It’s the most wonderful time of the year—time for your company to redesign, rebuild, or simply fix your website. We can hear the the flood of questions swirling around in your head or among your team at a Tuesday morning meeting…
- Do we have an in-house web designer and developer who can handle the workload?
- Do we have the resources to manage the project?
- Have we considered how we will run user acceptance testing?
This is the moment you might consider hiring an agency. Don’t stress! There are many reasons companies outsource to an agency, especially when it is one that specializes in designing and building websites. Ultimately, we bring a level of expertise to the project. Let me walk you through what it’s like to work with our team here at WebDevStudios (WDS), and why you would want to choose us for your next project.
Every client and project we work with is different, and because of that, the specific WebDevStudios team members that you work with will be unique to your project’s objectives and will include specialists with various skill sets and knowledge. Each of our team members play a critical role on the project. Today, I’m going to give you a sneak peek into roles and responsibilities to give you a better feel for what to expect when working with our team.
Business Development
You will be initially speaking with a member of our Business Development team. They are responsible for taking your vision of the project, researching it, and converting it into a comprehensive proposal and project plan.
Project Management
A dedicated Account Manager will be assigned to your project that oversees the account, while a Project Manager will be assigned to manage the day-to-day objectives from initiation to completion of the project. They are responsible for managing tasks, scheduling, communication, etc.
Our Project Managers work closely with the Engineers during the project to ensure everything is on track, in scope and on budget. Through our project management tool set, you will have the opportunity to follow the progress of your project. The Project Manager will keep in touch with you at all times during the project; so if you have a question or concern, you always have someone to talk to.
Design
If your project consists of a design phase, you will have a dedicated UI/UX web designer who will focus on creating a prototype for your new site based on the requirements you discussed with Business Development, as well as your target audience. From detailed wire framing to prototyping, you will be involved at every step during the design phase to ensure your needs are met. This is one of the most exciting steps in the project, as our creative team is excellent at taking your vision and creating something visual that considers accessibility and responsiveness to ensure your site looks great on desktop and mobile.
Engineering
There will be various Engineers dedicated to your project. As I mentioned previously, every project is unique and requires particular skill sets. We have a wide range of Engineers on the WebDevStudios team who specialize in different areas of technical abilities specific to WordPress. Below, I break down the different types of developers you might work with on your project.
Lead Engineer
Every project has a dedicated Lead Engineer (some projects require more than one) who is responsible for taking project requirements and mapping out a development plan for our Engineering team. They will also review updates, do demos, and work alongside the Project Manager during your project.
Frontend Engineer
Frontend Engineers are responsible for developing elements on the frontend of the website—essentially, everything your users will interact with—usually in the form of either a custom WordPress theme or a child theme from a popular theme framework. Our WebDevStudios team of Frontend Engineers take the beautiful prototype from the designer and turn it into the frontend of your website.
Backend Engineer
Backend Engineers are responsible for building the advanced functionality that typically interacts with the server. They also handle any data migrations from your old site to your new site, create custom plugins and custom post types, and ensure WordPress is created and set up for your new website.
In addition to our project team of experts, we break the project out into various phases that will help to set goals for each phase and move your project through from initiation to completion in a timely efficient way. You can check out more details about our typical project process flow in this blog post about a project life cycle.
We understand that redesigning or building a new website can be difficult, maybe even a little intimidating, but we’ve worked with many clients and have put together a team and process that make it fun and efficient. If you have an upcoming project, we would love to talk to you more about how our WebDevStudios team can help. You can get a hold of us by submitting a contact form or directly by phone at 1-855-932-3380.
Our team can’t wait to work with your team on your next project!