Glass Mountains
Working with remote clients
Our team of WordPress experts at Glass Mountains has worked together as a digitally remote distributed team for nearly 10 years. We currently have 12 people in our team, most are based in the UK, with one of our designers based in Berlin. Remote, distributed teams, and dealing with the unique challenges that it brings, is ingrained into the DNA of Glass Mountains.
So if you are concerned about how you might find working with us, don’t be.
Experience
Our US clients include Mark Schaefer, Jay Baer, Jon Loomer, Southwestern Consulting, Steve Spangler, Jason Dorsey, and more.
For all of the above clients, we have delivered extensive, complex, WordPress website redesign projects. And have continued to support all of those clients with ongoing help.
Some of the clients we did not meet face to face until long after the website redesign projects went live.
So how do we achieve this?
With experience, and tools like Skype, Zoom, and UberConference, it makes it very easy to pull multiple people onto a virtual conference call – this is very important at the start of a project. Other tools like screencasting are also invaluable as well.
Timezones
Timezones need to be taken into account, of course, & we use tools such as Calendly so clients can directly book slots into a private, shared, availability calendar. Better still, when events are booked into Google Calendar, they automatically adjust for clock changes in UK/US etc.
For US clients, this typically means, if a face to face call is required, that will be the first thing in the morning US time, which is late afternoon UK. When required, we can do later in the day as well.
Communication
Email, for all its faults, is still the default, go-to communication medium for many businesses. However, we like to build on top of email to give the client better tools to provide feedback.
In the initial stages of designing a website, there will be lots of feedback about visual points: email alone will not help here. And if you are not discussing this feedback on an online call, how can that be provided? We find the following two approaches crucial:
- InvisionApp
- Loom
Invision is online app which we use to share design mockups to a client. The beauty of the tool is that it allows clients to comment directly onto the mockup – indicating the area where they want to provide feedback. Whilst this may sound a small thing, any time saved by not having to guess what the client is referring to is time we can spend on solving their problems instead.
However, the killer tool for us is screencasting. If you don’t know what screencasting, it is where we can create a short video of the screen (+ audio) and we can describe something visually to a client.
Testimonials
Here are a few testimonials from some of our remote clients:
Joel’s Glass Mountains team has been amazing. I’m able to sleep better at night knowing that the websites are always being taken care of and that any problem, if it arises, will be fixed immediately. They take full ownership of everything they do, and I don’t know what I’d do without them.
Joel and his team are fabulous to work with! We’ve done highly complex projects with them and quick and simple projects. In all cases they are one of the few firms that do consistent quality work, with solid design. Most of all they get things done right and by when they say they’ll do them. They are a part of our business’ competitive advantage and I highly recommend them.
It is never easy creating a massive new website but working with Joel was a true joy. It worked really well right out of the gate and I am getting so many compliments on the design and functionality of the site.
Please get in touch if you would like a friendly chat about how Glass Mountains can help your business.