Efficient, high-profit website builds

Website designs are the bread and butter work for most agencies. Practically every business in the world needs one and they can be incredibly valuable business assets.

The challenge with website projects is that they are complex. It’s not just about creating something beautiful that represents the brand, but there are numerous technical challenges to overcome.

• Designs have to be translated into code
• Browser compatibility
• Mobile optimization
• Search optimization
• CMS configuration
• Data and analytics flows
• Platform integrations
• Hosting
• DNS configuration
• Email setup

…the list could go on and on.

And it’s always fun to discover that your client doesn’t know how anything is set up (or even where their domain is registered).

The tech side of website design also comes with numerous hidden traps. Certain designs could be 5x more difficult to implement technically than a slightly different alternative. Or, a small client change request could send a wrecking ball through hours of technical work. Read this post about the 2 most common “saves” we make to learn more.

This is why we’ve developed a systematic approach to helping agencies deliver website projects that are high-profit margin and low stress.

(And, if you want to get better at selling web development projects in the first place, we created this course based on our personal agency experience plus the best of what we’ve seen in working with our agency partners.)

Here are a few examples of recent projects and more details on how we approach helping agencies implement the tech side of website projects.

Budgeting, Proposal, and Design

Some agencies–and all agencies on some projects–work from starter sites or templates suited to their client project. That’s a great way to work.

But, when your client needs custom work, the process is a bit more involved.

Budgeting

Budgeting your costs to meet your client’s feature requirements can be time consuming. You trade off inaccuracy with time spent you cannot get back.

Our partners have a better way. With BlockStep, you can use our quote builder to get an estimate of project costs and timelines. You can create multiple versions so you know your costs with different feature sets or build options.

Proposal

When you’re ready to make your proposal to the client, you can lock in a quote and scheduling from BlockStep so you can price your proposal for success.

Proposal support…features to hit specific budget, timeline, goals, and avoid costly mistakes.

Design

If you want to hit a specific budget target, we can work with you to create a design to do that. And, if you have a completely custom design, we can do that, too.

Learn more: what are the “Blocks” and “Steps” in BlockStep?

Depending on the client and project, we work from:

• wireframes only
• reference or “comp” sites
• business goals (without any design direction)
• high resolution, custom design files

…and everything in between.

Here are some examples of what our Partners send us.

How BlockStep Supports You

As a BlockStep Partner, you’ve used our quote builder to nail the budget and used our proposal support to win the project. You’ve sent your designs and brief over to your team here at BlockStep. Here’s what you can expect next:

1. Project Review – We will review and surface any questions.
2. Development – We deliver on time and on budget.
3. QA Review – We’ll send you a link to the staging site to review and request changes. If you have content to add, we can get that hooked up, too. If you want to do a QA run through with your client for their feedback, you can.
4. Launch – After we’ve made any tweaks based on the review stage, we’ll launch the site and hand you the keys to give to your client.

You get all the credit, even though, you’ve been working on your business not in it the whole time.

Winning Results + Ongoing Support

Check out a few of the recent, custom-designed sites we’ve delivered for our agency partners. Their clients are thrilled and our agency partners get all the credit (and profit) from the project.

And our collaboration doesn’t have to end when the website is launched…

Offload the Ongoing Support 

Nothing kills your growth momentum quite like a client continually pinging you with questions, expecting you to make constant updates, or asking you to fix the emergency they created when the cheap contractor they hired broke their new site.

(Yep, we’ve been in the agency game ourselves. We know how clients work. Or don’t.)

If your client needs ongoing support like hosting, maintenance, design or content updates, you can connect with our support partner. We can hand the project off directly to them for a seamless transition that makes a great experience for your client (and you can collect a referral fee).

With BlockStep partnership, you have a partner to support your growth in an ongoing way beyond the initial project.