146 - Refining our website building process with James and Martin Coates

Interview - Refining our website building process with James and Martin Coates

Today is a bit of a departure for us at WP Builds. Usually we talk to WordPress plugin and theme developers, and of course there are the chats that I have with David Waumsley, but I don't often talk to other agency owners, but today that's going to change.

I met James and Martin Coates at WordCamp Manchester during the past two events. We got chatting and I loved what they had to say and their enthusiasm for WordPress and website building.

We decided that we would record a podcast about the processes that they have developed over the years to make their business - Impact Media - as efficient as possible.

Martin Coates is the Technical Director and James Coates is the Creative Director, and yes, they are brothers and work together and they still like one another!

We decided to to this by tearing down a recent project that they were / are working on for a large WordPress Multisite network.

The project was completed in three distinct phases:

• Complete the corporate site - bakels.com
• Complete the UK version of the site with all of custom features that the company required
• Clone the UK version of the site and make it available for the regional offices around the world to amend with their own content in their own languages

We spend quite a lot of time talking about the tools that use and how they use them...

Tools mentioned in this episode:

• Slick plan - https://slickplan.com/ (Sitemap and Content Gathering)
• Sketch - https://www.sketchapp.com/ (Hi Definition Wire-framing and Page Template Design) 
• Invision - https://www.invisionapp.com/  (Wireframe and Visual Prototyping of Website)
• Trackduck - https://trackduck.com/ (Client Feedback and Collaboration)
• Useloom - https://www.useloom.com (Video Feedback, Internal as well as Training Resources)
• TestingBot - https://testingbot.com/ (Automated and Manual Testing of Websites with Video Recording)BitBucket - https://bitbucket.org/ (Version Control of Code)

I'm sure that you've come across a few of these tools before, but it's likely that you've not heard of them all. I'm sure that there's heaps of value here!

Plugins mentioned in this episode:

• WPML - (WordPress Multi Lingual Plugin)
• NS Cloner - (Helped with the roll out of the global websites)
• Gravity Forms - (Data Capture Plugin)
• WP101 - (Standard WordPress Training Videos to provide clients for onboarding)
• White Label CMS - (Helps provide a streamlined basic dashboard for on boarding with links to custom Training Videos)

Don't forget to leave some comments below and I'll pass them onto James and Martin!