Lifesaving Onboarding Strategies for New White Label Partners

Before making the decision to begin working with a white label web development company you’re fearful that you will become a victim of outsourcing gone wrong. It’s also a common fear that the work you receive may not be to your liking, and then what?

We’ve gone alongside many digital agencies through their onboarding process. And through our experience we’ve learned many things that have helped us avoid the simple mistakes. When you are ready to use our white label web development services we will take you through the process in a series of small steps. Following this process allows us to understand if we are on the path to achieve your goals.

Step 1 – Setting the Expectations

Each website is unique to a specific company, so before we can begin the work we go over your expectations from this partnership. It is important to understand each team member’s responsibility to make the work effective.

We discuss the following technical expectations:

  • Quality – Quality costs money! You need to provide examples of the quality of work you are seeking. This allows us to set a fair exchange between the project/agency. Your examples should be relevant to your needs.
  • Compatibility – Determine where you want your website to be utilized the most: browsers, devices, and screen sizing. Understanding your user compatibility helps our team throw the most effective life raft.
  • Backend Setup – Your preference on a site builder matters. We discuss with our clients how they want to have their site built as sometimes they have specific needs for organizing the fields in the admin panel, and what field type to use for elements like excerpts, sliders, and post lists. We discuss page builder options like Elementor, WP Visual Bakery/Visual Composer, Divi, Beaver, Advanced Custom Fields, and/or Flexible Content.

 

In tandem with technical expectations, it’s important to also discuss your expectations from your white label partner. Expectations are carried on all sides of the life raft and stretch beyond technical needs.

  • Speed – Provide a timeline for how fast you need your web developer to complete this project. You can use examples of previous tasks and websites to compare the length of the process.
  • Capacity – Do you have other projects in parallel to this one? At what level of experience is needed to complete them?
  • Availability – Do you plan your projects ahead of time or do you need a developer on a quick notice?
  • Communication – Dictate your communication style between the project/agency. Do you prefer to connect with your developer often, on an as needed basis, or by meeting?

 

It is important to lay out all the expectations prior to the start of the project. This simple breakdown opens the conversation and communication between agencies, and ensures the web development team is on the right path — from the start.

Step 2 – Connecting with the White Label Team

Forming a connection with your white label partner can allow a free flow line of communication between the project/agency — start to finish. Non-verbal communication can be good for quick needs but it is mostly ineffective when forming a working relationship with your white label partner.

Spending the time to engage and connect with your white label partner via voice call or video call can encourage the communication to become more distinct and personal. And while misunderstandings are bound to happen, a non-verbal form of communication can drown the issue and make it difficult to navigate moving forward.

This isn’t saying to become the best of friends with your white label partner, but taking things beyond surface level and discussing more than work can bring long-term partnerships and continued work. Jokes and birthday greetings welcomed!

Step 3 – First Assignment: Agreement

It is tempting to test your new partner before really investing, but this first assignment, or first few, should be chosen carefully. The first few projects should be used as a gauge for the expectations and to work through the learning curve as partners.

The first few projects are opportunities to begin speaking the same language as your white label partner; understanding expectations and overcoming the learning curve.

We want this partnership to achieve goals and be cohesive. The first few projects we take on with any digital agency are always within our normal scope of projects. We create a dialogue that lays out all the “first things first”, outside of the technical development. We also highly encourage these first few projects to have more cushion room before delivering to the end client. Additional time welcomes the opportunity for us to get questions answered and any feedback adjustments made before final delivery.

Step 4 – Progress Review

While the first few projects are important for the working partnership to grow and solidify, that relationship also services the progress meetings throughout the process. We schedule progress meetings shortly after the start of a new project so we can update progress, ask any questions that have come up on either side, and/or go over any new findings if the starting task was more difficult. A strong working partnership allows more effective and transparent progress meetings for the web developers and your in house team.

Step 5 – First Assignment: Post-Mortem 

Upon completion of the first assignment you should schedule another meeting to discuss the ending details and the outcome of the project. In the post-mortem meeting things like technical execution, pricing, and overall style of communication can be discussed amongst everyone between white label partner and agency team.

The next few projects to come are also used as testing and a part of the onboarding process. After the first assignment is complete and the post-mortem meeting takes place, we can apply the feedback to the next few projects. Through time, and understanding each other’s working dynamics, we can scale back meetings and discussions to something that makes sense for both partners.

Conclusion

When deciding to partner with a new white label web developer a lot of common mistakes happen and eventually can impair your ability to create long-term business partnerships. Going through an onboarding process is imperative to allowing valuable work to be done and your projects to be the best they can be for your business. We do not cut any corners with our onboarding process and neither should you. The biggest takeaway from these action items are the expectations between project/agency and the capacity of communication. Utilizing these strategies provided can go a long way with common problems in new white label partnerships.

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