Your reasons for product redesign may be different, from low client adoption to a major rebranding effort. In any case, you need to set up a productive environment of collaboration with the provider of redesign services. Working with an outsourced company is a challenge for many businesses. Many unpredictable bottlenecks may emerge because of the time difference and distance.
Here is a simple yet handy guide for setting up collaborative workflows between a web agency and a client. Use these tips to nail remote work and derive maximum value from product redesign.
1. Define Roles and Responsibilities Clearly
Product redesign is a complicated process involving many people on both sides. The web agency may need to work in a close bond with in-house staff to gain access to critical architectural parts. It may also need to learn more about your brand identity and culture, which is better done by insiders.
Thus, you should discuss and lay down all roles, responsibilities, and processes in the project documentation before starting any project. Otherwise, the remote workers may experience confusion, role ambiguity, and role conflict. Each of these undesirable byproducts of remote work can cause delays and team friction, which you should avoid by all means.
2. Build Trust Early at the Start of Work
Placing an order for product redesign or web development seems simple at first glance. Yet, a remote agency doesn’t know you as a brand, team, or business idea. So, they may deviate from your delineated path and develop wrong solutions, wasting your time and money.
This trouble can be avoided if you reserve some time to get to know the remote team and tell them about your brand, culture, strategic values, and goals. A well-arranged acquaintance can save you much time and energy in the work process. It builds trust and creates much better mutual understanding between the project participants.
3. Set Up Effective Communication Channels
Remote work is much more complicated in organizational processes. But the way you set communication channels can either simplify or complicate the work further. It’s critical to optimize project communication by setting the limitations of involvement. Getting all team members on board during chats and video calls kills time and productivity. Many people have nothing to do with the discussed processes.
Thus, the most effective communication strategy is the involvement of related staff in discussions to save others’ time and prevent delays. Still, documentation should be stored in a single, universally accessible database. This way, everyone can stay in the loop without distracting teammates. Remote communication and project/task management tools are diverse and effective today. So, you will have a wide range of options to choose from.
4. Share Your Ideas Openly
Rapid prototyping ensures effective collaboration on web design or redesign today. It’s a distributed design approach that focuses on early and open idea sharing and experimentation. The project moves forward quickly, with all team members staying on the same page and contributing to its progression. As a result, the whole team enjoys a much shorter learning curve and achieves better outcomes quicker.
5. Be Patient and Supportive
Haste and fuss are the worst foes of web redesign. The client often faces stringent deadlines and wants to achieve lightning-fast market success. Still, reality may impose different rules on the game. Thus, you may fail the entire project by hurrying too much and neglecting some vital stages of redesign, testing, and launch.
6. Create a Collaborative Culture and Mindset
The times when the client assigned a project to an agency, and the agency performed it, are long gone. Modern successful businesses work together with their outsourcing providers. They actively participate in ideation, business idea validation, prototyping, and user research.
Such an approach is much more productive in business terms. The client is the Product Owner, who knows the company’s values, goals, and unique benefits better than anyone else. Thus, the client’s active participation in product redesign creates a collaborative culture and mindset among all involved employees. As a result, the team moves in the right direction without deviations, guided by the product’s champion.
7. Take Advantage of Innovative Technology
Outsourcing is not new. It emerged a couple of decades ago as a solution to the shortage of local talent and an assistive tool for workforce globalization. Thus, you’re now better positioned to reap the benefits of software development for remote work optimization. There are tons of communication, project management, task monitoring, and documentation apps and programs to help make your remote work a breeze. Study the market and compile a mix of remote work instruments suitable for your specific project goals. You’re sure to simplify many processes that initially seemed a hassle.
8. Be Clear about Goals and Deadlines
Excellent communication and productive work with a remote team is impossible without clarity about project goals and timelines. You can’t be content with a partnership if you’re kept in the dark regarding the work progress, deliverables, and deadlines for specific project parts.
Thus, it’s vital to set a specific timeline, assign roles within that process to all involved team members, and track the progress with the help of specialized software. Things happen, and deadlines can be adjusted in case any emergency occurs.
9. Keep Everyone in the Loop
Keeping all project participants informed about the progress is extremely hard. People work from different locations, live in different time zones, and require different bits of information. Thus, a wise solution should be a single knowledge base where you will store all relevant documentation. The documents, design sketches, meetings recordings, and other data pieces should be clearly labeled and stored in folders so that anyone can find the needed information hassle-free.
Remote Work Can Be Efficient
As you can see, setting up a productive remote work environment is possible with some preliminary effort. You need to pick the right tools and design processes in advance so that everyone knows their tasks, deadlines, and spheres of responsibility. Stick to those rules, be open and supportive, and you’re sure to get a lifetime web design partner.
