Working on website design is one of our favourite things to do at Brucira. The creativity, strategy-building, and finesse that we get to display during web design projects are unmatched by any other, to be quite candid.
For every website design project, we start with information architecture and post-approvals. Then, we create wireframes before forming the final design.
The content for the designs is often provided by the client. They either have their own content writing team or hired contractors.
Here’s how a typical work tacker looks like:
The Pain Point
We usually receive content in a document with headers and sub-headers marked to give the coordinates of the content. These markings help the developers visually identify where goes what. This leads to the creation of long documents that takes an enormous amount of time for both creators and the receivers.
We ask for content during two stages - the wireframe stage and the final interface design stage. This means that the content writers have to create copy twice, and since they have no idea how it translates into the design, they’re writing blind.
As the final design is being developed using the wireframes, content changes several times to fit the new design requirements. This means that if a particular section had forty words during the wireframe stage, it may need to be cut down to twenty words or fewer in the final design. This requires multiple rounds of edits, signing off on the final content by senior members, design and developer changes — all of which is time-consuming, expensive and tiring.
The whole process works like a table tennis game, except the writers on the other end of the table don’t know where to aim their ball. Waiting for writers to edit their copy interrupts the workflow of the designers.
Writers wait for the designers to add the given copy and send mock-ups of how it looks on the webpage. The process is repeated at least three or four times because the writers need to provide copy multiple times so it can complement the design while still sharing the client’s message.
The Holy Grail
We imagined there was scope for an alternative universe that eases the pain of multiple rounds of content edits. Space and time continuum where designers and writers to be able to work together in harmony on web design projects.
What was needed
- A way for writers to be able to see how their copy lends itself to the website design.
- A way for designers to work seamlessly with copywriters without having to change the copy on the website multiple times because it didn’t fit, didn’t look nice, or simply didn’t do justice to the design.
- A cost-effective and time-saving collaboration tool for multiple rounds of copyedits between designers, copywriters, stakeholders, and everyone else involved in the project.
Drum Rolls Please
Ruttl is a website feedback tool that provides an ingenious way to save both time and money when it comes to content writing for web design projects. With Ruttl, you can mark-up changes on a live website allowing content writers to make their edits directly onto the webpage. Senior members of the team can inspect the final website design and comment on live website that let the writers know what changes are needed.
No longer will your edits for individual lines get lost in long emails or buried under your 5,647,000 email and Slack threads. As we mentioned, in a post about how we started using slides for illustration projects, we love innovative tools like Slack but most of them do not offer the similar level of agility that you get while using live website review tools like ruttl.
When it comes to involving key leaders and stakeholders, the client can simply use Ruttl to show what the live website would look like with the changes. Any edits the stakeholders may have can be directly implemented onto the webpage for the designers and developers to follow with Ruttl.
