Product Review – GetSignOff
For most designers it is pretty rare that your first design will be a complete hit with your client. More often than not your initial design is going to undergo several revisions before you arrive at final version that your client can sign-off on.
That means that you and client will be going back and forth with suggestions, changes, and tweaks; and typically this will all be done via email. But what if there was a better way?
What is GetSignOff?
The GetSignOff website describes the product in a nutshell : “GetSignOff provides a mechanism for presenting your site designs, managing feedback and organizing multiple versions of a design.”
The product does one thing and one thing well…It allows you to show your designs to your clients in a simple collaborative environment.
Why do I need it?
As already mentioned, email is the typical way that designers will submit their layouts to the client, and in most cases it works well enough. So why pay for a service to do what you can do for free?
The biggest reason for using GetSignOff is that it makes it easier to understand exactly what the heck your client wants you to change.
For example, have you ever received an email back from a client like this: “We really like the design, but can you change that blue thingy to purple and while you’re at it change that bottom stuff to bold?”
Blue thingy? Bottom wha?
It’s frustrating to try and decipher cryptic directions or keep track of long lists of changes. With GetSignOff you can present your layout to the client and they can markup the layout with their own notes and comments. It will also save all the discussion around the layout so if you forget a particular change request; you can go back and find it. It’s much easier than going back through 50 different emails.
Also, with the Pro Account, you will be able to edit the CSS to brand GetSignOff to your company’s specific branding. So it may allow you to present a more professional appearance.
Ultimately, you will have to decide if those reasons are enough to justify the monthly fee.
Will my Clients use it?
That’s the million dollar question. Email is simple, why introduce something new that the client has to learn?
Well, as far as programs go, GetSignOff is dead simple. It doesn’t bog the user down in complex navigation and options. It presents the layout and gives you the option on making a note on the layout or adding a comment to the discussion. Straight forward stuff.
What’s not to like?
All-in-all I really liked GetSignOff. It has such a simple setup and it does what it does well. Having said that, I’m not 100% sold on the service yet. What’s holding me back is what I call: The Case of the Missing Emails.
One thing I knew the program should include was a way to automatically update the client and designer when a note or comment was made on the design. I quickly found out how to subscribe to an RSS feed but for some reason it took me awhile to find out how to setup automatic email notification (there’s a little envelope icon you need to click on). With that figured out I thought I was all set.
Not so.
Emails were being sent but no emails were received. For some reason Outlook was classifying email notifications from GetSignOff as spam and was deleting them automatically. Not good, especially since you will assume your emails are going through and wonder why your client is never getting back to you.
The GetSignOff team recommends sending your own emails to the client to tell them to check the website for the current changes. But if you do that, why not just scrap the program and use email in the first place?
The good news is that the GetSignOff programmers are working on a solution to the email issues. While they’re at it, I would also like to see a way for the designer to automatically turn on email notification for a client or have the designer informed if the client subscribes to RSS or email notification.
Highlights
- Simple interface
- All comments are saved for future reference
- A slick way to present your layouts
Lowlights
- Email notifications may get labeled as spam
Travis King is a freelance web designer with Green Tea Design. If you have a product or service you think Freelance Switch readers might be interested in, please email Travis at travis@greenteadesign.ca
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Definitely looks like the thing that I have been looking for. I do a lot of web design and this would actually work well with my clients.
It sounds like it could be very handy indeed.
Re the email problem, the GetSignOff team needs to get their PTR record in order, ie, it ought to point to the host that is sending the emails (see http://tinyurl.com/5b49lt). Their host may need to do that for them.
Until it is done, the likes of Yahoo, GMail and others will tag emails as spam and may even delete them without a trace.
I’ve seen a few startups with the same problem.
I’ve used getsignoff.com a few times with a client and overall it helped and expidited the process.
One thing of note was the client, moderately tech savvy, was initially confused by the note adding, commenting, and sign off features of the site.
But overall I would say it’s definitely worth a go to see if it works for you and your clients.
Hi all,
first of all thanks for the review. It is much appreciated. As for the email problem – we think we have fixed it now. At least we can no longer replicate the problem (which we could do before). If anybody does find they are still having the issue then please email us at support@getsignoff.com.
Looks like a very useful service, though I’m not sure I could justify the price as I don’t currently do enough pure design work for direct clients — a lot of it is through other agencies.
I find that many of my clients just aren’t savvy enough to use anything other than email, so like many of these cool little web apps, they would take one look at it and say “Wha?”
One thing I dislike about this site (and many others) is that it’s a UK business yet all prices are listed in USD. Understandable for the global marketplace, but for goodness sake, list your local currency price too!
I love to use the traditional, fax, snail mail instead of all this, it apparently takes less time for me and my client and less confusion to process it.
It looks to me like a replacement for good old-fashioned project management, paying attention to which would resolve 90% of the “bad client” complaints I see out there. Email + Telephone + Constructive Attitude will fix almost anything if done in a critically reasonable manner. This app looks cool, but in my opinion, the process of creative project management is just too subjective to work with a blanket solution like this.
I second that, Bryan. Our studio tried all such apps. For project management, time lines, to-do lists, invoicing, etc. The only ones who use it is us. Clients never do. Sure, they all go “wah!” when you demo your project management set up (like basecamp) and all go “you guys are the real deal”. They never use it.
Products like these are offering one equation; the designer. They do not take in account that a client has many layers and many approval processes, and that the person calling the shots often is not the person communicating with the designer. Yes, you get confusing emails. That is why you have a telephone. Yes you can have confusing instructions by phone. That is why you are talking in the first place. Designing is communication, and I much prefer to talk to a client and walk them through it all over sending them a link, and asking them a written comment. You follow up with bullet points and action lists, but that is after you talked and worked the issues.
We have an exact same thing as a client section on our website. Been there for two years, we have had three clients use it temporarily. Because they forgot to download a file on their hard disk, or such. So, while this app is well presented, and has indeed some good points and solutions = it is nothing that you should not already be doing yourself. The only advantage I see is that it is centralized for the studio or freelancer – so he is organized. But it doesn’t solve any struggle to get a sign off. I think it will prolong the struggle by taking away the one-on-one dialogue and discussion.
Bryan and Mario: Really good arguments there for NOT using project management software.
I’ve been freelancing for a year or so now and to be honest my processes for dealing with comments and feedback are not great. Well, actually they are fine really: the problem I have is that if I have a long telephone conversation with a client, it feels like I’m not achieving “real” work.
So I keep looking at project management software as a way of putting the focus back on to the client, to free me up a bit more. But you’re right, clients don’t use them — they are only useful as in-house tools for managing tasks and deliverables. Encouraging clients to use them is probably ultimately a waste of time!
Next year I think I need to focus more on my processes. If I can improve those, I won’t need to try and get clients onto project management software anyway.
it seems to offer similar services with Conceptshare.
“Will my clients use it?” Million $ question.
The answer is that some will love it immediately, most will like it quite quickly, and there will always be some who will never, ever, in a lifetime, want to use a tool to provide feedback.
I’ve got direct experience of this from running ProofHQ (www.proofhq.com) and we have been delivering an online proofing system for the last 12 months.
However, it is worth working with those hold-outs because the payback from moving your clients from proofing by email to online proofing is huge. We have clients reporting 30-40% faster turnaround times on projects by using ProofHQ. Others have said that the number of proofing rounds drops from an average to 5 to an average of 3. I know that sounds like boring statistics, but its real money in the bank for those designers.
Deploying any system will take some effort. This applies to online proofing, project management systems like Basecamp or Central Desktop, or even web-based invoicing systems like Harvest. But if it is the right system and you have the right support the upside can be almost instant and significant for your bottom line.
It looks pretty good, altough in my case most of my clients, somehow, barely use word, excel and Outlook. So if I try them to use an online software, well I can see my self spending more time teaching them how to use the software instead of getting the job sign off. I use emails when it´s posible. Sometimes you can´t get aways from a face to face meeting in order to accelerate things. The Messenger service like MSN has been working well for me too. I chat with the client, she/he gives me the modifications and I send the JPG sample again, if its a design, or upload the canges if its a website. SO I can do that with 2 or 3 clients at the same time.
Regarding phonecalls, as Matt said… I temporary solved my problem giving my clients only a cellphone number. So they knwo when they call me, that the phonecall is not going to be cheap, so they measure the talking time and go to the point. If they talk to much I always invite them to send me an Email, so we can both have a backup of what is need to be done.
Anyway (this goes for Paul), looks like a great tool, probably if you work with quite young clients… young people is more open to use tools like this.
Unfortunately getsignoff.com is now closing which is a shame as it was a great service we used successfully on a number of projects.
We have been working on our on tool for a a while now which you can preview here: http://designsignoff.com. We have taken a slightly different approach to getsignoff.com and proofhq.
Our experience of working with clients was that no one ever used the annotation tools. For us its more about giving them a simple and attractive way to view the most recent set of designs in the context of a browser and having a clear and irrefutable “sign off” you can point back to if they start trying to move the goal posts later.
With regards to leaving comments our experience is that this has been more varied. Some clients would rather do it all on the phone, hammer through all of the designs and sign them off in one go. Others are used to working online or are maybe even distributed teams so they love using the comment functionality.
With designsignoff.com have very much aimed to keep the tool as non-intrusive as possible so that you can work with it more or less without it getting in the way.
Caheck out the preview at http://designsignoff.com