Outsourse Web / Mobile / E-commerce Design

Category: B2B

5 Reasons Outsourced Freelance Developers are Better For Business!
Chances are if you’re reading this you’ve had a need, or currently need to hire a developer for something. Maybe you’ve got an app idea and want to build an MVP, or your company’s Shopify e-commerce store needs some updating? We get a lot of people asking us why we think it’s better to hire freelance developers, and we try to give unbiased responses, even though we are an On Demand Freelance Developer Hiring Platform. Since this question comes up so much we thought we’d take the time to research the facts, and present to you 5 Reasons Outsourced Freelance Developers Are Better For Business. We also custom made the infographic too! Please share it!
1. Save Time: Freelance Developers save time. That’s a fact. Take it from us at BuildaTeam where we save our clients months of recruitment work, by vetting and hiring freelance developers using our proprietary testing method we’ve developed over the years. This tool was designed to quickly vet a freelancer’s skill set vs. the client’s need and save everyone time in the hiring process. We’re not the only solution either (although we’d like to think we are the best). Hiring internally is a long term solution, and can take several months to find a solid team fit. Freelance Developers, on the other hand, don’t need to meet the team physically and usually only work on a specific project, on a contractual basis. Because of this, they can start working quickly, saving your organization tons of time.
2. Save Money: The average full-time software developer in the United Stated earned a $99,510 salary in 2014 and no doubt that figure is growing annually. Unless your company is prepared to pay that kind of salary for a full-time team member then sourcing a freelance web and or mobile development freelance is your best option. The average freelance developer is charging $73/hour so you can imagine the cost savings for your business! For instance, the average website redesign is between 30-100 hours of work for a freelance developer, yet a full-time employee may drag that work out over a few months of paid salary. You do the math.
3. Get More Done: For any of us who have ever worked from home for a day, or been a digital nomad we’re sure you’ve noticed that saving time getting ready, and getting to the office has allowed you to crush half of your to-do list before you would even be in the office normally. Well, that enhanced productivity time is a constant for most freelance developers. The average commute to work in the U.S takes over 25 minutes each way, not to mention the time it takes to get ready, chatting in the office, distractions etc. Bottom line, freelance developers get more done for your money, period.
4. More Experience: This is a no-brainer. Freelance developers normally juggle multiple projects and gigs at the same time, often from several differing industries and technologies as well. This wide range of work allows freelancers to gain a much more varied experience than their full-time counterparts who work years often on one project at a time. More experience means more usefulness to you as the hiring manager. Again, get more shit done!
5. More Talent: The freelancer workforce is exploding, yet it’s getting harder and harder to source and hire fulltime software developers. There are currently over 60 million Freelance Software Developers in the U.S and half of the entire American workforce is expected to do some sort of freelancing by the year 2020 (although, admittedly this is not just Software related freelancing but still, cool figure right?). Focusing on hiring a freelancer will greatly open up your options no matter where in the world you are.
So there you have it. 5 Solid reasons to start looking for freelance software developers for your next website or mobile development project. In case you needed any further discussions, advice or info on who to hire for your project, our Project Managers are always standing by, ready to chat with you, for free! Email us any questions you have and we’d be happy to help you. For more info on what we do as a company, and how we help companies hire the world’s best software development freelancers please visit our site here. Also make sure to check out Clockspot – Saving your organization tons of time.

Sources:

https://www.fastcompany.com/3049532/the-future-of-work/heres-why-the-freelancer-economy-is-on-the-rise

https://fu-web-storage-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/content/filer_public/c2/06/c2065a8a-7f00-46db-915a-2122965df7d9/fu_freelancinginamericareport_v3-rgb.pdf

http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-developer/salary

https://project.wnyc.org/commute-times-us/embed.html
December 2, 2016
8 Reasons Why You Need To Hire an SEO Consultant!

If you’re reading this, you probably have access to a web developer (if you don’t you should email us). Hopefully, your developer knows how to build a website for human visitors, but do they know how to build a website that appears equally as attractive to robot search engine spiders? If not, you need an SEO Consultant and here’s why.

Search Engine Optimization is all about constructing the content of your website to be most relevant to Search Engine Spiders for the terms that will optimally drive your business’ growth. But you probably knew that already, right?

Well, SEO is a long-term marketing strategy that requires a lot of time investment to be successful. If you’re doing it alone it also takes months of trial and error and hundreds of hours of reading best practices and asking questions on forums online. Want to fast track that success? That’s where a professional SEO consultant comes in. An SEO Consultant assists small companies and startups who would otherwise not have access to a full-time in-house SEO expert by acting as a temporary assistant to their development team. Usually, an SEO Consultant will diligently analyze your website against 20-40 proven Search Engine Optimization tactics and best SEO practices and then they’ll compile an actionable list of on-site improvements your developer can implement themselves. Need more convincing? Here are 8 Reasons Why You Need To Hire and SEO Consultant:

-1) You’ll save Time –

With SEO, timing is everything. Well maybe not everything, but it’s huge. Finding an in-house SEO Expert can be a costly HR endeavor. Outsourcing organic Search Engine work to an agency can be a waste also, as their client workload reduces the amount of focus on your company’s campaigns. An SEO Audit Consultant can start working right away to save you time and get you rankings quicker. SEO results normally take 3-6 months to kick in (but plenty of people see first page results in 30 days, depends on chosen keyword strategy) so the quicker you get to work, the better.

-2) You’ll Save Money-

The average SEO agency charges $4000 per month for a minimum 6-month retainer. Building a team of Search Engine can take months and cost even more! A one-off SEO Audit can cost under $2000 with Buildateam or other agencies and you’re existing developers and marketing team are trained to carry on the work alongside other projects.

-3) SEO Brings Free Leads For Life- Only SEO and Content Marketing bring in leads forever. Nothing has a better proven ROI than Search Engine Optimization. Spend time now and gain rankings and high-quality traffic for the life of your business.

4)Search Engine Optimization Is Crucial- SEO is so important because there are essentially only two types of web visitors that will land on your website; potential customers and search engine bots, also known as Spiders. You must optimize for both.

-5) Search Builds a Foundation- Optimizing your website for Search Engines builds a foundation for all other forms of marketing to succeed. If you don’t have SEO in place, you are not maximizing your other marketing initiatives.

-6) The Highest Quality Traffic = SEO- Search traffic has the highest intent to convert for your business because they are literally searching for you, as opposed to clicking an ad or a post on social media. You are top of mind.

-7) SEO Leverages Everything Else You Do- After you have basic on-page SEO work done, every Social Media share you receive, every link posted in a forum all help to increasing your standings online. SEO compounds the results of other marketing efforts.

-8) Organic Beats Paid Always- Nearly 75% of all search traffic clicks on Organic Search Engine results. This means that if you get strong SERP (Search Engine Results Page) standings you are 3x more likely to get the click than through a paid ad, forever free! Paid ads are a short term supplementary addition to your SEO campaigns…but SEO will win you more business overall, for free!

Convinced yet? There are a myriad of options for finding freelance SEO consultants like www.freelancer.com but if you’re ready for a really fast solution BuildaTeam can help. Our SEO Consultant has worked with several of our Web Development clients and he’s ready to assist you too! If you’re interested in learning more about how a Professional Search Engine Consultant can save your time, money and a lot of headaches on your SEO email us today at hello@buildateam.io

November 21, 2016
Why You Need Help Building Your Startup MVP!

Has anyone ever paid you for just an idea? Didn’t think so. It usually takes at least a solid MVP, right?

Since we set up our company in San Francisco, we’ve been focused on helping startups build their MVPs and we’ve heard thousands of potential clients tell us that they have “THE” next big startup idea. We agree with the philosophy out here that confidence is really an important tool and we also believe that the mindset of “Fake it till you make it” is definitely subscribed to by most Bay Area founders. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, and it’s something that we adore about working in this region. Having said this, our CEO Lex’s response has always been the same since day one:

“The idea is important, but it’s ultimately the execution, that sets successful products apart, and that’s where we come in”.

So why do you need help building your MVP? First, for those that don’t know, MVP is a startup term for “Minimum Viable Product” meaning a product that may not be perfect and ready to support millions, but it will get you traction and prove the concept enough to get you the meetings you need. MVPs are important because they help prove that you’re on the right track. The key with MVPs is being able to iterate on the product early on, quickly and efficiently.

Products naturally evolve during development with the more user feedback and market insight you gain. Hiring full-time employees takes time away from product development, fundraising and other important tasks for founders. If you wait as long as it takes to iterate several times and get it perfect, then you could be too late to the party and someone could have moved quicker to getting funded, and grown their team and passed you up. This is where services like ours come in, and help non-tech founders and other early stage startups with their MVP development, while they work on the business sides of things. Not only does this allow the startup to move faster, but it also ensures a better quality product and a lot less stressful nights leading up to your big pitch day.

What is unique about newer solutions like BuildaTeam is that we aren’t just freelancers 8,000 miles away that you are need to explain the requirements to. We help you define and optimize those requirements and align them with your business objectives, leaving the legwork of writing the code to outsourced expert teams. This help founders ship early stage products both on web and mobile. Today there’s more of a paradox of choice on who to trust with your software development than flavors of ice cream from the Ice Cream truck guy. You need to pick the right solution either hiring in-house or outsourcing but the fact is, you don’t need to be an incredible tech developer or software engineer yourself any longer as much as you need to be a really good manager. You need to find the right solution for your team, and move quickly so you can get it right, before you run out of cash.

“Unless you’re already an entrepreneur with at least one nine-figure exit behind you, the answer is no. The reasoning behind this is simple: People buy products, not ideas.” – From a recent Fox News article on a similar subject.

So if you’re in charge of a startup that is moving too slowly with development for your liking let’s chat. We can help. Email us: hello@BuildaTeam.io

November 6, 2016
How to Use Confirmation Bias to Close More Sales Deals!
You’re biased.

Yep, we said it. You, and everyone else you’ve ever met have preconceived notions of what you believe to be correct or incorrect. These inclinations influence your decision-making process, whether you are aware of them or not. Your customers behave exactly the same way. Have you ever heard of Confirmation Bias? It’s one of the strongest biases you can have, because you don’t know you have it!

Now, all people have biases, and they’re not all bad. That’s why we say that BuildaTeam is the best web and mobile development solution out there, we’re biased! One of the most common biases is “confirmation bias,” which is how we interpret information in a way that reinforces what we already believe. It’s frequency and power is connected to our addiction to self-worth.

A great example of confirmation bias is how voters act during a United States Presidential election. The more people read and inform themselves about the presidential candidates, the more they tend to believe their candidate to be the correct choice, not realizing that they are subconsciously biased to absorbing information that furthers their existing stance. Salespeople can also fall victim to their own confirmation bias when they ask clients questions whilst pushing them in the direction of the answer they want to hear, instead of letting the client tell them what they need.

These deeply rooted, subconscious, cultural assumptions drive all purchasing decisions, and reinforce those decisions even after they have made a purchase. Talented Salespeople learn to utilize these subconscious cues to boost their deal closing power. Here’s how:
- 1) Give a Great First Impression: Successful salespeople focus on giving a great first impression. Your mom may have always told you that a first impression is everything, and that’s never rang truer than in sales. If you’re first impression is stellar, you’ve influenced your prospects to subconsciously continue to look for the positive in you or your product/service. Their brain will naturally seek out reaffirming information to the original assumption that you and your company are amazing.
- 2) Be Affirmative: Smart salespeople use affirmation messages within the customer journey to foster confirmation bias. By saying positively affirming messages to the prospect throughout the journey, you can subconsciously push them towards greater loyalty. Examples of this are: Our products are exceptional quality, or we have the highest standard in the industry.
- 3) Compliment Your Prospects: By rewarding your potential customers’ micro-decisions with praise as they progress towards purchasing, you can reinforce their confirmation that you’re the best person to work with. Tell them what a smart decision this is, or how impressed you are with the speed they work at. However, be cautious not to be overly flattering and ingenuine.
- 4) Emphasize the positive: Positioning things in a positive light, sometimes even trivial things that the customer wouldn’t even notice can go a long way. Examples: Is your product /service process painstaking, don’t say how hard it is, rather talk about how diligent your team is, or how it’s the most detailed product/service on the market.
- 5) Encourage Customer Reviews: Even after you’ve closed a sale there are ways to use confirmation bias to your advantage. If you encourage customer reviews and sharing post sale, not only will it help acquire new customers, but it will also increase subconscious brand loyalty in the review writer. Think about it this way, if a previous customer spends 10 minutes writing about how much they enjoyed working with you, you better believe you’re going to be top of mind for a while.
Always keep in mind that overdoing any of the above suggestions can put you at risk of sounding inauthentic and that you will not all of a sudden become a mind reading master simply by harnessing people’s confirmation bias. These strategies take some time to become accustomed to and should be tested thoroughly. .Let me know if these strategies have worked for you in the comments below. Best of luck out there.
September 23, 2016
Avoiding Development Trade-offs: Who We Are

Here at BuildaTeam.io we recognize that there are thousands of options for outsourcing web and mobile development services. It’s enough to make anyone’s head spin, right? It can be so stressful that some of the Product Owners put off development and even technical planning of their projects for so long that they end up with ‘had to be done yesterday’ deadlines when they contact us. At the same time, the barriers to starting a development agency / freelance business for software development services and advertising it online continues to lower. This results in a flood of low-quality offers that look like great deals on the surface. It requires a full-time involvement, dedication, patience, strong communication and technical skills to be able to filter through all of them and successfully choose a long-term technical partner from the first try. In the end, companies are either spending their development budget on one or two elite team members, or they’re outsourcing to “questionable quality” freelancers (just to achieve some digital footprint). It’s more important than ever for companies looking for developer solutions to dig deeper and decide which option(s) are best for their business.

From all available variants for developing the web or mobile application for your business, we will concentrate on the main options: you could build a team in-house, work with a local freelancer or local IT agency or outsource the development offshore to a company or an individual. Each option has its benefits and trade-offs.

Our team is full of undercover superheroes!

Building a team in-house is the best way to go and would allow you the most flexibility with the project. It is expensive to manage and do the HR legwork, though, plus you have to compete with some sweet experiments to attract the best available talent. Good for you if you can afford this game!

Another option is to hire a local agency with an in-house team. It’s a great way to get the job done with reasonable quality in a planned manner. It is usually quite costly as well since the agency has to take care of the administrative overhead. Some of the local agencies after being unable to find the talent for the in-house team on time would likely be working with offshore developers trying to deliver projects and maximize the profits.

Relying on local freelancers or friends can work out for smaller projects that don’t require complex technical skills. Most likely, you’ll be choosing from a very limited talent pool and might end up with an amateur doing things he is unqualified for. From our hiring experience, we noticed that it takes to interview hundreds of people before finding an excellent full-stack Engineer, DevOps and Business Analyst in one.

Outsourcing development offshore, say, to Asia or S. America or Eastern Europe can be very successful and cost effective, yet can completely destroy your timeline as communication can break down very easily due to the time difference, poor documentation, language barriers and lack of expertise. A good way to combine quality and price if you are strapped for cash is to have one technical person in-house and let him manage the distributed team on a daily basis. He would be able to help you transfer the business requirements into technical documentation and recommend on what skills the team should have and help you pick the right people. Based on this idea of combining an in-house team to keep the quality high and experts worldwide to maintain the cost lower – our founder Lex came up with BuildaTeam.

Note: We do NOT all have amazing beards. Sorry, false advertisement.

At BuildaTeam we are very excited to be offering affordable on-demand web and mobile development services. As our name suggests, we specialize in building an entire team of experts fully dedicated to a project and extremely affordable thanks to our tiered pricing and global talent pool. We use American based Product Managers, Architects, and Team Leads to make sure that technical documentation properly reflects the business objectives, communication doesn’t skew the requirements and code quality standards are met upon the product delivery. Combined with a pre-vetted (read about our 4-step interview) pool of Sr. Engineers worldwide creates a win-win situation for everyone. Our HQ is based in Silicon Valley, the epicenter of technology and development. Our teams include Designers, Software Engineers, Data Scientists, DevOps Engineers, Architects and other experts required to get the job done effectively and efficiently.

Whether you need Custom Software Development like proprietary Business Automation and Management Tools, a complicated Magento store set up or an iOS / Android Application – BuildaTeam will manage each piece of the development puzzle for you!

In essence, you get the best of all worlds while working with us: you get a fast moving, agile team that works like they’re in your office, you get the cost savings of working with remote developers. You also get 24/7 support out of the box and instant access to your local shop.

We exist to alleviate the stress and provide a simple, cutting edge and extremely efficient solution for all your development needs. You don’t need to take our word for it, here’s what some recent Product Owners we work with have had to say about working with us:

“I thought that Buildateam.io did an absolutely amazing job creating my app DejaWho”

“Build-A-Team is an excellent company, with a big team of varied skills. They are responsive and knowledgeable. Also their project managers are incredibly organized.” – Mea from RoyalRobbins.com

You can read more testimonials here: https://www.BuildaTeam.io/reviews/

Email us at hello@BuildaTeam.io and our experienced Product Managers will help evaluate the cost of your project.

August 17, 2016