Avoid These Traps During The Website Development Process
A short time ago rules of business changed tremendously. Try to guess why that happened. Absolutely right. The Internet. No one can afford to ignore the Internet today. The website is a good tone for a modern company and the key to a successful business. Whatever your business is, at some point you have to think seriously of the need to establish a web presence in order to spread the information on your company or to find new customers, increase sales, it can be anything.
If you have ever dealt with website creation you have valuable experience, which you can analyze, and shape the expectations. What if you do not have such an experience? Keep calm. This article can guide you of what to expect as it lists all possible traps of website development. And, as the saying goes, >forewarned is forearmed.
"Just make me a website"
Half the customers are trapped in making just a website instead of making it as a business tool. Why is it a trap? Because the main goal of a website is to solve business tasks rather than just to exist.
What's the use of a pen if it doesn't write, of a smartphone if its battery is dead? And what's the use of a website if it doesn't have any tasks?
The purpose of a tool leads to determining its functional characteristics. For example, there is a great difference between axes: splitting and felling, hatchets and fire, hammer axes, and lots of others. The tool should be sharp and heavy, or on the contrary - light, should have a comfortable handle, should it be long, or on the contrary - short. Industrial designers invent the construction of an ax, choose materials and create a tool based on these characteristics and requirements.
The same thing is with a website. What kind of people and what exactly should they do as the result of cooperation with your website? Should your site sell products or just present your company? The further development of a website depends on answers to such questions.
"Developers know what I need"
A common misconception of all customers is that everything will be done without their participation.
The thing is, all of us use various software products and visit a broad range of sites every day. Therefore, it's not a surprise that we accumulate implicit expectations about how the website or software should work.
In a website already created for you, there may not be those features that, as you think, are taken for granted. That happens when the development team is working with incomplete requirements, and it becomes necessary to think out a lot of things at the business level, not even at the level of implementation.
Before starting a website creation process you need to describe the reason why you do this. Formulate requirements on your language, tell about your business and its problems and how do you understand them.
"Website is pretty easy to create"
If you think that you can create a website just by following some manuals like "How to make a website in 3 hours" (just for the record, there are a lot of web-based guidances on hacking such sites) or you think that you will have your website created right tomorrow, you are trapped.
Website creation does not have anything in common with a famous hat-trick, where a magician produces a rabbit out of an empty hat. You should understand, at least in general terms, what is happening in that black box on the one side of which you put your technical task and money, and on the other side, after a certain time, a ready-made website will "magically" appear.
Therefore, let's make this black box more transparent.
Several people will work on your site. First of all, it is developers who will work on your website creation. And, yes, developers differ - mobile and web, front end and back end developers.
After the structure of the site is described, the front end developer starts working. The web designer draws several variants of the site design, that is what the visitors will see as a result, designs navigational elements, turns brand into colors, fonts and layout. After the design is approved, the designer translates this picture into something that is understandable to Internet browsers.
After the main templates of the site pages are completed, the back end developer begins to work. The developer connects the necessary modules for managing the web application so that you can edit, add or delete information easily. He is also responsible for server-side logic, for optimizing the website for speed, for database creation and so on.
And then there are quality assurance engineers and testers who test the website to ensure its quality from start to finish.
And then there is the project manager who will coordinate with you the nuances, set tasks for the performers and monitor the terms.
This is a rough description of the website creation process. Now you understand that this process is not a matter of minutes and every change in requirements from you will influence the whole process and the team.
"All software development companies are the same"
The wrong choice of a software development vendor leads to unpleasant surprises in the best-case scenario, and to a short, unnoticed and sad life of your website in the worst case.
Most likely, the web development companies will ask you to fill out a standard brief to get the needed information. Do you understand the formulation of the question, and if not, is it easy to get a clear explanation from the project manager of what do these or that terms mean?
Based on the introductory information received from you in the brief, the web development company will tell the approximate cost and terms of website development. Do not be in a hurry to make your choice between contractors only at the cost-time ratio.
So that your investments in the website do not vanish, choose software development companies with valued experience in IT sector, the professionals with which you have a mutual understanding. Think, a representative of which company clarified questions and spoke in a language you understand, reacted quickly to your questions? Look at the portfolio of these companies to make sure you are comfortable with the level and style of their work.
Conclusion
Everyone can order a website. However, only one of the ten can get the results of it. Undoubtedly, a website that solves business tasks and created by seasoned developers will play a role in the development of your business.
Good luck with your website development!