At GoWP, we proudly partner with agencies around the world delivering WordPress services that help them grow and increase profits.
Whether we’re providing expert training, hosting weekly Niche Agency Owner Happiness Hours, or providing the daily support that agencies need to expand services or grow their team, GoWP fully commits to the success of our partners.
Vince Aguirre of Distinct, a GoWP partner since 2016, says “Before GoWP, our churn rate was 20-30% and now it’s next to nothing. I knew I needed to turn Distinct into a profitable business but I couldn’t do it alone.”
GoWP’s Origin
Co-founders Brad Morrison and Lucas Karpiuk launched our company in 2009 managing content edits for “mom and pop” agencies. Despite a healthy success and the numerous professional relationships they forged, they saw the path to scale was limited if concentrated on content edits alone.
Daniel Morrison, current Director of WordPress Services, came aboard to contribute to the Content Edits service, but soon came to the same conclusion. He worked tirelessly with the core team to imagine and strategize our path to the next level delivering a more robust slate of services.
Listening to our Partners Led to a New Service
The team saw that by listening to clients and staying in tune with their needs, we could honestly assess who we were and the services we were great at delivering and where there was opportunity to grow and improve.
Daniel recalls, “Our direction has followed the trajectory of our partner agencies.
We realized that maintenance could really be scaled a lot quicker than content edits. Over a four or five year-long process, we pumped up maintenance and made sure that service ran like a well-oiled machine.”
The team was right. Yet, according to Daniel, our conversations with partners kept coming back to their pain point around content edits.
“We’d say to our partners, ‘What we’re doing with the Content Edits service is about a 30-minute process. If you want anything outside of that, we can quote you up to two hours.’ ”
And the conversation continued.
“We know you want this page built and that you have the PSD file. We know you have the mock-up. You have the images and all the content. You have your website set up perfectly to handle this type of thing, but it’s going to take five, six hours.”
The answer for our team was clear.
So, we launched a new service – Page Builds.
We went back to our partners and offered an assigned developer to their teams who would focus solely on building out their pages.
Our Scaling Continued after Page Builds
To operate these shifting tasks, we needed to expand our team. So, we hired a couple of developers who could really help us execute this new service. Our first Page Builds developer, Angelo, is still with us and still contributing to this service. He’s a valued team member keeping us on that partner-focused trajectory.
Last year, a partner asked for help applying WooCommerce functionality and Gravity Forms to his site.
Daniel’s initial feeling was that such a request was not actually a Page Build.
“That request bumped up to the line of the Page Build Service. However, we know our developers are capable of doing a lot outside of the box that we’ve drawn. So we want to be able to utilize them in a way that makes sense. We took a quick poll and asked our partners, ‘What do your agencies need?’ They were happy to tell us, ‘Developers.’ ”
We Hire the Dedicated Developer for You
That answer could not have been better suited for us because at GoWP we’re really good at hiring developers. We’re able to test their skills, then interview, hire and train them. We perfected this ability through many years of discovery and implementation. And, we know that these are time-draining tasks for our partners.
“Our clients don’t enjoy fishing around to find developers then rotating them in and out of their staff on a weekly basis. And, some of those developers REALLY don’t work out. So that’s how we approached it – solving those headaches for our partners.”
Listen to what Coach and Product Strategist Chris Lema says about GoWP’s Dedicated Services.
Dedicated Developers are Cost-Effective Team Additions
Our partners find it’s cost-effective to have a part-time GoWP Dedicated Developer working through their support tickets and creating simple and complex plugin customizations four hours a day, Monday – Friday.
They feel a greater degree of freedom to refocus their attention or take on projects they normally wouldn’t have the flexibility to undertake.
We’re giving partners greater assurance by keeping our developers’ skills fresh, without asking their agencies to conduct the training.
For example, our developers are building client sites with different page builders and observe partners increasingly using Gutenberg. So, we’re in the process of training our team to have full competency with that block editor.
For agencies, we offer a valuable alternative to the time-draining tasks that consume too much of their bandwidth.
- Agencies don’t want to spend the bulk of their time updating websites.
- Agencies don’t want to deal with the hassle of keeping WordPress plugins up to date and performing backup.
This is not a problem for our Dedicated Developers who efficiently manage those tasks and build something for each agency, if necessary.
Daniel didn’t realize the value of these additions on his own. He points out that Lucas Karpiuk has done a “killer job creating the coolest maintenance system that I’ve seen (and continues to improve it). Having his insight on what qualifies and quantifies a good developer has been foundational in each of our new services.”
He further credits Brad Morrison’s vision and leadership that give the team space to expand our services and meet partner needs.
Daniel adds, “We not only see our company’s skills and strengths as a way to grow a sustainable business, but we also see them providing a sustainable way to help out agencies.
We communicate to our partners, ‘Let us do what you don’t like to do. Or, those things you don’t have time to do.’ We know what to look for in a developer and how to give them the tools they need to mature and become even stronger.”
Advice for Agency Owners considering hiring a GoWP Dedicated Developer for their team
Our Dedicated Developer Service is now one year old and going strong due in part to the consistent care and attention given to relationships and developer measurables.
GoWP account managers do a great job ensuring the communication with partners who’ve taken on a Dedicated Developer is open and fluid. Before placing a developer on a team, managers conduct a discovery call to gain understanding of the agency’s needs from skill set and time availability to project outlook. The onboarding process requires one day.
Daniel can attest to the managers’ effective oversight, “We stay in regular contact on their progress and deliverables of each Dedicated Developer once they are placed. If we find a developer is not the best match for a partner, we have the system in place to switch them out for another partner for whom they’re a better fit. We want to make sure we have the right-fitting developer who is aligned with the agency’s needs and projects.”
For agency owners considering their next move and right decisions for their team, GoWP’s already gone through the trials and errors. We know how to source, vet and place top talent on your team. We gladly take on those logistics. All the agency has to do is show our developer how to work in their tools and how to do their projects.
“We know what to look for in a developer and how to give them the tools they need to mature and become even stronger.”
GoWP’s Daniel Morrison and COO, Emily Hunkler, with Ed Perry, friend of GoWP.
Case Study
Sometimes, agency owners aren’t sure what adding a Dedicated Developer to an established team might look like. Jason Ake, the founder of Waypoint Creative, had such concerns. Before signing on for GoWP’s Dedicated Developer service, Jason struggled to find the right developers for his team. He wasn’t fully confident in the freelancers he periodically hired and he couldn’t help but worry that his clients’ sites would suffer.
Jason says, “I get at least three times the value with my GoWP Dedicated Developer compared to what I would get from an independent contractor or freelancer. Not to mention, I don’t have the headaches and time investment of training and onboarding. GoWP has allowed me to put money back into the company. We’re able to stay lean and still grow as a company. Bonus: I don’t have to pay taxes on GoWP services, it’s actually a write-off because it’s a service!”
Read Jason’s full case study here.
If you’re ready to eliminate the pain points you face at your agency now, consider the cost-saving benefits of adding a GoWP Dedicated Developer to your team.
Schedule a call with a member of our team.
