Keeping your workflow efficient and productive can be hard in the world of web designers – and staying on the top of deadlines is the key to success in keeping your business flowing.

Enhancing productivity in the workplace doesn’t have to be a chore, as these 5 productivity hacks shared by experienced web designers from Melbourne will help you to get more work done in a timely manner.

1. Seize on your inspiration

Be it designing a website, a luxury vehicle or a comic book, inspiration is the key when it comes to putting an idea on paper. Inspiration can spring at any point throughout the day, so while you may be on a coffee break from designing the boring back end, you might see something that sparks your inspiration.

Honing your ability to visualize a style in a different medium will put you in a good position when it comes to taking inspiration from outside sources for bespoke web design. Whenever the ideas arise, write them down, take a screenshot or do whatever is necessary to conceptualize your idea the moment it happens.

It is often a good practice to keep a notepad with you at all times to keep a log of your thoughts, especially things that inspire you or give you new ideas or concepts about the type of work you are doing. Later, when it comes to the actual hard draft work, you will have a collage of all of your raw ideas ready to put into action.

2. Choose your tools carefully

One of the best ways to be more productive and efficient in the workplace when designing a new website is to use the right tools for the job. Use tools and utilities that you are used to, but feel free to test out alternative software that is intended to save you time.

You will often find that the average user will only use the same tools over and over again to get the same type of job done. This may be fine if you offer a set of web design service where a customer can pick from a set of templates or designs, but branching out and digging deeper under the hood of your web design toolkit is a great way to find shortcuts, new tricks and implement better features quicker than ever.

3. Benefit from your amassed codebase

You’ve worked hard to build up a reputation for creating new and modern websites for clients that feature distinct visual effects or features, so why aren’t you taking advantage of them? You can benefit greatly in time-saving and productivity by using your own codebase as a jumpstart to creating new projects. Sort and organize your codebase into distinct categories to find them easily, and allow yourself to place them into your new creations when needed.

You’ve already done the hard work, so why not make life easier for yourself by implementing these tried and tested features as a way of building your sites up module by module, giving you immense productivity advances in the long term.

4. Implement cloud data storage

One of the best ways to help with productivity around the design environment is to set up a cloud data storage account to aid your backup and allow you to move and save huge files and codebases with a few mouse clicks. One of the other great advantages of cloud storage is the ability to work with others on projects at a distance, as well as continue and start projects together in real time.

Many companies now offer services that allow you to share your work with colleagues or clients for easier workflow and improved status updates for better peace of mind.

All of the big boys such as Microsoft and Google offer cloud storage for free up to a certain amount, but if you require more, there is often a small additional fee. If you need cloud storage on a bigger scale, look at implementing Amazon cloud storage for a better price-per-gig as a professional alternative to consumer-grade storage services.  

5. Keyboard shortcut mastery

The absolute top-level way to improve productivity and workflow within the web design environment, and just about any other computer-related work is to master the shortcut keys for all of the programs that you use.

Shortcut keys are designed to simply give you access to an important function within the program or application to save your time and efforts. All applications have shortcut keys for the core functions. But if you look carefully, most advanced applications also have shortcut combination keys that allow you to perform both core and advanced functions all from your keyboard.

Many programs allow you to customize a shortcut key for your particular style of working, allowing you to perform all of the functions that you regularly use with a few simple clicks.

Once you have mastered your keyboard shortcuts, you may find that you will drastically improve your web design creation workflow, allowing you more time to take inspiration, be more creative and learn more things about web design, or have that coffee break you truly deserve.

Bottomline

When it comes to agencies, web designers really have to think about various ways to save time and be more productive. The ways mentioned above can be really helpful to designers folks out there. Also, don’t miss to check out Minterapp to track your time and be mindful about the time you spend.

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