Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / Anyone use BC for Web Design Projects?

We’re a small web development company based in the UK and have/are reviewing several options at the moment including Basecamp for our simple PM needs. I was therefore initially really pleased to come across this thread which clearly posed the question that I wanted answered but I’m slightly concerned that a number have struggled to get the best out of it. This is most odd given Jason’s Frieds statement of Mar 22 which said ‘Based on our most recent Basecamp customer survey, the majority of people who use Basecamp use it for web design projects. Basecamp was originally built to manage web design projects.’

Given this clear bias towards the web design industry, you would think that the ‘getting started’ process would be much more aligned towards our needs rather than the generic approach it seems to take. Please don’t misunderstand me, I know that the generic approach means BC is open to a much wider audience but I think this is a huge opportunity missed if indeed we are the main target audience.

Two initial thoughts. 1. If it was really designed for web designers, surely this thread shows you that some part of your target audience isn’t getting the best out of the product giving BC the opportunity to improve what is apparently an already excellent product. I do have quite a few ideas here but it would make this initial thread way too long.
2. What about the end customers – those of us who have lots of small web projects on the go at once probably don’t have the time to carry out ‘extensive walkthroughs’ for these people as we haven’t built this into our project cost. Again, this tells us that there are improvements that can be made to the client facing side of BC if nothing else. Maybe, the client interface could be changed to accomodate both the technically challenged and those business users who are more concerned about managing their business than they are having to learn a new product in order to get a website built !

To help us get started quickly, can those experienced BC users share with us their must do top 10 tips. Dare I say it, can you share with us your getting started or welcome letters to the end customer and any obvious web design related ‘to do’ lists. I know you have probably worked hard to get these in place but I’m sure your efforts would be most appreciated. I for one would be willing to pay someone if it meant that I could hit the ground running.

Note to Jason Liebe: Jason you seem to have come up with the golden nugget of a single message that allows your customers to get started very quickly. Any chance you could share tis with us ;-)

Neil