Whether you’ve got an existing website or are thinking about launching one of your own, one thing is certain: you need the right team to build and manage it. Every digital agency has its own approach to website development, and their choices matter, from the technology and tools to the configurations of your content management system. A wrong choice could be the difference between a website that lasts for years and a website that needs to be rebuilt in a matter of days.
You’re putting a lot in the hands of your web developer. We get it. After all, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, there’s a lot of web developers out there. Therefore, we’ve developed a guide to help you source the perfect web developer.
1. Your Web Developer Uses Common Sense
Website development and management shouldn’t be complicated for you and your team. Your web developers know this, and when tasked to build and manage your website, they should be considering the following:
- Less is more for your website. They should use the bare minimum technology to keep your website lightweight and manageable.
- They release your site in batches, starting with the most important pages. Everything else can come in later batches.
- Another benefit of a web development partner is that they are mindful of web design costs and aren’t burning a hole in your wallet. Your web developer should combine and simplify existing work processes when there’s an opportunity. For example, why use three services if there’s one service that can do it all?
The above three are a few common sense examples that website developers should be doing. Every website development project that we do is based on common sense. We practice what we preach and believe this makes us stand out as a web developer and digital marketing agency in Columbus, Ohio.
2. You Are the Most Important Person in the Room for the Web Developer
This is one of the most important aspects of any web developer. They give you the time and day and are constantly listening to you. In fact, web developers should do most of the listening and understanding to ensure your needs are met. Listening and understanding also help us understand what we are tasked to do.
3. They Ask for Requirements well before Anything Gets Started
We’ll come across businesses who want a website but are unsure what to put there. Web developers are great at executing, but need your subject matter expertise to do so effectively. For a successful website, businesses need to communicate the goal of the website.
Enter the requirements. With a well-defined set of requirements, your web developer can approach your website and plan every aspect of your site accordingly. Uncovering the full requirements may take several conversations, but once you do, there’s alignment between all parties, decreasing the chance of misunderstanding. As a result, the website is delivered exactly as requested.
4. They Aren’t a “Yes Man” and Are Willing to Challenge You
A web developer’s job is to approach every website with a healthy level of criticism and pushback. For example, businesses may want everything on their website. A lot of the time, this mentality results in an indefinite project with budgetary constraints, which introduces two major issues:
- The project timeline is severely impacted and stretched
- Your web developer will be doing work for free
There is a balance between the two, and web developers are responsible for speaking up when problems arise. Additionally, their role is to provide the expertise to translate your subject matter expertise into a website. You may have a ton of great ideas, but they need to tell you when something doesn’t work for now.
5. Your Web Developer is Constantly Thinking about What’s Next
It may seem contrary, but developers should suggest ways to improve the user experience. After all, they have been doing this for a while and can pull insights from different verticals to improve your current site. However, this may be a stretch if your web developer lacks marketing expertise. Our team has the expertise and data to guide and make those important marketing decisions.
Whether you pull the trigger or not on any of the suggestions from your web developer, you’ll have a backlog of work and, at the minimum, gain insight into what could be improved on your website. As mentioned earlier, you can always revisit these suggestions later.
6. They are Detail-Oriented, so You Don’t Have to Be
The last thing you want to do is launch your only to realize there are spelling mistakes or broken functionality. You get one first impression, so don’t waste it! Therefore, make sure your web developers are doing the following:
- They should stage your site as a draft and/or staging site through a separate domain/subdomain. This allows you and your team to review any updates in a working environment without fear of introducing issues to your customers.
- They should be relentless with quality assurance (QA), which refers to testing, testing, and more testing of your website. The goal of QA is to review your website for any issues before deploying it to your live production website. There’s also a final check where they should force you to under user acceptance testing (UAT). When performing UAT, you will confirm that what’s on production matches what you’ve already reviewed and approved on staging.
- They know what they are doing and will always prepare you for the next step. Surprises are their enemy, and preparation simplifies the website development process.
These are a few examples that indicate a detail-oriented web developer. Keep them in mind during your next engagement with your developer.
7. The Web Developer Takes Care of You Every Step of the Way
This sounds very simple, and it is. Your developer should be thinking of you and what makes your life easier, whether that’s setting something up for you, avoiding certain times of the day to accommodate your schedule, or looping you in when the time is needed. They should also be mindful and avoid super complex workflows and solutions.
The Bottom Line / TLDR
Sometimes, all it takes is a small change to make your website experience better. You can easily update your hero section, headers and callouts, color palette, and content. Before doing any website updates, base your decisions on your customers and how those decisions will get them to convert faster.
We are website developers out of Columbus, Ohio that can help you make customer-centric decisions to refresh your site. Reach out to Uplancer today for a free consultation.
