Lawrence Anthony runs a web development and marketing company called Pixallus with a team of 8-12 independent contractors. They serve clients in various industries such as higher education, political campaigns, local businesses, retail, ecommerce, and so on. In this interview, we talk about:
What was their feedback process like before ruttl?
How did they get introduced to ruttl?
Which features are they making use of extensively?
A sneak peek into new features
ruttl’s impact on their business
What was their feedback process like before ruttl?
Lawrence’s company started out with basic tools such as email and text to communicate the feedback changes. They also made use of screen share tools where a team member of theirs could point out certain things and talk about their suggestions.
While the email did not help them communicate visual feedback properly, screen share tools did not help them keep a record of everything.
So, they transitioned to several feedback tools before ruttl, which didn’t work out that well for them.
In Laurence’s words:
“I have used other feedback tools but there were always issues. When you send the client a link for them to start commenting, there was always a breakdown - they couldn’t log in, they couldn’t access, they couldn’t comment. So it just became a headache and I gave up.”
How did they get introduced to ruttl?
“ruttl has been a blessing for our team because it simplified our feedback process, no need of long emails trying to figure out what they are talking about, where they are talking about; ruttl just makes it easy.”
Laurence discovered ruttl through our AppSumo launch. Their team tried it out and found the tool to be quite easy. With a simple shareability link, they could send the link to their clients and they could start commenting right away. Their clients did not need to create an account or log in or face any such hassles.
“It’s just really easy. I have had some clients, they’re almost 80 years old, I send them a link and they just go there and start commenting. That’s how easy it is as compared to the other providers, I have had some techie people and even they couldn’t leave comments.”
Which features are they making use of extensively?
Their team does not always deal with clients that are tech-savvy. So, their most-often used features are commenting features. But their clients do make use of video commenting and picture commenting which have changed the game for them as they could leave their detailed feedback and suggestion.
A sneak peek into ruttl’s new features
We recently launched some improvisations and additional features to ruttl. Lawrence’s team mentions them in the interview:
PDF and image markups
Loading new revisions in bulk
We also got a new feature request from Lawrence that we have been getting from other Ruttl users as well: seeing a list of unresolved comments from the previous versions.
Our co-founder comes up with a solution for that which you could see live in some time: in the comment card, at the bottom, there’d be a separate section where you can see, for example, ‘This is an unresolved comment from version 3.’ Once you click there, in a different tab, it will open version 3 so you can have the comparison as well.
We also talked about the web app support in Ruttl that will be launching very soon. You can review a web application through this. You’ll be able to download a Chrome extension, go to that extension and take that page on any project and start commenting there.
ruttl’s impact on their business
The most important thing Ruttl did for Lawrence’s team was that it saved hours that were being spent on time-consuming stuff such as going back-and-forth on communication, reading long emails, understanding what the clients were talking about, which element they were pointing to, getting on a phone call to understand things or getting on a screen-share to confirm what they were saying. Now, the client and the entire team can just click on an element and give their feedback. It reduces the misinterpretation errors that usually plague the feedback process.
“If we think only about the web page, the landing page designs, we can easily say that Ruttl helps us save a few hours per page."
