RVA Street Art Festival…. more info here >>>

Recently I have been revamping not only my Hollen Zoo Designs website, but how I run the whole design process.  As a small designer, that has a growing number of clients, a hand shake and a verbal agreement is no longer enough and often left the client unsure of what was really included in their design package.

To make this easier and clearer for the client, I switched over to using Freshbooks for my invoicing, and that seemed to make a difference in the process (I had been using Blinksale).

However with Freshbooks I was still not able to give the client all the needed information for the project.  But then I some how stumbled on Bidsketch.

Bidsketch is easy to use proposal software for web designers.

Pros

• Easy to use with step by step guides through the proposal process.  Great for those like me that need help putting all the details and pieces together.
• Comes with built in templetes that create a great starting point for your proposals.
• Options to choose what templetes to include in the opening and closing sections.
• Saves your proposal templetes so that you can reuse, and edit as needed, for each new proposal.
• Client views a nice online (and pdf version) of the proposal that looks very streamlined and profesional.
• Client accepts proposal online.
• Integrates with Freshbooks!  Ok, I love this.  Client accepts proposal and then I press a button– boom– the invoice will appear in Freshbooks.  Within minutes, my client will have a nice looking invoice that matches the proposal they just accepted.
• Ability to have optional items in the proposal that the client can uncheck and the proposal fee total will reflect those changes.
• Great customer service.  I was having an issue with the Freshbooks integration, and I had a response within hours about the issue.

Cons

• Cost.  The smallest package is $19 per month with a 25 client and 200 proposals.  For a small company like me, I have lots of clients but few proposals per month.  I think $19 would be fine for unlimited clients and 25 proposals. Or would be better to have a $9 a month package with 25 proposals, and 25 clients.  Quoterobot, a similar servies, is $10 a month, period (but really doesn’t offer the same level of service and integrations, so I would be willing to pay more for Bidsketch).
• The place for the client to change the optional fees (it is located on the left hand side) might be a bit hard for less computer savvy clients to find.

Overall

I love this software and can see it making the quote process a way to start the client / designer relationship on the same page.  I had tried Quoterobot but it just didn’t have as good of workflow or the integrations that Bidsketch offers. I am excited to have found Bidsketch, and look forward to making the proposal process easier for me and for the client.

twitterfeed.com : feed your blog to twitter.

There are many methods to feed your blog posts to twitter and facebook.  My favorite, and the one I am not recommending to clients, is twitterfeed.

It is easy to set up your feed/s with a step by step process.  There are Advanced Settings that allow you to pick update frequency, post content, and add post suffix to each tweet.