Media Contour
A Full Service Interactive Studio

Founded in 2005 and based in Los Angeles, California, Media Contour is a small collective of talented web designers who have created an impressive portfolio of work. They are an interactive agency focused on web design and development.

But Media Contour is more than just a successful web design agency. Their undeniable passion for helping small businesses and enriching the Los Angeles web design community has produced a long list of happy and successful clients, a wall full of awards, and a blog devoted to web design events.

The Los Angeles Web Design Community

No other web design agency can provide the same level of visibility and transparency as an agency using Intervals.

Matt Dandurand, the founder of Media Contour, has been active in the Los Angeles web design community since the year 2000. As much as he loves LA, Matt is the first to admit that his local web design scene suffers from a Hollywood stigma. And his commitment to the web design and UX community goes beyond the beleaguering Hollywood hype — Media Contour is actively devoting their time and resources to put their local tech community on the map alongside New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.

Media Contour participates in as many web design related meetups in the Los Angeles basin as they can fit into their already busy schedule — the Los Angeles User Experience meetup, the Southern California Web Designers & Developers meetup, and other meetups encompassing the Los Angeles web design community at large. Media Contour posts reviews of each meetup event, and maintains a master calendar of upcoming events on their Los Angeles Web Design Community Blog.

It’s hard to believe Media Contour has enough time to devote to the local web design community while also running their own creative agency. So where do they find time do all this?

Saving Time through Project Management

We did tons and tons of research. Intervals was, and still is, unlike anything else out there.

Media Contour shared with us the inner workings of how they use Intervals to manage their workload while also keeping track of their time. Our web design workflow management software helps them break down their workload into different types of projects — web site projects, social media projects, logo projects, and a handful of others. For each project type they have created a project template, which includes the work broken down into milestones and tasks. When a new project kicks off, they simply copy the project template, saving them a lot of time that would otherwise be spent doing setup.

The next step is setting up clients with limited access to their projects. The different user levels provide Media Contour with just the right amount of client access, so that clients can view project and task updates. In fact, Intervals has become a part of their pitch. The level of visibility and transparency Intervals offers to monitor ongoing client work is a selling point few agencies can match.

Empowering the Lean Startup through Online Time Tracking Software

Before being introduced to Intervals, Media Contour was accustomed to developing fixed bid projects, and often times losing money on them. They were a young company trying to figure out the best business model that worked for both their own web design agency and their clients. Media Contour would often times go above and beyond, as is the nature of designers who want to do their best creative work, on each project. Unfortunately, this approach was shrinking their hourly dollar amount and decreasing their margins. The needed time tracking software designed by and for a small business that would help them understand where their time was going, so they could stop losing money.

You want more business, but you also want to be passionate about your work and see your client succeed.

The Intervals blog turned Media Contour on to the idea of billing projects at an hourly rate, instead of a fixed bid. They decided to try Intervals for project management, task management and time tracking with new clients. “We were using Basecamp™, but it just wasn’t robust enough,” says Matt. “We made the switch and have never looked back.”

Soon after adopting Intervals into their day-to-day workflow, Media Contour discovered that tracking time and billing hourly gave them more flexibility when working with lean startups. They could now make rapid and quick changes to match the lean startup’s fast-paced and liquid nature. Intervals gave them the ability to track billable hours in real-time, which became a selling tool for acquiring new clients.

Media Contour and their clients are able to log in to Intervals daily and review a project’s progress and billable hours, and decide what and how much to do next, making the most of the client’s budget. Intervals makes this possible by running reports on their data in an instant, giving Media Contour and their clients the real-time billable hour calculations and estimated versus actual projections necessary to make the best decisions.

Media Contour has selflessly put their clients first, empowering them to succeed without draining their budget. In an industry plagued with questionable contractual practices, Media Contour is a welcome, trustworthy reprieve. “You want more business, but you also want to be passionate about your work and see your client succeed,” says Matt. Media Contour is able to do both, using Intervals, not only to track time and manage projects, but also to build long lasting client relationships.

Want to experience the benefits of using Intervals at your agency? We offer several different pricing and plans to fit your company’s needs.

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