Sometimes we’re asked:
What are the best tools you use to work with clients? Minimise email? Make things faster?
Over the past years building up Shopify Ninjas from a one-man small-time show to one of Shopify’s biggest specialized development teams, I’ve discovered several systems that help make projects smooth. Below are my favorites. (There are no affiliate links; they’re just things I love.)
If you’re a store owner wanting to work with developers, you may like to see if they use these (since they’re tried-and-trusted), and if you’re a developer, consider them for your projects.
Whoever you are, they’re likely to make your life easier. For store owners, we also have a Shopify-specific toolkit.
On to the life-saving web development toolsets…
Project Management: Basecamp.
Put simply, BaseCamp will save you tons of time, and tons of headaches. Store everything related to your project in one place: files, comments, to-do lists, and documents. We use BaseCamp for our projects and it’s great for communicating across continents (our team is spread across 3 of them!), and clients can see exactly what’s happening.
Honorable mention: A free, also decent version is Trello. Not as robust as BaseCamp, but a nice freebie.
Figuring Out Requirements: Google Docs
There’s nothing that makes me warm and fuzzy quite like a Google Document for requirements. Need to tell a web developer what you want, list out apps you need, and get their comments? This is the fastest way when setting up a project.
Create a document, get your developer to comment on it, and finalize the details. Once done, move on to BaseCamp to execute the project (as above).
Testing across devices: Screenfly
Screenfly is a great, free tool for testing across phones/tablets/desktops at all kinds of sizes. We use it for testing. I did a detailed write-up of Screenfly over here.
Screenshots: Skitch + Evernote
The price is right, again — this is another wonderful free tool. With Skitch, you can create annotations and screenshots that make things easy to understand. I use it for communication with clients every day and love it.
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Those are the essentials for communicating with web developers across continents and timezones (at least some that I have found invaluable).
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Thank you for showing interest in our Shopify Insider Blog @ Blackbelt Commerce. Please make sure to check out our portfolio. We also have some top blog recommendations for you to check out; How To Use Video For Easier Web Development Projects the most exciting e-commerce marketing trend, shopify plus, what happen after migration?, and 4 Lessons Learned From Building A Shopify App. As always, keep a lookout for new blog posts
Something I missed? Questions about these? I’d love to hear in the comments.