Make 2015 a testing time at your agency and enjoy an easier life
A year of fast-paced change in the world of digital, the hectic countdown to Black Friday and the Christmas shopping season, and the holiday itself (a little too quickly for everyone’s liking) are well and truly over. It’s January, comparatively calm, and a time of reflection for most people, not least of all digital agencies.
As such, now is the ideal period in which to think about what worked well last year, what didn’t work so well and how things could be improved. But what New Year’s resolutions should you be making for your agency in 2015? Below is a list of five points worth considering, and could make the coming year exceptional for your agency.
Get out of the office on time
Leaving work earlier may seem rather counter-productive to agency success, but not if it’s a sign of smoother delivery. By lowering the workload of your developers through outsourcing extra responsibilities, like software testing, you can reduce defects and avoid unhappy clients sending work back to you for further development. This means fewer knock-on effects and delays on your other projects, leading to shorter hours all round for you and your team.
Stand out in the pitching process
As the number of unique Smartphones and tablets used by consumers to shop online continues to rise, ensuring a great user experience for all of their customers is becoming a greater concern for brands. Sites and apps not working properly on certain devices can have negative consequences for a company’s brand image – as a result, you need to convince potential clients at the pitching stage that you will not only deliver a great looking site, but one that works well, too.
Allow more time for creativity
Creativity is what everyone gets into the agency business for, right? But unfortunately, all sorts of pressures – such as helping out with testing software before it’s handed over to the client – can contribute to developers and designers being pulled off their creative work. Hiring more staff to dedicate to such distracting tasks or outsourcing them to appropriate companies will give your agency more time to do what you do best.
Keep development costs down
Clients sending software back for you to eliminate bugs and correct coding mistakes drives up your developments costs – it means that your developers spend more time on unbillable work. As a result, you’ll have less to invest in growing your agency, and risk being left behind by competitors. To protect your profit margins, you therefore need to optimise your developers’ performance by ensuring they are supported and that their workloads remain manageable.
Give your reputation a boost
If promising potential clients that you can deliver sites and apps that will work for the vast majority of their customers will help you win business, putting this into practice will help you retain it. One way of achieving this is to test on as many unique mobile devices as possible, something that can be easily achieved by working with a software testing partner like Bugfinders. Doing so will boost your reputation with existing clients, increasing the likelihood of referrals to other brands.
Content by The Drum Network member:
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