How to Optimise Your Workflows as a Website Reseller

With a high turnaround of new websites to create, website resellers are constantly seeking ways to simplify, streamline, and expedite their workflow processes.

At Mono, we prioritize our partnerships and strive to make it effortless for our partners to grow their businesses. As the success of our partners directly translates to our success, we have identified eight key factors that can significantly enhance workflow efficiency, particularly when dealing with a high volume of site creations.

1: Understand Your Prospect or Client

To maximize the outcome of prospect calls or meetings with clients, conducting thorough research is crucial. Familiarize yourself with their pain points and requirements.

During the first meeting, it's okay to ask about their specific needs, especially when dealing with existing customers, but it can also be a good idea to attempt to understand the customer's perspective from the outset.

This discovery phase involves gathering information about the customer or prospect, which can occur even before the initial call.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What does the customer do?
• What are the website's goals?
• Who will be visiting the site?
• Are there any budget or time constraints?

Document these goals to make them tangible. Ultimately, this process should culminate in the creation of a proposal and a project scope that can be presented to the client.

2: Make the First Interaction Count

Pitching clients can be a time-consuming process, and it's important to make a strong impression right from the start. One effective way to achieve this is by demonstrating a clear understanding of the client's needs and presenting a solution to their problem.

However, some website resellers face a dilemma when it comes to pitching potential clients. They may create dummy websites to showcase during initial meetings, but this approach can be time-consuming and costly since most of these websites end up being unused, driving up the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).

To address this challenge, sales teams require a faster method of creating these dummy sites without relying on the design team and without needing to go through a complicated setup process in the backend of their chosen platform. The sales team doesn’t want to have to deal with issues such as hosting, account creation and user management if they just want to design a dummy site!

Recognizing this pain point experienced by our own Partners, Mono will be launching the Quick Creator later this year.

This innovative tool will allow the sales team to swiftly set up a proposal website for a customer within minutes, eliminating the need for admin access:

• The sales team will have access to a limited selection of pre-designed templates, initially set up by the design team.
• Leveraging information from the customer's Google My Business account, the sample website can be populated with relevant content in no time, ready to be showcased to the prospective customer.
• A preview link can then be sent to the client for review.
• During the initial meeting with the client, the use of the dummy website created through the Quick Creator tool allows them to visualize how their actual website might look.
• If the client decides to proceed with purchasing the site, Sales can provide the proposal website to the design team.
• The design team can then utilize the sample site as a foundation to enhance the site with advanced styling, high-quality images, interactive forms, compelling text, and other elements.

As mentioned, the Quick Creator is expected to be launched later this year (2023). To seize the opportunity of using this tool once it becomes available, we recommend getting started with a demo account today. Request a demo here. 

3: Separate the Sales and Design Process for Maximum Efficacy

Context switching can severely hamper productivity. Many teams experience context switching when team members are expected to wear multiple hats. Designers, for instance, may be pulled away from their design work to pitch prospects or build proposal sites. This constant mental shifting between tasks impedes the ability to focus on building beautiful websites for customers. Similarly, sales professionals should be able to concentrate on the sales process without being burdened by complex systems or the sudden need to learn highly technical skills, such as creating a proposed WordPress website.

Psychologist and author Gerald Weinberg suggests that context switching can reduce productivity by 20-80% per task. Moreover, a study found that people typically spend only three minutes on a task before moving on to the next, or just two minutes for digital tasks.

One way to avoid context switching this is to separate the sales and design processes. Make sure site proposals are quick and easy to create, so that Sales can do this themselves whenever they need to pitch a client. That way, you allow everyone focus on what they do best.

The Mono team is currently working on a really exciting new feature that will help facilitate this process, so stay tuned, and follow Mono Solutions on social media to not miss out on news. 

4: Consolidate Your Systems into One Automated Platform

Managing customers and websites across multiple platforms can be time-consuming and complex for website resellers. Dealing with separate platforms for hosting, domains, and website builders creates fragmentation and slows down workflows, hindering efficiency.

WordPress is widely used in the website reselling industry, particularly among smaller resellers, due to its flexibility and customization options. However, WordPress can be manual and challenging to navigate, especially for those new to the platform or lacking technical expertise. Setting up hosting, managing domains, and configuring website builders within WordPress can consume significant time and require specific knowledge.

Also, managing customers and websites across multiple platforms can cause inconsistencies and complications. Updating customer information or making website changes often involves navigating through different platforms, resulting in fragmented data and potential errors. This lack of integration and centralization hampers overall management efficiency.

In contrast, Mono's Reseller Admin Interface (RAI) offers a unified solution that simplifies customer and website management. By consolidating hosting, domains, and website builders into a single interface, RAI eliminates the need to manage multiple platforms separately. This streamlines workflows, saving time that can be better utilized for other crucial business tasks.

RAI provides a user-friendly experience, designed to reduce the learning curve associated with complex platforms like WordPress. It empowers resellers, regardless of their technical expertise, to effectively manage customers and websites. Additionally, RAI's integrated approach ensures consistent and accurate data management. Changes made to customer information or website settings automatically reflect across all relevant areas, avoiding discrepancies and enhancing the user experience.

In summary, Mono's Reseller Admin Interface (RAI) offers a comprehensive solution for website resellers, simplifying workflows, reducing manual efforts, and improving overall efficiency. Whether you are a small reseller or an experienced professional, RAI provides a user-friendly and integrated platform to streamline operations and deliver exceptional services to your customers.

5: Plan the Process and Manage Client Expectations

Create a site map and plan the required content placement. This is also an opportune time to establish an SEO strategy for the website, if applicable. When it comes to content, offer two options to the client:

• Provide copywriting services
• Request that the client provides all content before the project begins (applies to images as well)

Carefully plan the inclusion of pages, starting with the most important ones. Determine the appropriate images, colours, typography, and other elements. The pages should align with the client's needs and incorporate relevant Call-To-Actions (CTAs) that reflect the website's goals.

Note that Mono's white-label website builders strategically position CTAs on the site for optimal conversions. You can use these templates as a guide for placing your customers' CTAs.

6: Facilitate Content Gathering from Clients

Educating clients on the necessary content they need to provide is your responsibility. You must clearly outline their obligations and hold them accountable in a friendly yet firm manner. Collect all content before initiating the project to ensure a smooth process and avoid unexpected problems that may arise when dealing with unprepared clients.

Clients are often busy with other priorities and may not fully understand the requirements. Simplifying the process and providing clear guidelines with visual examples can help remove obstacles and facilitate information sharing. Offer a single platform, such as a Google Drive folder or Dropbox, where clients can easily provide the content. Avoid relying on email, as it can be complicated to manage and track. Alternatively, utilize online forms or specialized solutions like Content Snare to gather the necessary information.

To further assist clients in understanding their responsibilities, consider creating explanatory videos using tools like Loom. These videos can also serve as resources for future projects.

7: Design and Build the Website

Now it's time to implement the plan by translating each design decision and content element into the website builder of your choice. For many, this is the most enjoyable part of the project as the website begins to take shape. A smooth execution is more likely if you have already received the content from your customer in advance.

Designing websites as a fulfilment team will always be different from doing it as an individual. For individual businesses creating their own websites DIY-style, they can afford to take their time and change the design one element at a time. After all, they only have to do it once. But for professional website resellers who must create tens or hundreds of sites, it is important to streamline the design process as much as possible. 

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Is there a way you can automate some of the design process? Figma is a great tool for bulk editing pictures. You can, for example, create rounded corners or bulk re-size images within seconds.
• Does your website builder allows you to bulk edit design and content? The Mono Editor for example offers Global Design and Global Content. Global Design is where you can quickly set and edit an extensive amount of global design properties for font texts, colors, modules (content blocks), padding, and more. Global Content lets you define information such as opening hours, logo and legal text in one central location and use it in multiple locations on the website. That way you only ever have to edit your design and content in one spot, instead of all the places it could potentially feature on a single website. 
• Can you reuse design elements from other pages or projects? Inventing new designs can be time consuming, so repurposing ideas in a slightly different way can help save you time.
• Use chatGPT to create text for the sites. Read a few guidelines on how to do so in our article Should you get ChatGPT to write content for your website?

8: Check in with Your Customer and Test the Site

Provide your customer with a preview link to the website and seek final approval on the design. Go through each element of the website and thoroughly test all links, forms, and other interactive components. Once the customer approves, publish the site and perform a final check after it goes live.

In summary

In conclusion, optimizing customer fulfilment workflows in website reselling requires a strategic approach and efficient processes. By understanding your prospects or clients, making a strong first impression, and having a strong process on a unified platform, you can enhance workflow efficiency and deliver exceptional services to your customers.

Additionally, leveraging Mono's Reseller Admin Interface (RAI) and white label website builder provides a unified solution that simplifies customer and website management, eliminating the need to navigate multiple platforms separately. It allows you to build and manage websites from one central interface, and it is fully white label of course. Get a demo here.

By implementing these strategies and utilising the right tools, you can make your customer fulfilment workflows more efficient, saving time, improving productivity, and ultimately driving the growth of your website reselling business.