Inside The White Label Agency: How to develop better WordPress websites!
About The White Label Agency
The White Label Agency is a B2B partner helping agencies build custom WordPress websites for their clients. Those agencies create the designs, and The White Label Agency does the coding as their invisible back office.
We sat down with Bobby King from The White Label Agency to find out about how their development teams collaborate with external clients.
The White Label Agency offers two primary services for WordPress development. 1) Project-based white-label WordPress development Each project is quoted individually based on the design files and requirements sent to us. We provide the partner with a personal account manager who learns their preferences and serves as the single point of contact for getting their sites done and keeping them informed along the way. 2) Dedicated developers A more cost efficient alternative for our partners that have a steady workflow and feel comfortable having full control of the coding process. In this model an experienced and fully equipped developer from our team is assigned to work as a remote member of the partner’s team.
How is your team structured?
At TWLA our project teams are comprised of a dedicated account manager that works directly with our partners for all communication, a developer to perform the coding according to specifications, and a quality assurance team to review projects before initial delivery as well as during the feedback stage.
As a remote team, can you give us some insights on how you collaborate on new projects?
Our Account Managers and development team sit in the same office, so they work together to review a prospect’s design files and specifications to deliver an accurate quote for projects. If their are any questions that need to be clarified our Account Manager will contact the prospect via email or Skype.
If it is a deeper technical question the Head of Production will be included on the call.Once a quote is accepted, the Account Manager will write up all directions for the project and place the designs in a Basecamp project that an assigned developer has access to. Partners are also granted access to the same project if they wish to double check understanding of requirements and to make any additions before the project starts.
During development if any other questions do arise the Account Manager will reach out to the partner for clarification, but at this stage that is not done very often as it is best to get complete requirements before development.
"Once the development is finished the project goes to our Quality Assurance team to start the feedback and delivery process."
What are the advantages of outsourcing WordPress development?
The main advantage of outsourcing WordPress development to an agency like ours is the flexibility and scalability it offers. Whether a partner needs one developer that they want to work closely with or an entire team that takes care of the entire development process we have a solution that can work at a very reasonable price for the value provided.
This scalability allows our partners to focus on whatever they do best, whether that be pay-per-click consulting to design services, and leaves the development of their clients sites to a professional team that focuses only on WordPress.
What does the feedback process at TWLA looks like?
When initial development of the website is complete and it has passed an internal review our Quality Assurance team gives the go ahead for it to be sent to our partner for review. The partner is presented with a link to the website on our development server and the site is already setup with the Usersnap plugin.
The partner sees the website just as any end-user would, but there is also a small tab on the bottom right of the screen that allows the user to make screenshots and annotate portions of the site that they wish to provide feedback on. Those feedback items are ported directly into a Trello board that our development team has set up for the project under an “Issues” column.
Once the partner has completed their feedback they will alert the Account Manager the site is ready to be updated.
All cards are then handled by the assigned developer and then checked by a QA Engineer, who additionally performs regression testing after any changes. The QA Engineer gives the final go ahead when the site is ready for delivery and the Account Manager notifies the Partner their site is ready for final review and migration to its live location.
How does your team use Usersnap?
Here at TWLA we use a combination of the Usersnap plugin for WordPress and Trello boards.The plug-in allows any reviewer of the website to make screenshots of the specific feedback issues, make notes to the development team and submit them for feedback directly on the website versus using email.
Those feedback requests are sent as a card to a specific column for incoming requests on the matching Trello board of the project and are prioritized for development review and adjustment.
"A really great feature of Usersnap is that it automatically captures the used browser, URL, and screen size for each snapshot."
Having that information saves a lot of back-and-forth communication time as the developer can pinpoint exactly what conditions may be causing an issue and then take steps to address it properly.
What are important factors for you and your team when collecting user feedback?
The most important factors when collecting feedback are the following: Centralization - having all information collected in one place for the entire team to access makes sure nothing is lost along the way. Transparency - allowing all stakeholders to see what issues need to be addressed, what items are being worked on, and what items have been completed in real time simply by checking a Trello board. Visualization - using a tool like Usersnap allows partners providing feedback a way to visually show us what they are seeing on their end and what needs to be fixed. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and there is no truer place for that then with addressing feedback on websites.
How many people are usually involved in a web project of yours?
Typically there are 4 people involved in a project.The Account Manager serves primarily as the project manager and is supported by the Head of Production, a development team member and a quality assurance team member.
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