When you’re getting a new website built, you’re bound to have some feedback. The colours are too bright, the sidebar isn’t wide enough, you want to replace the 3rd paragraph and get rid of that little doohickey in the corner, just above the contact box.
It’s fair to say that anyone, particularly when you’re not familiar with website terminology, who has had to provide feedback on a new website can be hard work. Trying to communicate clearly what you want changed can mean an extended email exchange or protracted phone call. There has to be a better way.
Fortunately there is. It involves using Firefox and a Firefox Add-on called Awesome Screenshot – Capture and Annotate. It allows you to easily grab a snapshot of your website and use the drawing tools to note exactly what you want changed and where – even if you’ve never heard of a header, footer or sidebar. This is the great thing about an annotating tool – you don’t need to know anything about websites or the different widgets and wazoos that go into building a website – you just grab a drawing tool and scribble on the website what you want changed and where.
Using Awesome Screenshot
- Get Firefox (an internet browser I recommend, Chrome is good too – anything other than IE!)
- After installing Firefox, grab the Awesome Screenshot add-on (restart of Firefox not needed)
- Capture entire page or crop any portion
- Annotate it with rectangles, circles, arrows, lines and text
- Use eraser to hide sensitive information
- Save to Local or upload to awesomescreenshot.com and get a shareable link
Reviewing your website
Of course this add-on isn’t the only way you can improve the process of managing a new website project – there are lots of other screen capture tools that you can use to communicate the changes you want to your website developer. It’s just a case of using the tools available to make it easier for both you and your developer – something that makes it clear for both and provides a good record of the requested changes – something that is difficult with a phone call.
So whether you use Awesome Screenshot or something else, it’s good to know that there’s plenty of free tools out there to make it easier to project manage your business’s new website.