In the past few blog posts we’ve gone through what you need to know about outsourcing, when you need to outsource, finding the right WordPress developer, and what to outsource. This post is going to wrap up this series; and it’s going to go over how to make sure you find success when outsourcing your WordPress development. Here are 5 things to do to ensure that your projects are successful and your client’s are happy.
Establish regular communication
When you outsource development to someone, it’s very common that there will be a learning curve as the developer gets used to working with your agency. It’s very helpful to schedule weekly or bi-weekly calls with your developer to make sure everyone is on the same page with the project. This also let’s the developer keep you updated on any potential issues with the project. This is even more true if you have handed off multiple projects. When there are multiple projects in the air, it is helpful to go over everything and make sure everything is on track.
Get tasks and communication out of email
Most of the time your agency will already have a slack channel or project management app you are using to communicate. Go ahead and bring your developer into the app or slack so they can be a part of the communication going on around each project. This allows you to keep all communication for each project in a specified area that everyone can refer back to.
Have a solid process in place
If you are going to bring in someone that’s not from within your agency to do the development, it’s important to have a solid process in place. Your process can’t just live in a couple people’s heads nor can you brainstorm it on the spot for each project. You need to have a set process that ideally is documented somewhere so you can easily pass it off to the developer so they know what to expect. Now, this doesn’t mean the process is set in stone. Once you start to work with a developer you’ll probably find a better way to do things and adjust your process. You just need to have a starting place for how you see this working.
Add all the details to your designs
When you are creating the designs you need to make sure they are as close to the way you want the final website to look and function as possible. You have designers for a reason and you want them to have the final say on the design of the site and not leave it up to the interpretation of the developers. This includes hover states, animations, and anything small like that. Spell it all out. This will ensure you get a site that is as close as possible to what you designed. Also, make sure you are labeling your files and layers well. Layer 1 copy copy copy is not helpful when developing a site. It’s helpful for the layer to be named after what it is. For example, Header layer, Body layer, Footer layer, etc.
Set expectations at the beginning
Do you want the developer to communicate directly with the client? Do you want everything to go through your account manager? How will payments, change orders, and all of that work? Make sure you have all this established and communicated from the beginning so everyone is on the same page.
As you can tell a lot of this comes down to communication. As long as you establish good communication from the beginning everything else you can figure out.
Do you have any questions about how this works or interested in getting started? Reach out and let me know how I can help!
