Due to company restructuring at The BBS Agency, I recently concluded a chapter in my career: my first agency web development job, in a position that required flexibility, adaptability, documentation, customer support skills, coding and design skills, and even the occasional use of my graphic design abilities.
Flexibility in a Wide Variety of Client Types
Our clients ranged from small writer brochure sites to large e-commerce clients that make thousands in sales each month. It’s not the kind of job you can just learn one thing and do the same thing day after day. Some clients just needed to advertise their services with a website that reflected their personal brand; some clients needed their websites to integrate with CRM’s; and some clients were bustling businesses with everything from a busy e-commerce platform to paid membership content and more. I was able to help these clients set up, troubleshoot, and optimize their website setups.
Documentation
I’ve always valued detailed documentation and taking notes, and was very persistent about that in my internship classes at MPTC. At the BBS Agency, I continued that habit, and compiled notes whenever anything stood out to me as something I or another team member might need to know later. My documentation skills aided me in creating and following Standard Operating Procedures and notes for my coworkers.
Customer Support
Given that my role was technical support, I had to quickly learn the ropes of customer support, tailoring my communication style to each client over multiple communication channels. These channels included using the Teamwork help desk ticketing system, managing tasks via the Teamwork Task platform, checking instant messaging accounts, recording video summaries, and leading virtual meetings.
A Wide Variety of Skills
Another aspect of customer support was working with other 3rd party support teams for the various hosting platforms, plugins, and services that our clients used on their websites. When working with these teams, I had to incorporate good documentation practices, and summarize progress on issues both with my team, and with the clients.
I could write a very long summary of everything I learned, but I have distilled it down to the following bullet points:
- Troubleshooted CSS issues and implemented custom CSS for page builders with style limitations
- Agency team communication and task management
- Connecting CRM systems to WordPress
- Optimizing technical SEO using tools like aHrefs and SEMrush
- Setting up email templates in GoHighLevel
- DNS configuration in hosts like GoDaddy, Cloudflare, WP Engine, and Flywheel
- Working with email deliverability issues using SMTP site plugins and SendGrid
- Updating WordPress plugins and WordPress versions
- Working on website updates using staging sites
- Site optimization using things like WP rocket, imagify and those principles
- Cache troubleshooting, from caching levels to working with selective caching and page-based or page element based caching
- Working with PHP WordPress pages and templates
- Writing and working with Standard Operating Procedures
- Setting up Advanced Custom Fields on WordPress
- Setting up reCaptcha and Google Analytics
- Working with Gravity Forms, building and testing forms, and setting up custom form responses
- Working with SEO tools like RankMath and Yoast
- Designing and setting up brochure-type sites (about, services, FAQ, contact us)
- adding new fonts to websites
- using sftp to work on and fix website issues
- making webpages with Beaver Builder and Elementor, and occasionally, Divi and Genesis
- Adding professional stock photos using asset providers such as Envato Elements, Shutterstock and 123rf
- Occasionally troubleshooting connections to payment gateways
- Making all webpages responsive
- Creating team and client documentation using video and marked-up screenshots
- Creating and implementing harmonized website color pallets
- Implementing CTA’s throughout sites
- WordPress plugin conflict testing
I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute and develop my skills to a long standing web development agency, and I look forward to seeing where my journey will lead next!