Why Website Development is Important for Businesses
A website is usually the first interaction between your business and the customer. SEO has become the main tool of most marketing departments, which means that when the customer clicks through to your site from Google or Bing, they need to be instantly impressed.
The potential customer needs to understand what your company is about, the feel of the company, the attitude of the company, its products or services that it provides, and why they may provide the passer-by some value. This is even the case when customers land on your website from a social media advert too, as the advert usually tells part of the story.
These are just a few things that are important, but to get it right is the challenge. Web development has lost its middle-ground. The choice is more black and white than it used to be: do you want a generic drag-and-drop website or do you want a high-end, full customised, optimised and responsive website?
Developers are going more to high-end developing now because of how many people are using drag-and-drop sites. The issue is just that: everyone seems to be using drag-and-drop website builders. These were great before people knew they existed, you could make a flash looking site very quickly and cheaply. But the designs are limited, and now we can all spot them a mile away.
They are also superficial. The websites run slowly because they generally use poor servers, they rank poorly on Google, they severely lack in custom features and fixing issues, and they often crash when they receive high traffic.
The fallacy is difficult to see for recreational users and even bloggers, but the fad is slowly being realised by businesses. Web services by Passion Digital is one good example of why custom web development is back on the rise. Mobile surfing is perhaps the most popular method of purchasing items. This is arguably the priority at this point, and so having responsive sites that cater to all the different devices and screen sizes is necessary for every customer to get the full experience. This is actually a huge problem, where sites are borderline unusable for mobile users because they were created on a desktop and forgot about testing other platforms.
Why web development is important
Web development and MVP development for startups can be made in-house by hiring the suitable employees, or it can be outsourced. Both are fine options, although there is a reason why the demand for outsourcing is so high. Maintaining a website isn’t necessarily a daily requirement for most businesses. You can add a blog post without interrupting the site if needed, but generally things remain stable for a long time. Therefore when outsourcing, they merely fill in the blanks after you’re all set-up and ready to go.
This is the beauty of a strong website. It stoically remains a reliable place for custom. There’s far fewer uncertainties than with physical stores. You’ve not got to worry about the demise of a high street around you when you stand strong in the Google rankings – although Google does tend to ask for some maintenance (they even get on to you about font size). It is also the place that customers come to when they want to complain or enquire about something. The reputation of the company can lie in the hands of its website (and its usability) in the most delicate of moments.
Considering its outreach, it is vitally important. When you have the potential custom of anyone from anywhere in the world, you need to be ready to show them exactly what you’re about. An impressive site can cause people to stick around for longer, even if they’re just admiring the features and design of the site. This gives you long enough to grab their attention with some highly persuasive web copy – content that will convert them from passers-by to subscriptions to your newsletter, or even purchase an item there and then. Newsletters are a great way to keep hot leads and such to keep coming back to the site in the future, and of course, convert to sales.
This is why other web and marketing services are so popular right now. Front end, Back end, Full stack and Full Stack Mobile developers – these are the key outsourced development investments – and you can reinforce your IT team with on-demand specialists provided by a third party.
Speed is king
Sites like Facebook spend an incredible amount of effort on making their site as fast as possible. In this day and age, waiting 3 seconds at a blank page for it to load is excruciating. Browsing the web has become a market of attention grabbers, and as a result, we have a very low tolerance regarding patience. If a website doesn’t load straight away or fails to impress after 2 seconds, there is something 1 click away from giving me a dopamine rush instead.
The reality is businesses have to buy into this fast-food mindset and create a website that grabs attention quickly and provides no inconveniences like awkward positioning on mobile browsers. The rise of generic drag-and-drop template themes has actually served as an opportunity; an opportunity to differentiate and stand out from the crowd.