Own development

"I smile when I think back on the days when I had to go to a client personally to present mockups. I had to show him in person to be sure that the mockups are correctly displayed and understood.

During the presentation it was so important to follow the correct order and it was pretty inconvenient to switch from one mockup to another. There were some other issues, for example, it was not easy to store all the comments and suggestions regarding mockups. This was already difficult enough, not to mention travel time, wait times and traffic jams"

In early 2014, we decided to create a convenient online tool for organizing project presentations to the client. We had to solve a number of issues for this:

• Simple, high quality mockups that are available for download without quality loss
• Change of the project structure should be easy
• Have shareable short links to specific mockups
• Have simple, supportable interface on tablets and mobile devices
• We should be able to get quick access to the mockup without referencing it by file name.

The company allocated a budget and a staff to work on this startup. We started looking for turnkey solutions but the existing ones did not meet our requirements. We decided therefore to establish the SaaS service for ourselves and to help other designers and web studios.

As a result, in early March of 2014, the first version of the project was launched. Until September of 2014, we were working on various updates for this service. We managed not only to achieve the goals, but also to surpass our own expectations. The service consists of 3 parts: a selling website, tools for designer and tools for presentation. The principle of operation is as follows:

• 1. The designer creates a project and uploads the mockups.
• 2. Then he arranges all the mockups according to the project structure. He can come up with names for each of the mockups and for the folder, as well as write a comment if necessary.
• 3. Then the designer can get a short link to the project or to a specific mockup and send it to the client. The client receives a link that he/she can open and can quickly see the created mockups.

Problems solved:

• SaaS service development for structured on-line presentation of mockups to the client
• Simple and fast upload of mockups for designers, ability to create quickly a project structure and organize the mockups
• Always correct order of mockups. The customer receives a permanent link to the project and is always up-to-date with all of the changes happening.
• The client can conveniently view mockups on mobile devices, tablets and desktop PCs. It’s also possible to switch between sizes in the desktop version.
• Navigation using a number of mockups. Each mockup gets an assigned number [folder number][mockup number] (eg 0314). This helps to quickly understand what kind of mockup we’re discussing. When you know a project name and a mockup number you can quickly access the correct mockup by typing in the url.

The project was picked up very quickly by our customers. After that we decided to launch an advertising campaign to promote the service. Unfortunately, our budget was not enough and we stopped the promotion of this resources.