What features for web design project management system?

[-joe-]

Hi there, I'm currently about to custom-build a CRM (customer relations management) system for my web design business.

Now, I want this to be the best ever made. Ambitious goal, I know, but I wanna go for it. I also want it to be almost 100% automated, so I can just sit back and let the money flow.

What I'm thinking, is, having four login tiers:

Admin: Just me, maybe one other person in the future. 100% control, but I'd prefer to avoid having to use it.

Managers: I will hire a Filipino or two for general management, as well as some customer support. Also, I'll get some English/US teenager in to handle support as well, although they won't be a manager. Each Filipino will be assigned a few designers under them.

Designers: The designers. They will do the designs, and also follow up any job-related support tickets from clients.

Clients: They get their login, and will be able to see the status of the project, message designers, view a calendar, and make complaints if necessary. They will also get their final files through the system.

So, anyone got any ideas as to what I can include in this?

Thanks. Tits for your trouble:

 

[galacon]

Wow... So young, yet such tasty meat curtains...

 

[patrick24601]

What are you going to automate?

 

[-joe-]

What are you going to automate?

Everything, really. Only thing I plan to do myself is give a monthly bonus to the best performing manager, and deal with complaints. Preferably, I'd like everything else to be handled by the workers.

So far I've come up with:

Client:

• Calendar, predicted completion dates and milestones
• Ticketing, send support tickets to designer about anything. Forwarded to me and managers, to ensure there's no fiddling.
• Live chat, appointment based, mainly for initial discussion about what's needed with the designer. Again, everything will be logged to ensure no fiddling.
• Reporting, shows current progress, with allowance for email reporting + push notifications, á la SEscout
• History, shows order history etc.
• Referrals, referral program, possibly with discounts or gift cards in exchange?
• Complaints, allows complaints, which will go direct to me. Possibly an automatic goodwill discount system, although that may be left out, due to the potential to be abused.
• File uploads, allows uploads of mindmaps, concepts etc, to show to designer.

Designer:

• Calendar, shows expected delivery dates, allow to set milestones, and also designer can blank off dates for holidays etc.
• Project tracking, shows current projects, with a brief description, can be expanded for full details.
• Ticketing system, allows for replying to tickets and opening new tickets with the client, the manager, or me.
• Live chat, inbuilt appointment based live chat, as referenced in the client section.
• Submit work for project as psd, will be forwarded to manager and coder (who will have a similar interface, although slightly reduced)
• Automatic project assignment to designers.

I'm still brainstorming the manager + admin sections.

So, any improvements?

Thanks

 

[sumohax0r]

I used to be all gung ho about building all my own systems too, then after years and years of slow process and spending more time on the coding / design then making money - It finally clicked.

Things that you can get by without going custom, do it.

Especially a CRM there is tons of options out there that will suit your needs, spend that time and energy one something that you can make money on.

The CRM world is hard to compete (if you are going to sell your platform), your up against Salesforce, Sugar CRM, Basecamp + 500 others.

Not trying to shit on your project, because I know how excited I can get when I start planning a project out like this, but really eveluate if it is going to be worth the headache.

A full blown CRM like your talking is months of work, if you REALLY want to do it right.

++++ tons of time debugging / adding needed features later down the road.

ORRRRRRRRRRR

Signup for Basecamp $99 a month and get to work making money now.

ya know what I'm sayin?

 

[dchuk]

End to end website development and design is damn near impossible to automate, especially with a crew of filipinos running the show. What you want to build will take 200+ man hours at least, when you could have done what sumohax0r is suggesting and signed up for Basecamp in less than an hour.

And I'm not just being a pretentious asshole, I've worked in a web design shop for years

 

[-joe-]

I used to be all gung ho about building all my own systems too, then after years and years of slow process and spending more time on the coding / design then making money - It finally clicked.

Things that you can get by without going custom, do it.

Especially a CRM there is tons of options out there that will suit your needs, spend that time and energy one something that you can make money on.

The CRM world is hard to compete (if you are going to sell your platform), your up against Salesforce, Sugar CRM, Basecamp + 500 others.

Not trying to shit on your project, because I know how excited I can get when I start planning a project out like this, but really eveluate if it is going to be worth the headache.

A full blown CRM like your talking is months of work, if you REALLY want to do it right.

++++ tons of time debugging / adding needed features later down the road.

ORRRRRRRRRRR

Signup for Basecamp $99 a month and get to work making money now.

ya know what I'm sayin?

Really good point. However, while the customization is really nice to have, it's not just about that. Since it's a web design company, it's also a bit about prestige. If I can say, "hey, we've built this elite platform, look at what everyone else has done, designed a website for a small pizza shop. Plus, we're cheaper" people will be more likely to go with me. You have a really good point though. Out of interest, how long do you reckon a Filipino would take? Just if I can get a decent coder for $400 a month, it may be worth it.

Thanks very much for the advice though, I definitely prefer it to sugar-coated "everything's gonna be lovely" advice

End to end website development and design is damn near impossible to automate, especially with a crew of filipinos running the show. What you want to build will take 200+ man hours at least, when you could have done what sumohax0r is suggesting and signed up for Basecamp in less than an hour.

And I'm not just being a pretentious asshole, I've worked in a web design shop for years

Fair point, although there doesn't seem to be too much difficulty in automating it? Since the designers will be US and UK based, no Filipinos, it's mainly them that'll be handling everything, the Filipino managers are more just an additional extra to add a bit of oil to the gears.

Fair enough about the 200 man hours, that is a lot. However, if I could outsource that to Russia/India/Phillipines (with someone from the US/UK testing it at the end), it may be more manageable. Also, with basecamp, my main problem is with the lack of customization and the prestige aspect.

Thanks very much

P.S. Post 666

 

[Jizzlobber]

I looked at them all. Although everyone likes Basecamp, the two that I found to be best were Comindwork and Central Desktop. I ended up going with Comindwork for an offline project because I needed a Gantt feature. It also allows for customized workflows to be created. I would check out the demos for both these solutions for inspiration if you are rolling your own.

 

[sumohax0r]

Q: How long have you been doing web development work?

This will help me get more of a prospective because I've been there.

Q: Do you do your own coding? or are you looking to hire a Filipino?

I've lived in the PHP and know someone locally that have worked with
Filipino programmers.

------------------------------------------------------------------

It is nice to have a custom backend, but honestly customers could care less :/ its sad because I've done it, spent 50 hours on building a PHP backend that looked nice for a client to update there site.

95% of my clients preferred I use wordpress because it was more flexible.

So that's when I started building every site on top of wordpress, its not much more work to make a xHTML site a theme and clients love how easy it is for them to manage.

They could care less if its custom, they just want it to work right.

And with systems as popular as Wordpress and Basecamp, its just not a big deal.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Also if you look at most big agencys there sites are very minimal, usually just down
to a name and some contact info.

You can sign a $50,000 client without a website if you can make yourself look good
enough when meeting / talking to the client.

I promise you a client is never going to say "Basecamp? why don't you have your own custom project management software" because business's use third party tools all day long, they don't even know what custom is really.

 

[-joe-]

I looked at them all. Although everyone likes Basecamp, the two that I found to be best were Comindwork and Central Desktop. I ended up going with Comindwork for an offline project because I needed a Gantt feature. It also allows for customized workflows to be created. I would check out the demos for both these solutions for inspiration if you are rolling your own.

Awesome, cheers, will do

Q: How long have you been doing web development work?
About a month now, although it's all outsourced.
This will help me get more of a prospective because I've been there.

Q: Do you do your own coding? or are you looking to hire a Filipino?

I've lived in the PHP and know someone locally that have worked with
Filipino programmers.
My original plan was to do my own coding, for a bit of a weird reason - I don't know a single coding language, other than HTML. I thought being chucked in at the deep-end might help me. However, 200 man hours sounds like a lot, since I'm assuming that's for a moderately experienced coder. So I think I may be looking to hire a Filipino.

------------------------------------------------------------------

It is nice to have a custom backend, but honestly customers could care less :/ its sad because I've done it, spent 50 hours on building a PHP backend that looked nice for a client to update there site.

95% of my clients preferred I use wordpress because it was more flexible.

So that's when I started building every site on top of wordpress, its not much more work to make a xHTML site a theme and clients love how easy it is for them to manage.

They could care less if its custom, they just want it to work right.

And with systems as popular as Wordpress and Basecamp, its just not a big deal.

Yeah, fair point. It's partly because I really do need to prove I'm good, because while I've got a lot of interest from the people on the forum I'm advertising on, a few months ago in one of my first posts there, I mentioned my age (17), so a select few have been on my ass about that because they're still on 30k a year at the age of 40. Unfortunately, this means that some people listen to them, so my sales get reduced consequently. And no, no plans to do a general website backend, just the CRM for my own website. I'll be sticking with wordpress.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Also if you look at most big agencys there sites are very minimal, usually just down
to a name and some contact info.
Good point.
You can sign a $50,000 client without a website if you can make yourself look good
enough when meeting / talking to the client.
Yeah, I know, but it's an added selling point.
I promise you a client is never going to say "Basecamp? why don't you have your own custom project management software" because business's use third party tools all day long, they don't even know what custom is really.

Yeah, I know they won't, it's just it's something quantifiable, compared to the rest of web design work. Plus, in the long run, it saves money and automates

Thanks again

 

[dchuk]

Really good point. However, while the customization is really nice to have, it's not just about that. Since it's a web design company, it's also a bit about prestige. If I can say, "hey, we've built this elite platform, look at what everyone else has done, designed a website for a small pizza shop. Plus, we're cheaper" people will be more likely to go with me. You have a really good point though.

How long have you been doing web design for? The point you want to get to is having the highest rates while still getting clients, not being cheaper than competitors. The clients who are willing to go with the cheapest people out there are the ones you need to avoid, they'll run you dry to get everything they want for pennies.

Your new clients and bigger contracts will come from what you've done for others, not what you've done for yourself. 95% of your leads will come from networking and referrals, not your website/marketing lander/cool platform.

I've convinced client after client to go with my shop rather than a cheaper competitor because we weren't outsourcing to the philipines, we were experts at what we did, and we gave them face time. Most clients are retarded when it comes to this stuff, even ones at big agencies farming work out to your shop. You need to talk to them and hold their hand and deliver quality work.

 

[Rexibit]

To follow up on what sumohaxor said: I started using EE for my CMS and it's worked great. However, all the clients who really wanted to be able to edit the content themselves ended up paying me to do it because they decided they didn't want to fool with it, but still have the option if they wanted to later.

I use TeamworkPM for my project management, a lot better than basecamp in my opinion, and all the clients like the idea of it. However, they get lazy about a week into the project and just start E-mailing me everything instead of uploading the files there like I want them too.

My point is: having a nice custom backend is nice, but it's kinda pointless if the client doesn't want to use it.

 

[identity_00]

Most customers want a personal touch.... a call, a follow-up, talk to someone about their idea and what is happening. Most business owners can barely check their emails yet get online to "google it". They just want to know the steps, approvals, timelines, and good communication. When the design is done they'll want a point of contact for changes (or site emergencies) and hosting.

Maybe if you're selling 99 dollar websites to webmasters and just pumping them out - then that is cool whatever the expectation is low for that price point. If you're planning on big time clients or getting to the agency level then I can't imagine this working. The relationship and communication aspects are too important. The employee who ordered has "higher-ups" to respond to on projects etc. Their job maybe on the line if its a failure and they can't talk to a real person to work out the issues. That is a quick chargeback or you not getting paid. With no personal touch they're not invested and don't give a rats about you - they'll just call up another.

You can get a free account over at teamworkpm to get you started.

 

[mattseh]

If you insist on writing it yourself (don't these guys make good points), use a framework, it'll save you over 9000 minutes

 

[fericitul]

Have a look at ActiveCollab. I spent some time on finding good collaboration software for online projects, and this is what I ended up with. I might miss a few CRM and staffing features, but the project, ticketing, calendar part is worth having a look. There is free 14 days trial, enough to get some insights.

 

[-joe-]

How long have you been doing web design for? About a month now
The point you want to get to is having the highest rates while still getting clients, not being cheaper than competitors. The clients who are willing to go with the cheapest people out there are the ones you need to avoid, they'll run you dry to get everything they want for pennies. Yeah, good point. I'm not on the cheap end, but not on the really expensive end either. Since I'm outsourcing the web design, I'd rather have 15 orders with £100 profit each than 1 with £1000 profit. I'm trying to avoid that $70 website crowd as much as possible.

Your new clients and bigger contracts will come from what you've done for others, not what you've done for yourself. 95% of your leads will come from networking and referrals, not your website/marketing lander/cool platform.
Good point. However, I'll be doing a good job as well, and you've got to have a way to bring in the initial customers to recommend it.

I've convinced client after client to go with my shop rather than a cheaper competitor because we weren't outsourcing to the philipines, we were experts at what we did, and we gave them face time. Most clients are retarded when it comes to this stuff, even ones at big agencies farming work out to your shop. You need to talk to them and hold their hand and deliver quality work. Yeah, I'm including options in it so they can talk to me, but I don't think I'll mention the managers are from the Phillipines, by hiring ones who speak good English. All my designers are native English, and it's going to mostly be them who are dealing with the clients. It's just that when I scale up, I don't wanna be dealing with millions of clients on a daily basis, that sounds too much like a 9-5.

Thanks very much for all the help

To follow up on what sumohaxor said: I started using EE for my CMS and it's worked great. However, all the clients who really wanted to be able to edit the content themselves ended up paying me to do it because they decided they didn't want to fool with it, but still have the option if they wanted to later.
Kk

I use TeamworkPM for my project management, a lot better than basecamp in my opinion, and all the clients like the idea of it. However, they get lazy about a week into the project and just start E-mailing me everything instead of uploading the files there like I want them too. Yeah, thanks, I think I'll bury the email address a little bit, and have an auto-respond telling them if they have an order-related query to use the ticket system or live chat. Thanks though, that's something I hadn't fully considered.

My point is: having a nice custom backend is nice, but it's kinda pointless if the client doesn't want to use it.

Good point

Most customers want a personal touch.... a call, a follow-up, talk to someone about their idea and what is happening. Most business owners can barely check their emails yet get online to "google it". They just want to know the steps, approvals, timelines, and good communication. When the design is done they'll want a point of contact for changes (or site emergencies) and hosting. Yeah, that's the main aim of this, try to make it as user-friendly, easy to use, and to the point, as possible. It's just that sometimes people don't want the hassle of the niceties of a conversation, and just want it straightforward and to the point. Thanks

Maybe if you're selling 99 dollar websites to webmasters and just pumping them out - then that is cool whatever the expectation is low for that price point. If you're planning on big time clients or getting to the agency level then I can't imagine this working. The relationship and communication aspects are too important. The employee who ordered has "higher-ups" to respond to on projects etc. Their job maybe on the line if its a failure and they can't talk to a real person to work out the issues. That is a quick chargeback or you not getting paid. With no personal touch they're not invested and don't give a rats about you - they'll just call up another.
Yeah, I'm planning to pump them out a bit, definitely not planning agency level any time soon. However, it's definitely not on the $99 end of the spectrum, either, currently my price-point is ~£250 for a pretty good website, and ~£350-400 for a really top notch one. While I'd like to get gigantic orders of 4/5 figure sums, tbh, I think it makes more sense for me to go with mid-range clients.
You can get a free account over at teamworkpm to get you started.

Thanks very much

If you insist on writing it yourself (don't these guys make good points), use a framework, it'll save you over 9000 minutes

kk, any suggestions?

Have a look at ActiveCollab. I spent some time on finding good collaboration software for online projects, and this is what I ended up with. I might miss a few CRM and staffing features, but the project, ticketing, calendar part is worth having a look. There is free 14 days trial, enough to get some insights.

Awesome, cheers, thanks

Btw, I just finished mindmapping on paper the features and basic layout, so I'm definitely pretty tempted to go the fully custom route hehe. How many hours do you reckon it would take a Filipino to code? (obviously it'd be checked over by a native english person, and beta tested before release)

Cheers

 

[Garrett]

I also want it to be almost 100% automated, so I can just sit back and let the money flow.

Dude FAIL. Nothing works like that.

You should save the time/money spent on a custom system and come up with a strategy of getting your first few customers. Web Design has huge referral potential from satisfied customers, so you just need to get your first 10 or 20. Here's an idea for you. Go to LeadImpact or AdOn or TV and bid on GoDaddy.com/Wordpress.org and "How to Build Website" kws - make a squeeze page, bribe them to give their email, and win them over

You only have 1 month of coding experience? Fuck man disregard custom system acquire marketing skills

 

[Garrett]

Here's another tip:

Rank for these types of keywords with SEO:

-hire web designer

 

[-joe-]

Dude FAIL. Nothing works like that.

You should save the time/money spent on a custom system and come up with a strategy of getting your first few customers. Web Design has huge referral potential from satisfied customers, so you just need to get your first 10 or 20. Here's an idea for you. Go to LeadImpact or AdOn or TV and bid on GoDaddy.com/Wordpress.org and "How to Build Website" kws - make a squeeze page, bribe them to give their email, and win them over
I've already got a few customers. And I will be shortly, it's just first I need a website for myself, and, if I want to handle bulk orders, a decent backend.

You only have 1 month of coding experience? Fuck man disregard custom system acquire marketing skills

Nope, 0 months of coding experience (excluding HTML). I thought it might help being chucked in at the deep end, to learn quickly. Thinking about it, however, it may be better to hire someone. And coding will help me in the future with my marketing.

Here's another tip:

Rank for these types of keywords with SEO:

-hire web designer

Thanks, yeah, that's what I'm aiming for, I have a strategy for that.

So, how much time do you guys reckon I could get a Filipino to do it in? (or possibly an Indian, but they're a bit expensive in comparison)

 

[Garrett]

So, how much time do you guys reckon I could get a Filipino to do it in? (or possibly an Indian, but they're a bit expensive in comparison)