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Most Common Mistakes When Hiring A Web Development Agency

Having a website is the first step towards making an online presence. If you don’t have one, you won’t be able to take your business where prospects are multiplying…err…exploding by the passing of each second.

If you have a business or plan to set one up soon, you got to have a website, that too, one that is rich in feature and is attractive. To succeed on the internet, your website needs to have a variety of features and functionalities, including:

✓ Easy and simple design

✓ Simple navigation to users

✓ Quick page loading

✓ Neat and clean listing of products and services

✓ Optimized elements for better visible on the internet

In a way, your business website will help only when it’s loaded with features helpful for making an impact on the internet. Without a website, your business won’t be able to go online to benefit from what others are doing with ease. This is where web development helps. So, you should know web development fully before benefiting from it.

Web development – At a glance

It all started in way back early 90’s…Those where the days we came to know about the World Wide Web. Those were the days where static HTML pages formed the pinnacle of web application development.

The time flew and gradually, we saw innovation and advancement in the web development domain and now we have reached at a stage where web applications have become truly dynamic and complex.

Today, we can develop all kinds of web applications for different industries and projects. Today, we have a variety of development platforms that can transform plain static HTML pages into highly interactive apps.

From platforms to patters to practices, all have changed a lot over the years redefining the sphere of web development and adding a great heft to web applications.

✓ Web development is all about the process of programming or processing the data of a website

✓ Web development is actually a broad term involving a lot of works including of course the development of the website.

✓ From web content development to web design to e-commerce development and much more, all is part of the web development.

✓ In simple terms, website development involves all non-design parts related to developing or building website.

✓ Web development involves coding and writing mark-up to create different web-based apps for businesses

Why web development is important?

Web development has changed a lot and it continues to keep pace with the trends of the market. Businesses now have a great hope on web development to build their base, realize their goals and reach to growth and success in the desired manner.

✓ 4 out of 10 users will switch to another website if it takes more time to load.

✓ A website has less than 10 seconds to make an impression upon users and if manages that, it will stay in contention.

✓ Users form opinion about a brand in the moment the web pages load.

✓ A web page should load in less than 2 second and this is what makes the real difference

✓ Users on the internet will prefer reading or visiting a site which has a beautiful design rather than being a plain one

✓ People will stop engaging with a website if it’s does have an attractive layout

Mistakes that developers often make

Web development is all about developers leveraging the latest in web technologies and employing their skills to develop web applications of varying degree. At times however, developers make some mistakes and these mistakes need to be avoided to boost the level of productivity of the business. Those mistakes include:

✓ Mistakes that take place from incomplete input validation

✓ Mistakes that stem from doing authentication even without appropriate authorization

✓ Not developing apps in a manner which makes it ready to scale

✓ Developing web apps with wrong or missing SEO

✓ Failing to optimizing bandwidth usage

✓ Failing to implement responsive web design features

✓ Mistakes of not developing apps for different screen sizes

✓ Not giving proper care to cross browser incompatibility

✓ Developing web applications that lack proper planning for portability

Mistakes in hiring a web development agency

It’s clear that hiring a web development agency is not as easier a job as often assumed. A lot of factors need to be considered to boost the worth of hiring. What’s more, a clear-cut plan should be in place when you decide to hire the agency. Make sure not do most common mistakes when hiring a web development agency, including:

#1 Hiring without any plan in place

Yes, it’s true! Most of clients looking for a web development agency in fact go without any concrete plan or strategy in place. They just want a good website and that’s all. They don’t bother conveying to the agency what the purpose is, what kind of target audience it looks to deal with or what market to tap into. What’s more, they approach verbally and expect great development services!

#2 Not engaging with multiple agencies

Some clients want their web development projects to kick start as soon as it can. In the rush, they even ignore consulting beyond a single agency, which is a big blunder. You have to engage with multiple agencies, ask quotes, compare development solutions and then make detailed planning to choose the best agency. A single agency will make you lose any leverage you could have availed!

#3 Confusing “designers” with “developers”

You should understand your web project will consist two parts – designing & development. If the designing will have focus on the aesthetics or visual aspect of the site, then the development, its technical aspect. A developer – and not and never a designer – will be adept at coding, testing, and installing designs into a framework. Any confusion on this front means getting everything messed up due to bad hiring.

#4 Failing to hire genuine developers with customization skills

Most of clients do this mistake where they fail to hire a right developer. Instead, they end up hiring web platform customizers masquerading as a web developer. Such customizers seriously lack skills and expertise to develop customized solutions of transactional nature or those complex and layered apps for social and community. Doing Drupal and WordPress customization won’t make one a genuine developer and you should keep this in mind while hiring.

#5 Hiring based on industry-specific credentials

It’s always a mistake to search and hire an agency based on its credential for a specific industry only. Rather than benefiting, in such cases, clients end up being at a disadvantage, but how? Well, such agencies are so much specialized for a particular industry that they don’t put in research and analysis for web development works. They fail to add any value and innovation purely for being blindfolded to one industry alone.

#6 Giving preference to only big web agencies

In most cases, clients get floored by the lure of big and large web agencies in the hope of getting the best of web development services. But sadly, such is not the case as bigger the agency, lesser its time devotion to a particular project. Such agencies may well be having millions in turnover and overflowing revenue but they surely lack a touch of personalization offered by smaller ones. What’s they, they charge a bomb for the same project often done at a fraction of cost by their smaller cousins.

#7 Giving location and LOCAL a preference

Hiring a web agency based on their location, and especially based on their being located locally, is something which does not make much of a sense in today’s globalized and connected world. The only real benefit of hiring a local agency is vising it personally as and when required, and the benefits stop here itself. If the outsourcing industry too had thought that way, we’d never have reached where we’re today.

#8 Hiring without checking track record of a web agency

Many clients go ahead and hire a web agency even without checking its track record and its ability to deliver quality development services. Without checking the references, without asking questions and without knowing the plusses and minuses of the agency, one should not go ahead.

#9 Giving low price a preference

It’s understandable that when it comes to pricing, clients prefer to tilt towards the lower side but not at the cost of quality. Some even hire small agency so that exorbitant prices are not faced. It’s however unfair to link quality with price as both are entirely different facets. Big agencies may deliver both together but they surely cost more than smaller ones. This area is something you need to give some seriously thinking before hiring.

Conclusion
In a nutshell, hiring a web development agency is faced with varying level of risks and challenges as there are a lot of things to consider. If right care is not taken and if all factors are not considered properly, chances of hiring a good web agency go down drastically. So, clients should be cautious while engaging with a web agency and look to get all services and quality they need.