Web design and development is a collaborative process, but often times it can be difficult for the designer and client to communicate effectively.
There are many ways to collect customer feedback (form, email, calls, PMS…) although one of the most efficient ways to do it, is through a WordPress feedback plugin.
A WordPress feedback plugin can help bridge the communication gap between web designers and clients.
Why do you need a good Feedback plugin for your design services
Client feedback can be extremely useful.
Many web designers don’t have a solid understanding of what clients want and need.
Just as importantly, many customers also don’t know what they need or don’t know how to express correctly what they want.
Communication is key to a successful project, and this is something you can improve thanks to a WordPress feedback plugin, one of the best WordPress plugins that you can include in your digital toolbox
Quality
It helps you create a quality final product that perfectly suits the client’s needs, and there is no better marketing than a happy customer (you can for example collect their testimonial for your sales page), and besides, you will have an extra asset to show in your portfolio.
Connection
Good communication makes customers feel valued.
It’s important to make customers feel special, a good communication helps to create a connection and keeps them coming back.
This applies to many other businesses, surely more than once you have returned to a restaurant or store where even if the product was not the best, the manners were excellent.
Productivity
Productivity increases. With a good feedback collection system in place, you will increase the speed at which you can complete the project, as the whole process will be smoother.
In addition, you will also improve your productivity internally, no more emails cluttering your inbox, inopportune calls that throw you off when you are working on something else, or SMS that can pop up at any time of the day.
Professionalism
It will make you look more professional. For example, if you explain your communication process on your service sales page, you will not only increase your conversions, but you will also be able to charge more for your services since you will be offering more value. At the end of the day, with good communication, you are also saving your customer’s time, and minimizing their frustrations.
Less grievances
Since you will be able to receive feedback more easily and not at the end of a specific milestone, you will be reducing the chances of receiving complaints and requesting last-minute changes when you thought the final product was ready.
Why use a WordPress plugin when there are already other “solutions” on the market?
If you have been offering design services for some time, surely you already have in mind (and in use) a system to collect feedback from your clients.
But while this may be fine to start with, it is probably not the best solution.
Calls and videocalls
Calls tend to be quite inconvenient, it is true that they can be scheduled, but the problem is that scheduling these calls also takes a lot of time, and either you use an external tool (such as Calendly), or be ready to send and receive a bunch of direct messages or emails to agree on exact date and time.
And even so, keep your fingers crossed that everything goes well and the meeting doesn’t have to be postponed.
It’s true that there is nothing more direct than a real-time (video) call, but due to its complexity, my recommendation is that you reserve this method of communication for start-up projects, and not as something you will use on a daily basis.
A classic of communication.
Email has the advantage that it is asynchronous, so neither you nor your customer will have to waste time setting a date and time to share feedback.
However, using this method has a couple of important complications.
First, it is much more difficult to communicate, at the design level, what you want to achieve or modify.
It’s complex to specify visual elements with words, so you would have to use screen capture and annotation tools as an extra resource, and not everyone has them or knows how to use them.
Secondly, email is a tool that you will use for many other things, so receiving more content there will probably overwhelm you, and if you don’t keep your inbox up to date, it will probably take you more work to find what you need.
The latter also applies to the customer.
If he doesn’t have his inbox up to date, it will probably take him a while to see your emails and to answer you, which will slow down the execution of the project, and make everything run slower.
Project management system
Using a project management software will also make you look very professional, and will allow you not only to manage feedback, but also to manage other important elements such as hours spent, milestones, and dates.
It is advisable to use this type of software, at least internally, as it will help you to be better organized.
However, your customer will probably be reluctant to use it.
For you everything is perfect and simple because you have all your projects in one place.
But your client won’t like the idea of having to sign up on Trello to manage his web design, to Asana to manage the ads he has outsourced to another company, or to ClickUp to get organized with the freelancer who edits his videos.
And on top of that, the platform you use may not be comfortable for him, or he may not know how to use it, so the process will still not go smoothly.
Not to mention that you will probably still need a tool to take screenshots and annotate them.
Direct feedback using a plugin: ProjectHuddle
What is the best solution then?
As you may already know from the title of this article, our recommendation is a WordPress plugin dedicated to collecting feedback.
Specifically, our recommendation is ProjectHuddle, one of the best WordPress plugins for website & design feedback.
The way it works is so simple that a single image will be enough to understand how it works since the only thing the customer will have to do is to put sticky notes on the parts of the page he wants to comment on.
This will create a small conversation box in that specific area of the page, making it very easy to know what your customer is referring to (without the need to use a screenshot application).
Plus, it’s a perfect way to keep track of all the changes that have been made to different parts of the website.
That’s just the front end for your client, which as you can see, is very easy to use, and will give you the feeling of being at home (since it’s their own website!) no need to use third-party tools that detract from your brand image.
On the other hand, internally in the back end, you will be able to easily see all the feedback you have received, prioritize it by dragging and dropping, assign it if you work in a team, and of course, mark the comments as resolved.
ProjectHuddle is Self-Hosted, you’ll have to install it on a WordPress site, this means the software is white-label, and you own the data!
- IMPORTANT NOTE: Once you’ve installed ProjectHuddle on a WordPress site, you’ll be able to use it on an unlimited number of websites, and those sites are not limited to WordPress, but any platform: squarespace, drupal, wix, webflow, magento…
The best of all is that ProjectHuddle is not only for web design but also for other types of design such as print design, advertisements, logo design, photography…
If you want to know all its features and potential, besides visiting the official website (as they have interactive demos so you can see in real-time how it works) I recommend you to take a look at the following video, where in 10min you can quickly see how this platform works.
Conclusion
Even if this tool is not free, we believe it is worth it.
All its licenses allow you to create unlimited mockups, and use it on unlimited websites, with unlimited users.
ProjectHuddle does not punish your success (more clients) with more expensive licenses.
Remember that your time is money, but your clients’ time is also money, and this tool will help both of you not to waste it, and that is something you can include in the cost of your services.
Metricool vs. Later, which one should you pick?
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