Choosing the Right eCommerce Agency: Our Success Formula
Choosing an eCommerce agency partner can be daunting. How do you know which agency to trust? What if they don’t work well with your internal teams? Will they really deliver on results or the promises they made in their pitch? We want to pull back the curtain and give you insight into how we set up our teams for success, how our teams are structured and how we successfully integrate into client teams. Wondering what it’s like to work with us? Read on.
Your own, dedicated team of experts
We work hard at continuity of team members to ensure we work and learn together. At the start of any new partnership, we assigned clients to one of our teams. These teams become your resource and point of contact for life, whether that’s during the early stages of a first project or the implementation of additional solutions months or years down the line. Occasionally, when changes are forced upon us, we have a detailed onboarding process designed to bring new team members up to speed.
Providing a dedicated team of experts that know your eCommerce evolution inside out ensures we support you in the best way possible. If we are knowledge experts in your business too, we can provide the strategic direction you’re looking for in any partner.
Diverse expertise for world-class results
At many agencies, it’s common practice to assign a solo engineer to solve a particular problem. You’ll often find that these engineers specialise in a specific area but lack a general understanding of everyone else’s role or even struggle to see solutions outside of their domain expertise. This siloed approach makes it far harder to deliver a holistic solution that effectively considers engineering, design and strategy.
At Rotate°, we’ve seen that diversity of thought delivers greater value to clients. Having a team of designers, product managers and engineers who can collaborate effectively brings business needs, UX and technology together to build better solutions. Our team members all have a comprehensive understanding of engineering, design and strategy which allows for seamless collaboration and innovation. This side-by-side approach also makes it easier for our teams to adapt quickly to sudden changes. Each expert then has their own specialism which they use to craft unique solutions to client challenges. This T-shaped approach encourages collaboration and knowledge sharing, resulting in higher-quality results for clients.
An agile process for maximum productivity and successful collaboration
We recently introduced our new work process, Foundations° , which is our take on agile ways of working. We follow a dual-track agile work process and have two production teams that both consist of one shaping track and two delivery tracks. If you’re unfamiliar with what this means, here’s a breakdown of each team’s key responsibilities and the workflow:
Shaping track: focused on the ‘problem space’, strategy and mitigating risk
Our Shaping tracks, or teams, are responsible for mitigating risks through extensive research and testing. They work closely together to solve problems for clients and their users, creating detailed prototypes and thoroughly testing ideas. This approach allows them to identify and address potential issues upfront, ensuring a smoother development process and minimising the risk of costly revisions later on. The items that pass the testing stage are then added to the project backlog, ready to be built.
Delivery track: focused on the ‘solution space’ and building best-in-class products
Our Delivery teams are responsible for creating the final solutions defined in the backlog by the Shaping teams. Their aim is to deliver high-quality, user-centric products to clients efficiently. With a sole focus on building, they can create world-class products that meet client goals and drive high ROI.
A proven workflow
To deliver innovative, research-driven results whilst also preventing burnout, each project phase follows a structured workflow; 3 weeks shaping, 6 weeks delivery. Every 6 weeks, there is a 1 week cooldown period for all team members. This is an important time for the team to recharge and reset, and supports them in a number of ways including;
A chance to take a cognitive break
An opportunity to further their learning and development
The ability to join forces to address larger bug fixes