As a team of developers, designers & project managers we are always on the lookout in finding tools that help make the process faster and simpler for the team and our clients. From initial concepts to getting paid and tracking the jobs they are all important steps in ensuring our Jobs go smoothly and we can monitor their progress. AI is incorporated into products like Relume and Notion and they make a big difference in helping to speed up parts of our work flows.. Here is a list of products that we use currently that just fit our style of work…
Octopus.do (sitemap, initial layout ideas of the website) Losing ground to Relume - quick fast and easy to use to provide a rough site structure to discuss with clients or the team. It has 2 key features. 1) providing a site structure from an existing website so if we are wanting to understand their current site we can quickly use this. 2) build out quickly a site structure and layout to show the team or the client a rough draft…
Relume (sitemap, structure / layout of the website) Becoming one of our favorite tools to use… It is our go too tool for building a more in depth site structure and layout. Their AI features are just getting better and better making our roles quicker to carry out certain tasks. We are looking forward at incorporating their new pricing tool into our process in the near future!!! What I love about this product is that it was built by developers and they understand the steps that need to be done for good web design and development. Key feature for me is the ability to go from an idea to a site structure in a minimal amount of time ready for the design phase in figma….
Figma (Website Design) If Adobe is prepared to pay $20 Billion for this when they had a similar thing in Adobe XD their is a reason… It is super easy to use and acts as a really good base product that you can enhance with all the plugins. What we love about this is that everyone can use it at a basic level and provide feedback on the different stages of the design phase. A key feature we use is the auto layout tool…so good.
Webflow or Framer (Website Builder / CMS) Sorry Wordpress but you have no place in our tech stack. We use both of these platforms with webflow being the main one for more complex sites. Framer is more suited to the smaller sites we do that the clients want to update themselves… It still has all the complexities available but keeps the simplicity of a figma style builder. We are certified Webflow builders and a partner to Framer so love them both. Yes we should probably only stick with one to make it easier on the team but we see them serving our client base pretty well together. Love both the communities with the platforms the people are so awesome and helpful!!
Markup.io (Website Review / feedback) After the site is launched and we have done Quality Control it is great to have other staff and clients provide some final feedback on the actual site. This tool works really we at this as they can click on the area they have an issue and describe it. We love its simplicity and its core function of providing feedback…
Notion Project Management Where would we be without this product…lost and out of control!! Notion runs our agency and we have very detailed workflows and checklists when it comes to designing websites (thanks Flow Guru’s for the latest template) This ensures we dont miss anything and we can assign tasks to the correct people and monitor their workloads etc… Love it as a management tool and our key feature is it flexibility to create anything we like regarding projects, workflows etc…
Stripe Payments What else needs to be said it collects money (smily face) it is super easy to use and integrate with other tools. love its core function and it simplicity
Xero Invoices A great product for the business side of things… it is really easy to use and send out invoices etc.. to clients. Again love its simplicity and funtionality.
Overall we generally find it is better using tools that are built to do a specific task and it does that task really well keeping things simple. Most of the tools above are like that with figma, webflow, framer and Notion being more complex in nature but still functional for newbies and non tech staff…
