – my email address has been out on the web for so many years that I sometimes feel that I am on every spammer / dodgy list vendor’s databases. This tool splits the emails I want to see out with the emails I don’t. It provides for less distractions and a more efficient use of time throughout the day.
SEOMOZ – A useful tool for our seo work. A wealth of information to help us understand the performance of our websites and how we might work better to optimise them – be it on site or through improved link building.
Google Analytics – This goes on all of our client’s websites as the default tool to track their site performance. More data and info than you could cope with in a lifetime. This is simply a great tool to measure the success of a website.
Google Webmaster tools – helps you to diagnose any issues on your site and includes a load of useful information with regard to your site.
Extensions
For Chrome my preferred browser but most are also available on Firefox.
Web developer – Used this on Firefox originally and just add it through Chrome extensions (which is unbelievably simple) – A mass of tools to help you look at webpages, review and identify issues.
I hope you find some of these useful. I know we do – They all help to make our design agency not simply creative but also very efficient.
So what tools do you use? Let us know of any others!
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Chris Peak