Tools We Use and Why | Part 1
The one thing that matters is to find the thing that works best for you… in the stage you are…
Hi there!
We love tools and organizing things using different models, so we decided to write this article… like months ago… It has been long due, but here it finally is! 😀 Polly and I managed to combine our forces and come up with a list for all of you who are looking for a way to optimize communication, tasks and basic company operations.
Over the years we’ve tried using many different tools and have come up with a general idea of what works best and what just…doesn’t… In this article we aren’t focusing on flaws, though! So here are the tools we use to help us with our day-to-day processes – part 1. I asked Polly about her thoughts on each one, why we’ve chosen them and we’ll explain a bit how they work.
WordPress
Our general slogan is that we work fast and create beautiful WordPress websites. Here’s how WordPress helps with that.
Using WordPress has helped us learn a lot about web development and how it works. It’s super customizable and if you put the time and effort, no two WP websites will ever look the same.
A great thing about it is that most of the WP themes use builders, so that can be pretty helpful to people who are still learning how to create websites.
We wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who’d like to represent themselves or their business online – start off with a WordPress site. It’s almost as though there’s a plugin or a widget for anything you can imagine (don’t go on installing all kinds of plugins, only “cause you want your website to be able to do A, B, C, D, and oh, why not E as well”. Your website WILL be slow AF). Stay tuned for an article on must-have plugins;)
WordPress, being an open-source platform, not only gives the opportunity for many developers and creatives to go and chase their inspirations and ideas, but it’s also helping the whole ecosystem grow and develop, creates jobs, provides flexibility and more. Everything that the future of tech we are hoping to be. WordPress has a global, very supportive community and learning from them is as easy as contributing, so don’t forget to do this as well 😉 In our case, Emo is the one that participates actively in it and we are inspired by him to do more in the future. Aaaand yes, WordPress can be a bit heavy and demanding for a not-too-tech-savvy person, but hey – with thousands of tutorials and dev/design teams like us around, you can always find the way for you to have your website up and running. I like saying – it’s all about orientation. If you find your way around the platform – everything else is just plan and imagination 😉
Asana
Asana is said to be able to “manage your team’s work, projects and tasks online”. And we agree!
I have been using Asana for almost 10 years now. I didn’t like it much at first but it kinda grew on me.
When it came to deciding what we should use in Webdesh, I have gathered some experience with other project management systems as well, so I knew what I had to do.
I used Jira when I was working in an IT company, but to be honest – it’s way too complicated for not-so-tech & not-so-complicated projects. Trello, on the other hand, is a bit messy and you can not create a hierarchy as easy, although I totally support the Kanban method and everything that makes a job lean. Trello is mostly prefered by designers and creatives, Jira by hard-core tech people. Asana is when you like organization and you are a Spreadsheet geek 😀
But enough with the cliches. Asana is very useful for easy to semi-complicated projects in which you need strict structure and flow. In this case, I would recommend it for service companies, not so much for product startups (although they have developed the premium version quote a lot and it may work for them as well).
Asana has a List, Board (Trello-type), Timeline (Gantt chart-like) and Calendar view. It has automations and scheduling, repeated tasks and different integrations for your relief.
A very important thing is to keep your project organized and up-to-date at all times, otherwise it doesn’t matter what you use – you won’t get the benefits of it. It is a habit-forming thing for you and your team and somebody has to own that experience so that you are all aligned and ready for the real work to be done 🙂
So let us tell you more about Asana and how it works.
First off, you can create a different project for each of your work projects. Then, in each project, using labels and tasks, you can structure and separate it in smaller portions.
For example, we have different labels with tasks in them for before starting work on a website, the actual work and then final tasks after we’ve delivered it to the client.
You can make it as easy or as complicated as you wish, because Asana lets you create subtasks of subtasks, and then for those subtasks you can create more sub-subtasks (don’t do that…).
Each task has its own due date and assignee, which means that you can delegate, follow and plan tasks however you want..
We can go on and on about Asana, but it’s going to get really boring really fast (let us know if you’re interested though;)), so instead I recommend you check out some videos and maybe give it a try.
Mailchimp
Maybe you have heard of Mailchimp (or should I say – most definitely you have ;)). In this case – you can totally skip this section, enjoy the rest of our articles and if you like what you find in our blog – you know what to do right here 😉
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But just in case you haven’t – we use it, so we might as well tell you about it.
Mailchimp is a marketing-related platform you can easily integrate into your WordPress website and be able to do a ton of marketing stuff such as: subscription lists, designing & sending newsletters and tracking statistics about how many people have been reached and have interacted with your email.
It has a free version that can be very, very useful to your business.
You are able to manage your audiences and target specific people when reaching out for something.
As we already mentioned, it’s super easy to integrate it within WP, and especially within our fave builders – WPBakery & Elementor. Their developers have already thought of this and created elements that integrate Mailchimp into your website.
The one thing that matters is to find the thing that works best for you… in the stage you are… because things change and we as people/teams/companies and our processes should evolve accordingly.
Hope you like Part 1 of our list, if you have questions – we can help, just let us know in the comments below.
Share your “Operational Stack” as well – we love finding new tools and exchanging experiences with other companies and individuals 😉
Stay tuned for Part 2 of Tools We Use and Why to learn more about communication processes.
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Mirela Vaseva
Website Creator & Head of QA
/ IT, Software Engineering graduate 💻
/ good music, horror films, detective novels and delectable food 👌
/ YouTube videos junkie 🎥
/ animals, nature, water lover 🐱
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