Effective communication between agencies and clients is what keeps a project growing smoothly and efficiently. However, it can be difficult to shuffle the projects or assignments within your agency while staying up to date with your clients.
Thankfully, there are a number of tools available for collaboration to manage communication with your agency’s clients. This makes your company look more professional and makes its work smooth. However, with these tools, it’s more difficult for critical details to fall through the cracks.
In this article, we will explore some of the benefits of dedicated communication tools for agencies. Then, we will share two great tools that could be ideal for you.
So, let’s get started!
The Benefits of Dedicated Communication Tools
It’s very important for an agency to constantly communicate with clients. Whether it’s the discovery phase of a software project, creation, or delivery, it is also important to stay in touch with the client so they will ensure that the final product meets their needs.
Email is a powerful tool to communicate and do business all over the world, but it has some limitations. Managing email communication between a large team and multiple client contact points can cause a lot of unnecessary back-to-backs. If a crucial conversation missed any thread, then the whole project can be thrown in disarray. In short, email communication requires tight organization so they can attend to all details at the times to be effective.
This is where dedicated communication tools come in. They have many options to take your discussions and turn them into dynamic interactions, also with them many people can participate in project communication. There are even dedicated apps to help so you can manage specific tasks like website prototyping, mockup approvals, collaborative comments, bug tracking, and much more.
You can reduce the time and money administer to any given project by streamlining your agency’s communication channels. You can provide a dynamic and dedicated interface for everyone involved in a project, you can also offload tasks easily. Here are a few other benefits:
- Communication is always ongoing with everyone having access to the same information.
- Project histories can be trackable so it will enable team members to get up to speed quickly.
- Collaborative comments mean you will not miss even a single important email.
- All assets of the project will be collated in one location so it will reduce the time you don’t need to search for a particular element.
Tools for Collaborating With Clients
Technology is services constantly becoming available and always evolving with new products. While there is a myriad of collaboration tools to choose from, below are industry-proven and offer the features you’ll need.
1. Project Huddle
Project Huddle is a self-hosted WordPress plugin for creating mockups and websites pages, Project Huddle also has a free version of this plugin you can find it on WordPress. When will you install it, you’ll get a JavaScript snippet that can be added to practically any website. You can use it in multiple projects, it also supports multi websites. you are enabled to control site data. It also incredibly portable, so can be used wherever you can access your website.
There are two considerations you want to make sure if Project Huddle is right or not for you:
- You’ll be able to quickly integrate this into your existing workflow and quickly increase the response and iterations of your projects.
- On the other hand, if most of your collaboration involves elements such as mood boards and brand research, Project Huddle will not be as useful. It is more suited to collaborating on mockups and interactive website prototypes closer to final delivery.
You can easily install Project Huddle like any other WordPress plugin, after installation, you can easily share your mockups and websites with clients. They’ll be able to click on any given area and leave a comment, so everyone quickly understands any pain points the client has.
2. InVision
InVision is a hosted service where you can use prototypes and communicate with your clients. You can sync designs directly with industry-standard design programs like Sketch and Photoshop. You can then turn your designs into interactive prototypes, so your client can get the desired results.
This is an ideal approach for agencies that do not want to host their own design resources, which can be server intensive. It works particularly well for design-heavy work that may eventually be assigned to another development team. For example, HTML and CSS snippets can be generated to help build the final project, making it ideal for development from scratch.
One of its more notable major features is integration with major sites like Basecamp, Slack, GitHub, and Trello. This means you can quickly share important updates to everyone else involved with the project for higher connectivity.
Let’s check the considerations that you’ll need to make when looking at InVision:
- If your agency focuses on the design more than the final development, then Invision is good for you. You will be able to organize and incorporate a coherent set of resources to check the series according to you and your client.
- If your agency’s main goal is to focus on on-site development and delivery, then InVision is not a good choice.
The good news is InVision also offers a free version so you can check it before purchase.
3. Mockplus
Mockplus is a web-based platform for product design teams to prototype, design, collaborate, and handoff. It has everything your design teams need from ideation to execution. You can not only create interactive prototypes online but also import designs from Sketch, Figma, Axure, Adobe XD and Adobe Photoshop to make them interactive, and then handoff designs with accurate specs, assets, and code snippets.
With Mockplus, all the stakeholders, including your clients, can be involved in the design process. You can collaborate with your clients and get real-time comments from them to iterate your design and build a final product that really meets their needs.
Here are two considerations you need to check to make sure if Mockplus is right for you:
- If your clients want to be a part of the design process and give their feedback in real-time, then Mockplus is the right choice for you, which will help to streamline your design workflow, get all stakeholders involved, gather instant feedback, and move projects forward quickly and more efficiently.
- If your clients focus more on how the product will be developed by engineers, then Mockplus is not a good choice. Mockplus offers a forever free basic plan for all its customers. You can check its outstanding features anywhere at any time before you move to a paid plan.
Wrapping Up
Client communication management is difficult, especially for in-depth projects. Tools like Project Huddle and InVision can help you by providing a central place to manage updates, feedback, and other vital communication.
If you are focusing on development then use Project Huddle and if you are focusing on design then use InVision.
