YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS A WEBSITE
When was the last time you opened a phone book…? Guess what - Your customers are not using the Yellow Pages anymore either. In fact, as of 2011, 90% of Americans were already using online search to find information (60% of that reported doing so daily).
Widespread internet adoption means customers have and expect 24/7 access to information about the conversations, topics and products that interest them. Users have become accustomed to finding solutions that fit their specific needs and develop favorite resources to constantly return to.
Hiring the right developer or development team is essential to the business success of your digital venture, and from day one, all considerations must be focused on the final product from day one. Your website needs to be easy to find, provide value to visitors and be overtly user friendly. It’s a direct reflection of your brand and can be the only encounter visitors have with organizations that can offer online transactions and/or digital services.
Having a website is just the beginning, to stay competitive you must continuously respond to user feedback faster than your competition. That means developers must be capable of quickly finding and fixing failures in the deployed code while simultaneously building, testing and releasing updates that add customer value.
Recently, our Campus Director, Bill Adkins was quoted in an article on CIO.com about this very subject in, “8 tips for hiring a Web designer for your business.” Check out what other experts had to say on the topic on cio.com and read our two additional tips below!
THREE TIPS FOR HIRING & WORKING WITH WEB DEVELOPERS
1. As the customer, you should know your audience and the “voice” of your site. You will help designers/programmers better be able to scope your project if you can articulate your users’ experience. It will also help you scope the project in digestible stages.
2. Have your designers/programmers start small and iterate. Too big of a project will take forever, cost a lot and risk missing the mark with product/customer fit. There’s nothing wrong with starting simple. For example, you can tie your backend to Google Docs as a cheap/easy way to test functionality quickly and easily before building something more robust.
3. Have a list of websites you like and admire and know *why* you like them. Pick a few you like for their aesthetic (perhaps it’s what you’re trying to look like), others for their workflow, maybe others for their function. This will help designers know your taste and goals. Check your designer’s github account and references to see if they have built anything similar to the primary goal/desire you have.
BONUS TIP: If you need to hire the best impassioned, creative and productive full-stack developers available, CodeCraft graduates are trained in the latest tools and coding skills demanded by competitive businesses today.
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