I’ve written before about how to be an efficient designer. As a two-person business, Paper Leaf needs to be especially efficient, as the two of us need to cover a lot of jobs – designers, but also sales, accounting, project management and more.
With that in mind, we’ve recently starting using client forms to help with those questions that always need to be answered near the beginning of every project. You know what I’m talking about – I’m sure you’ve received emails like this:
Hi, I need a website. How much?
To which you thoughtfully craft out a reply, stating how happy you are they came to you, how you’d love to work on their project, but first you need to know the following details (which you spell out from a-z). To which you get the reply:
Basically I need a website for sales that I can maintain. How much?
Of course, I exaggerate for humor’s sake, but sometimes it’s not too far off. So, as a designer, what is an effective way to combat this sort of “communication”? I previously spoke about the design brief and how Paper Leaf used a Word-based model. This works for some clients, but as we all know, the easier it is to do something, the more likely it is to get done. With this in mind, we’ve turned to online forms to answer these questions.
Specifically, we’ve started using Wufoo. Wufoo isn’t the only online form service out there (SurveyMonkey is another), but in my opinion, Wufoo is the clear-cut winner. They have a basic free service with some limitations (3 total forms, 10 fields per form, 100 replies to each per month), but for lots of people, this is more than enough. They offer customizable forms, embedded code, and more. I highly recommend checking it out. So, with that in mind, how exactly can we use these forms to maximize our time as designers?
Earlier I spoke about the same emails and questions that precede any project. “I need X. How much?” And after the client has committed to you, you need to gather all the details about their business and the specific project you’ve been hired for. This is where Wufoo (or similar) comes in to play.
Hit the jump for more!
