Outsourced web development

Should I outsource my web development project?

How enlisting the services of a web agency can ensure successful project delivery

Setting the stages for success...

Your team may have the technical capability to carry out some elements of your next web project in-house. But do they have the time? Outsourcing your web development project to a web development agency can save logistical headaches and costs while leading to a better quality result. As well as having specific experience and up-to-date knowledge, an outsourced team is likely to provide services such as hosting and maintenance. So, your business will benefit from working with a trusted third-party web agency long after the launch of your website.

That said, there are 152K computer programming consultancy businesses in the UK (Statista, 2022), catering to various needs. So how do you select the right web development partner? We’ve provided insight below into what to expect from our typical web design and development process at Feel Created.

5 basic steps of outsourced web design and development

Initial pitch and discovery phase
Branding, design and tone of voice development
Coding phase
Copywriting and content migration
Final sign off and go-live

Initial pitch and discovery phase

Exploring what’s on offer

The first thing your potential outsourced partner will do is demonstrate why they are suitable for the job. This introduction is usually in the form of a pitch-based presentation. The presentation should be focused on the requirements of your brief. Have they answered all of the questions you posed? Did they offer relevant examples to your industry? The businesses we work with generally tell us they get a ‘feel’ for their preferred partner in this type of meeting.

If commissioned, a series of concise meetings will be arranged to allow you to go in-depth on your website needs. This discovery phase informs the entire design and build process, ensuring that your requirements are covered every step of the way. The discovery phase generally ends with an agreed site map.

Branding, design and tone of voice development

Getting the fundamentals right

Whether you need to rebrand or already have branding documents in the bank, your chosen agency will work with you to create a design that meets (or likely exceed!) your expectations. Our design process at Feel Created is communicated through Adobe XD.

Using XD as a review platform gives you better insight into how the final design will work when live. If your outsourced web development partner includes marketing services in their offer, they’ll also help get your brand tone of voice just right. The design phase can usually be completed in a matter of weeks (depending on internal review and approvals), meaning that your chosen team can move to code your site as quickly as possible.

Branding, design and tone of voice development

Coding phase

Putting the building blocks together

And so the technical part begins! Your expert developers will begin to put together the building blocks of your custom site. While you’re unlikely to need insight into the coding itself, at Feel, we provide links to our dev sites right from the start. Direct access to the dev site means that you can check in on the progress of your website at your convenience, at any time. We may be an outsourced web development partner, but we act as closely to an extended member of your team as we can.

All our sites are custom-built, so a high degree of collaboration helps remove bottlenecks and make amends and adjustments a continual, rather than last-minute, process. Giving consistent access to the development site can also help with approvals, giving you flexibility when arranging review points internally.

Copywriting and content migration

Adding in the detail

Some outsourced web development agencies offer additional services to complement their core offer. For example, marketing and copywriting. You may wish to save money by allocating the copywriting duties in-house, but in reality, it's often a false economy. Professional copywriters are experienced in translating your requirements to optimised web copy that will perform much better than non-optimised content.

They’ll write in an on-brand tone of voice that complements your web design, bringing together the full package for launch. At Feel, we help our clients get more out of their web launches by considering pre and post-launch marketing activity that helps raise awareness of your brand. We can also work with you to ensure your top-performing content is edited pre-migration to suit the style of your updated content.

Read our blog on copywriting

Final sign off and go-live

Ready for take-off!

Once review and sign off are complete; you're ready for launch. Often clients see this as 'project complete'. But when making a significant website investment, you’ll get better ROI if you consider long term performance. You will need hosting and maintenance, perhaps SEO and copy updates – this can all be managed by your outsourced partner as a weekly or monthly service. Often our clients mention that their web build is a 'one-off project' that they don't expect to repeat anytime soon.

But in reality, we find that many return after three to five years to refresh their online presence. After all, the digital landscape is constantly changing and evolving. Rest assured that we futureproof against total rebuilds within our builds by producing flexible, easy to update, maintain, and upgrade websites.

If you’re interested in outsourcing your next web development project but unsure where to begin. Give us a call. We’re a small (small UK Dev Agency of the Year!) team with big ideas, and we’d love to hear about your project

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