Working With Clients From Home

google-hangouts-iconI’ve been working on a website. The client is in Connecticut. I’m in California. That makes things a little tougher, especially for collaboration.

Tonight we worked together using Google Hangouts’ screen sharing feature. It’s like a video conference, except he sees what’s on my computer monitor as opposed to my webcam&#185.

The client was able to watch as I cropped and modified pictures in Photoshop and tweaked the website’s look. He could say what he liked or disliked instantly.

This is not the way to work through the meat of a project, but there are certain times when it makes a great deal of sense, like tonight.

We originally tried Skype. Screen sharing is a paid feature for them. We ended up at Google Hangouts because screen sharing is something they tout.

Most people don’t have Hangouts installed. That’s a problem. I’m not sure everyone wants to, or is capable of, working through the setup process. It was non-intuitively cumbersome and took too long. Until it worked, we weren’t sure we were doing it right!

I’m up for using an easier solution, but tonight this scratched an itch.

Oh, and working in pajamas is a good thing!

&#185 – And, unless he reads this had no idea I was in pajamas.

7 thoughts on “Working With Clients From Home”

  1. I understand exactly what you accomplished. It is a great idea, since you are so far away from your client. I know what you mean about installing the software. How about doing something like taking a screen shot and emailing it to your client? It would probably take a little longer. I can see the advantages and disadvantages of doing it that way. Just a thought on my part.

  2. We work with a marketing consultant and use Go to Meeting.com combined with a conferencing type of phone call. It was pretty simple to load the program onto my computer. We look at his screen and when we have to we switch it over to my screen.

  3. I actually went to work in my PJs and bathrobe on Halloween. The company was touting ‘office themes’ with a prize for the best one and no one was able to agree on one. I told everyone Monday I was coming in in my bathrobe and I did it. Picked out the ugliest PJs I had and wore beack slippers over my halloween socks just to keep my feet safe. Didn’t brush my hair either. Everyone got a kick out of it. Best part of it was I didn’t have to change out of anything to get comfy when I went home!

  4. Webex offers a free version and teamviewer is another free choice. Both easy to setup and from mainstream reliable companies.

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