Written by Miles Thorp

Inefficient web creation processes are killing your profit margins.

In the fast-paced world of digital marketing, efficiency is key. For marketing agency owners, time is of the essence, and every minute wasted in the website creation process translates to lost profits and missed opportunities.

The problem

In a forward thinking industry, things haven‘t changed.

Over the last decade the web has evolved. Making things once thought impossible, possible.

But, the way we plan, design, build and launch websites hasn’t! We’re now creating online experiences that wouldn’t have been possible 10 years ago, but we’re still using the same outdated, manual process we’ve always used.

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“Companies lose 20 to 30% of their annual revenue”

A study by IDC found that companies lose 20 to 30% of their revenue each year due to inefficiencies. For a marketing agency with an annual revenue of £1 million, this translates to a staggering £200,000 to £300,000 lost annually. So, what causes this?

The current web creation process is outdated, manual and no longer fit for purpose.

The current process of delivering websites is very much manual, with each phase of the project happening in isolation from the others. Leading to redundant tasks and more importantly tasks that could be automated being done manually.

You’re paying someone to do something that could be done for free and by doing so applying unnecessary pressure to your team and stopping them from focusing their time somewhere else.

Every time your agency does this you are limiting your capacity to take on new projects. You delay the time it takes for your clients to start seeing a return on investment and you chip away at your profit margins.

In years gone by this wouldn’t have been an issue. But, in recent years with the influx of automation and AI, agencies that do not adopt new ways of working will not survive when competing against agencies that do.

“20% of time is spent on inefficient tasks”

According to a report by McKinsey, employees spend around 20% of their working time on inefficient tasks. That means that for every 5 employees you have, one is wasted on inefficiency.

The solution

Convert your old, manual process into a continuous and automated workflow.

So, how do you tackle this problem? You need to analyse and optimise your agencies workflow. Remove inefficient tasks where possible and replace as much as possible with automation.

Doing this will lead to:

Reduced lead times = Happier clients

Reduced workload = Happier team

Increased profit margins = Healthier profit

So, how do you do it?

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Follow these 5 steps to optimise your workflow and save hundreds of hours on every web project.

Optimising workflows is no easy task. Trust us, we do it for a living. But, hopefully this will help get you started. Work with your team and follow these 5 steps to save hundreds of hours.

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Map it out

Step 1 is to map out your existing workflow. Sit down with your team and create a flow diagram that shows every task that needs to be completed when delivering a website. Go from idea through to launch. You could use a tool like Draw.io to create your flow diagram.

Tip: Go granular. There is no task too small.

Assign timings

Step 2 is to assign timings to each task. In an ideal world you would have tracking setup in your current process so you could add accurate figures. However, for most this isn’t the case so get your team to give you ball park figures for how long each task takes.

When you see these figures written down, they will shock you.

Identify opportunities

Step 3 is to use what you have so far to identify your biggest opportunities. Go through each task and highlight the tasks that take up the most time. Reducing these will generate the highest return on investment.

Tip: Your three most time consuming tasks are your opportunities.

Find solutions

Step 4 is to take those opportunities and find possible solutions. To do this you need to ask the following questions.

Are the tasks actually necessary?
Can we harness the power of AI and automation?
Do any tools exist that can do this for us?
How much would it cost to do this ourselves?

Implement solution

The final step and the most costly and time consuming is to start implementing solutions. Start with the solutions that are easiest to implement and work your way up. Don’t forget to iterate, this should be a continuous process.

Tip: Track the improvements made by each solution.

How much is inefficiency costing your agency?

The biggest expense on any project is labour and if your team’s time isn’t being used effectively your agency ends up paying the cost. Use our free calculator to get an estimate of how much profit you could be losing.

Calculate Now