A website can do a much greater job for your business development than you think. At the same time, creating this website is not an easy process – it will require a lot of effort from your side. Getting on this path, you need a reliable partner to help you overcome all the challenges. A successful website can only appear based on smooth cooperation between the development team and a business owner.
What’s the Purpose of a Company Website?
What do you Need to Know Before Hiring a Web Developer?
What are the Most Common Requests in Web Development?
How to Set Project Goals
Who should Create a Technical Assignment?
How to Communicate with Web Development Team
What does the Website Development Consist of?
What to Do After the Website is Launched?
What’s the Purpose of a Company Website?
Websites are not only about turning leads into sales as someone might think. Many different factors push brands towards creating websites or rebuilding their old ones. Thinking about the purpose of getting a website for your company, you need to see the whole picture. A website is an investment in your company’s future and a way for you to become a global player.
You should think about the website as one of the tools that should fit perfectly with your marketing strategy as a whole. Using this tool right, a business owner can reach a much broader audience and make a difference. The websites help companies be heard from anywhere in the world.
What do you Need to Know Before Hiring a Web Developer?
Developers, as well as the customers, have certain expectations about the project. They will do their best to ensure your business growth, but you need to invest effort in this process too. If your choice is a dedicated development team, at the beginning of cooperation, they will expect you to answer several questions and clarify the details to provide the best service. The first one is likely to be:
Does your company already have a website or had one in the past?
If you already have a website, be ready to explain what you need, whether it is a landing page, web application, some integration, or new outstanding web design. However, if you don’t know it yourself and need professional advice – go to an experienced, dedicated team. Then, you can ask their opinion on your website improvement, and they help you to define the downsides and give recommendations on what you need to do.
In case you decide to go for a company website for the first time, you will be asked several questions about what type of business you work with. For online store creation, the development team will also need to know how many types of products you sell.
Do you have a list of your competitors?
You may be surprised by this question and think that the developers are planning to use the design elements from your competitors or create something similar for you. No need to worry – it is not the case. They need to know your competitors to make sure your future website will stand out among them. If you don’t have much information about the others doing similar business and targeting the same markets – the development team can do research and find out everything for you.
What is your targeted audience and market?
The most experienced development teams know that differences in cultures and languages should be taken into account. This factor is especially critical for web design. For example, Scandinavian designs are usually more text-heavy compared to Asian ones where people tend to see more images and videos. Here, it is also important to discuss whether your country has any specific legal technicalities regarding online stores and their operation.
Do you have brick and mortar?
As we mentioned before, a website and a brick and mortar store, if you have one, should work together. Equally serving your business, the site should remind your customers of your physical store and vice versa. Smooth cooperation of online and offline tools is the best way to attract new customers and keep the long-them ones.
Does your brand has a specific design, style guide, or brand book?
The design is the face of your brand. It should precisely fit with your company’s story and product. If something does not go right here, your website may look like a cat with a dog’s face. That is why the development team will be interested in all the details about the way your company look now and was presented to the world before.
Does it Matter Where the Developer is Located?
As we said earlier, the cultural aspect is significant in web development. But where the client is based is not the only part that matters, the developers’ location and culture are no less important. In most cases, developers coming from one country have similar hourly rates and specific features that characterize their approach to web development.
However, this topic is quite broad, and we will tell you more about the peculiarities of work with developers from different countries in future articles. Here, we would still like to provide information about the average hourly rates of the developers based in different countries to make it easier for you to pick where to seek help.
What are the Most Common Requests in Web Development?
1. Why do you need to have a corporate website?
For many people today, it is difficult to trust a company that does not have a digital presence. They commonly google the name of the brand to learn more or check the reviews. Then, if they don’t see the website, it makes them think that there is something shady about this business. No business owner would want the company to carry little credibility. A corporate website matters not only for your customers but also for your potential employees. In the past, it used to work in a different way, but today’s job seekers tend to learn more about the company via the website.
If in the 21st century, your brand still does not have a website – are you sure it even exists?
2. Why do you need ecommerce?
Having a brick and mortar store, you might think that it is enough to grow a profitable business. But today, the expectations of the customers are much higher. They want not only to purchase an item at a fair price – there are thousands of stores that offer it. The customers want their regular shopping to become an exciting experience – something more than just grabbing a product and paying for it. An online store is the best place for you to provide the interactive shopping, win your customers’ trust and reach new horizons enlarging your client base.
3. What is a landing page?
Landing pages are all about marketing and advertising. It is the page that your potential clients see first when clicking on a promotion or search result. There, they can see different call-to-actions like contact us or reserve a call button or fill in the form field. Usually, such pages help collect user data like emails or phone numbers, which can be used later for developing a marketing campaign and eventually increasing the conversion rates. The main goal of the landing page that can be achieved in the long run is to convert website visitors into leads.
4. Why go for Integration?
Sooner or later, a growing business will require task optimization. Many different tools can be integrated into your system to save your time, help you manage accounting, advertising, or other tasks. These tools are not able to completely do your job for you, but they can make your life as a business owner much easier. However, they will serve not only you but also your customers – the integration of different payment systems and CRM will change their shopping experience for the better.
How to Set Project Goals
Setting the goal may sound easy, but in fact this stage is quite tricky – a mistake here can spoil the project, and leave your dreams unattended. It is crucial for the client to express the vision clear, do not ask for the moon, and stick to the original plan during the whole project.
Before working with a developer, you need to get a clear understanding that in website creation, a client and a development team should overcome different issues. They perform two entirely different tasks to ensure successful website deployment.
The main goal of the project is a combination of the results that you want to achieve and the developer team’s capacity. First of all, you need to find an answer to the question mentioned above – why do you need this project.
If no one is able to answer the question of why the project is needed – there is no point in launching this project.
The best way to set an achievable goal for the development team is to bring up the numbers. For example, you could say that the goal is to increase the conversion rate and average cart value. However, this description is too general to be easily measured when the project is over. Instead of such abstract goals, you can analyze the websites of your competitors and industry leaders and set the objectives in numbers. Let’s say you need the conversion rate to grow by 1.5%, and the average cart value increased by 20%. If you don’t have average industry statistics to go for real achievable numbers, you can ask the development team to carry out research for you. Some ecommerce development agencies offer a free quote before taking a project.
Here you have to keep in mind that you cannot just use as an example a company operating in a different industry or even a slightly different niche of the industry you work in. If you use an example, it should be relevant and achievable. The possible-to-reach conversion rates differ depending on a variety of factors. For example, you cannot compare an online store retailing mass-market clothes and an online boutique. Therefore, the best way out is to analyze your niche accurately and set the individual business goals that you want to accomplish.
If as a result of the project, the goal was not achieved – the project itself was of no use.
New website or modern redesign of the one you already have, can help your business grow but remember that even the most top-of-the-line website is not capable of anything and everything. Depending on your needs and the services the developers perform for your website, they will be able to handle different tasks. You need to make it clear with your development team in advance whether they will carry out the webstore promotion for you or not. If you go for the full package of services, the developers will be able to help you with the following:
Who should Create a Technical Assignment?
Some business owners come to the development teams with their own prepared technical assignments. However, in practice, most such plans eventually get tossed out.
To avoid time-wasting, leave the technical part to professionals.
You don’t have to worry that everything will be done behind your back, and the result will leave much to be desired. After you set the main goal of the project, the developers will do everything needed to bring this goal into existence holding to your initial plan. Their job is to offer you a tool powerful enough to move your business forward.
However, working with inexperienced developer or freelancer, it may be a better idea for you to create a technical assignment yourself – to make sure there won’t be any unpleasant surprises. But it will work out well only if you have some knowledge and experience in this field.
Working with a dedicated development team, you timely get information about every work aspect. Before making any important for your future website decision, the project manager should contact you. They also should ask if your website requires some particular functionality set and give you a list of available services, integrations, and extensions within different categories explained in simple terms.
How to Communicate with Web Development Team
These four communication principles we outlined below will help you build effective communication with the development team from the very beginning of your cooperation.
1. Cooperate closely at the initial stages
At the first stages of the project, the client involvement is especially crucial. For example, when the project time range is set, or business analysis is conducted, or the web design is created. If all the goals and tasks are set correctly, the client’s involvement will be hardly needed further on in the project.
2. Let the developers do their job
You have to accept one simple fact – you do not always know best, especially when it comes to development and web design. It is your project and your idea, but sometimes you have to step aside and just watch. In the meantime, you can focus on brand development and marketing.
The I-pay-I-know-better approach is counterproductive.
3. Define communication channels
Both you and the development team should have a clear understanding of what channels to use to discuss the project. It is better to use several communication channels, one for day-to-day interaction, and another one for decision-making. To communicate on a daily basis, Skype, phone calls, or text messages will be enough, but important negotiations should go via email so that nothing can get lost or be deleted.
What does the Website Development Consist of?
As a business owner, you may not need to go deep into technical details, but you must understand the ecommerce development process. Moving step by step is the best way of managing website development because if something goes wrong, you will be able to notice the issue as soon as possible. Fixing the bugs at the end of development will cost you much more than noticed-on-time bugs.
Most of the dedicated teams have a general website development plan that they adjust to the specific requests of their clients. If you need a new website with a fresh design, the development stages will be the following:
What to Do After the Website is Launched?
When the long-awaited online store is launched and operates smoothly, many business owners start thinking the work here is done. It can be a costly mistake – website launch is only the beginning of the journey. As well as brick and mortar shops, any online store needs to be taken care of. The website requires continuous support to keep bug-free smooth performance and fast loading.
The hackers and the viruses they use are getting more sophisticated, and in order to ensure the safety of your webstore, you need to get all the security updates and patches installed in a timely manner. Most of the ecommerce platforms release both small and significant updates pretty often. Your website needs to keep up with the pace. So, you need to have a reliable ecommerce developer who will update the system and install the necessary patches when required.
Also, no less critical for you is to analyze the website statistics. There is always some room for improvement, even if the developed website went beyond your expectations. The first month you need to be especially attentive to the customers’ behavior on your site. If you see that the users experience problems navigating through your website, you should single out where exactly the struggle points are. Then you need to contact your website developer or the one who carries out support to get the downsides improved.
Invest in delivering a better user experience, and it will pay off.
If you don’t have time to manage this user monitoring yourself, it is better to trust your website in the hands of professionals.
Wrapping it up
1. Before going to the development team, you need to find for yourself a reason why this project has to be done or what problem it will solve.
2. Do not go deep into technical details if you do not have knowledge in this field trying to set the project goal, go for something you are better with – numbers.
3. Keep in mind that the development team is not magicians – there are things that they cannot influence or change.
4. Tell the development team about your project, business, and product. Having more information about your brand, they will be able to come up with better relevant custom solutions.
5. Do not forget when the project is over – work on the website continues. After some time, when it becomes possible to analyze the downsides, they must be improved.
Have you had any experience working with web development teams? What was the most challenging part? Have the results been up to your expectations? Share your experience in the comments down below.
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