What would a customer want to see everyday: a cookie-cutter login screen without any character or a good-looking custom screen that lets them know you mean business? Hint: the answer is the latter. Read on for a few awesome resources that you can use to stamp your own personal brand on your WORKetc customer portal login screen.
Collaboration has always been one of WORKetc’s main foundations. Not just within your team, but between you and your clients as well.
That’s why we made the CRM customer portal, a branded online space where you, your clients, and your contractors can come together to collaborate on projects, clear up any support issues, and go through invoices.
This post isn’t going to dive into the nitty gritty of the customer portal, though (we’ve already done that). Instead, we’re focusing on one of the key words in the portal’s description above: “branded”.
Now, every entrepreneur has to know the importance of branding. A clear and cohesive brand gives you recognition; it sets you apart from your competition; it shows customers what to expect from you. Take this custom login screen by English Garden Group, for example. The company provides top-notch landscaping services (among others), so the background image makes total sense.
Knowing this, we figured it was imperative that we let our clients be able to stamp their own personal brands on the WORKetc customer portal purely for the benefit of their end customers. After all, what would a customer want to see everyday: a cookie-cutter login screen without any character or a good-looking custom screen that lets them know you mean business?
While the default tilt-shifted cityspace photo works well enough for any type of business out there, some of our users go to some lengths to find or create the exact type of branded login screen that they want their customers to see.
In this post, we’re shining the spotlight on these creative clients. You’ve already seen one above, so here are a couple more of our favorite custom WORKetc login screens.
AccsysIT‘s Customer Portal using WORKetc. Click for full view.
Of course, not every company can get visited by the President, but you can still kit out your custom login screen with a more fitting background image. You don’t even have to be a photography or Photoshop wizard to change your login screen from the default to what is basically a work of art.
For those who want to add a little extra to their WORKetc login screens, here’s a short list of free stock photo sites that you can use.
Unsplash
Unsplash offers plenty of options for stock images under a Creative Commons license.
Unsplash delivers 10 new, high-quality photos straight to your inbox every 10 days. If you can’t wait 10 days, the site itself has a searchable image archive.
The best thing about it is that all photos are distributed under the Creative Commons Zero license, meaning you can do whatever you want with them — even use them for commercial purposes — without having to provide attribution or ask for express permission.
JayMantri.com
Jay Mantri also offers free material if you need stock images.
Designer Jay Mantri’s website is a gold mine for anybody who needs a few free images to spruce up their projects. Most of the images on the site are landscape pieces, although there are a few artful shots of everyday objects such as vehicles. All of the photos on the site are distributed under the Creative Commons Zero license.
There’s no search function, but there is a single-page archive categorized according to month. Mantri updates the site with 7 new photos every week so if you can’t find something that you like, check back again in 7 days. You can also subscribe to a weekly newsletter to get the 7 free photos delivered to your inbox.
Snapwi.re
Snapwire offers a premium service for stock images, full of photos that are truly unique and beautiful.
Snapwire is a premium site, meaning you have to pay for any stock image you want to download. Unlike other stock image sites full of bland and lifeless pictures, however, Snapwire’s collection contains images bursting with life and creativity.
Perhaps the coolest thing about Snapwire is that if you can’t find the image you want in their searchable archive, you can ask their community of photographers to shoot the exact photo that you need. You control the price, and there’s even no obligation to buy if you feel your photo brief wasn’t met.