How to Collaborate with Clients in a Way that Boosts Business (and a Giveaway!)

Web design and development is much like the universe itself – ever-growing, ever-changing, with trillions of bright stars (and endless dust). We invest a lot to learn, grow, and develop in order to stand out as one of the stars: we study trends, uncover tools, keep an eye on competition, develop our portfolios, and hone our craft.

In this universe, we cannot exist independently of our clients (what would we design and develop?), so we must take note when a platform comes along that is helping web development and design teams:

Get more clients Work better with clients Keep clients happy Create long-term relationships with clients Make more money from clients

Introducing: Assembla Portfolio

Assembla Portfolio is a project collaboration solution for companies that design and develop for clients. It helps you bring clients in as a part of the planning and discovery process and organizes the relationships to be more efficient, productive, adaptable, and profitable. By infusing transparency into the development process, clients become more engaged.

Getting more clients

Assembla user Rob Heittman, CTO of Florida-based Solertium, an agency that creates web and mobile apps for clients like Five Guys Burgers & Fries, said it best:

"Providing transparency via Assembla is an organic part of our ‘sales pitch.’ Our existing good customers tell the story of their engagement to future good customers. Assembla has been the hands-down best tool we've found to support the communication style we prefer."

Working better with clients

Design and development teams have found that Assembla provides a balance between turning chaos into structure and reducing unnecessary bureaucracy. In Assembla, teams and clients can collaborate flexibly and adaptably.

When clients takes part in the prioritization and clarification of tasks, they always know what is going on and your team always focuses on what’s important to the client.

Getting serious about keeping clients happy

If there were a Holy Grail of working with clients, this would be it. Providing websites and apps for clients has long been a process wrought with frustration, billing disputes, communication issues, and unmet expectations. Assembla users (and their clients) have a different experience.

Terry Hoy, Vice President of Gravity Jack, a creative agency that develops custom mobile apps, augmented reality, and virtual reality for Coca Cola, HP, and the US Department of Defense, says "We never fight with clients. They have a realistic view of what is being accomplished. Every month they can change their priorities. Most importantly, they get the web site or application that they really wanted, even if they didn’t know what that was when they started."

Earn retainer fees from long-term relationships

Many design and development teams are reporting that thanks to the transparent communication and continuous delivery that results from collaborating with their clients on Assembla, more of their relationships are going from a fixed-scope project base to long-term relationships.

In Assembla, you and your clients get a single home for all of your work. You can collaborate on code using Git, SVN, or P4. You will easily maintain designs, websites, and code; efficiently review changes; effortlessly search (and find!) files. Most importantly, deliver to clients in a great package which providers can easily transfer to the ownership of the client. Thereafter, come back any time for maintenance and upgrades.

Make more money from clients

Based in NY and Des Moines, eWay Corp provides web development services and uses Assembla to collaborate with many clients. JP Singh, CEO of eWay Corp talks about work before Assembla, "By my estimation, we were only capturing 10% of billable hours for out-of-scope work. On top of that, there was a lot of back-and-forth with clients over invoices because they didn’t have a clear understanding of our process and the work being accomplished."

Since integrating Assembla, eWay Corp is now capturing 95% of billable hours for out-of-scope work and has collaborated with us at Assembla on new features that will help them reach 100% this year. By helping developers and designers capture more billable hours, get more clients, and improve relationships with their clients, Assembla is directly contributing to increased profits and customer satisfaction for its clients.

At Assembla, we practice what we preach. We are a distributed team ourselves – our team works in 10 countries. We release continuously and collaborate transparently; we collect feedback from our users and improve our product to serve their needs.

Giveaway – help us improve and win a prize

Help us out. You can win a free year of Assembla for your company, a Macbook Air for yourself, and optional fame and glory. Tell us how you want to improve client collaboration, even if it sounds crazy. We'll select the winner for a prize and optional glory.