13 Key Traits to look for in a Web Development Company before hiring them

Website is a vital component of your marketing and business strategy. It is an extension of your physical business presence, thus providing a virtual experience for your consumers to purchase your products or services. To partner with the right web development company for such a critical part of your business is not an easy decision.
Gone are the days when a business website was designed using a cookie cutter template on GoDaddy, Wix, Weebly, or other drag-and-drop website building platforms. These days, if you don’t use web development professionals to help build your website, you will have a hard time standing out from the competitors in your niche. Therefore, it is essential to know the key traits to look for in a web development company, as well as knowing what to expect once you find the right partner. Here’s a comprehensive list of 13 key traits:

1. Close Collaboration on Web Design

You are an expert at what you do and understand your products and services better than anyone else. In the same way, a web development company is an expert in developing websites. So feel free to share your ideas on how your business website should look and feel, but rely on the ideas of the web developer. He/she will use his years of experience, latest design trends, and creativity to build a custom website, tailored to your unique business needs. You will be amazed to see the end result; it will turn out to be much better than what you had in mind.

2. Expecting the Unexpected

We all know that running a business is not easy these days, when you have to compete with others offering similar products and services. That’s why, there needs to be more emphasis on your business’ unique value proposition; i.e. the unique qualities that makes you stand out from your competition. Also, you need a unique marketing and sales strategy, which you can brainstorm with web development company. With more focus and better ROI on Digital Marketing, website plays a critical role in the development of marketing and sales strategy.

3. Search Engine Optimization

There is a common misconception that if the website is up, people will somehow find it. The truth is that the website has to be promoted via different channels to drive internet traffic towards it. The most popular channel everyone uses to find stuff on internet is search engines. The challenge is that there are millions of websites, with billions of products, competing to get to the top of search engine results for the popular keywords. What you need is a keyword targeted, search engine optimized website, with lots of valuable content and inbound links from other websites.
Please make sure that your web development company is an expert in search engine optimization, and knows how to target keywords, and more importantly, what keywords to target for your particular product or service. A website that is not optimized for Google’s ranking doesn’t stand a chance in ranking at the top, which means no new visitors from Google.

4. Professional Web Content

If you signed for web content copywriting services along with web development service, then you should expect professional, informative, well-written content, with marketing-oriented language. Content should be well-researched, keyword targeted, with the correct density, and should flow nicely throughout all web pages. Visitors will think highly of your company if your website copy is well written, concise, and grammatically correct and provides them with the information they are seeking.

5. Long-Term Strategy

Setting up a website is not a one-time project, which you just create and then forget about. In order to maintain and improve search engine ranking, website needs to be constantly updated with fresh content, latest design trends, and layout. You also need to continuously audit and re-audit the keywords you are targeting, to make sure that you are as high in the rankings as possible and that your website is optimized for all the keywords that potential customers use to look for your products and services.
Your web development company should be able to provide the long-term strategy to help you compete in your industry and improve your website ranking gradually over time.

6. Internal Processes

A well-organized web development company is like a well-maintained car; it will continue to run smoothly without any surprises. Therefore, a well-organized web development company should have strong internal processes in place. It includes project management, task distribution, resource allocation and resource management, communication, and reporting. You can sleep peacefully knowing that you will get the best-quality website on time, on budget, as per your expectations, irrespective of an earthquake or a COVID-19 pandemic.

7. Latest Standards

One of the most important trait is to ensure that the web development company is aware of the various industry standards and follows them. Many of these standards ensure that the website being built will perform well under pressure while also ensuring they meet different security standards and expectations. Not only that, but international web standards also ensure that your website is accessible for people with disabilities. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 is the latest international standard for web content accessibility.

8. Easy to Scale Websites

It is vital for a website to be developed not only with the current scope of project in mind, but to also take into consideration possible updates and enhancements in the future. Many businesses have long-term goals and projects. It is important for the web development company to take into consideration the company’s growth plan, new services they are planning to offer, and future expansion of their existing website. Based on that information, web development company should develop website on a platform, in which it can be easily scaled with more web pages and more features. Not only that, but web development company should also suggest enhancements and latest features, as web development technologies evolve.

9. Security Taken Seriously

The web development company you decide to work with, needs to take security very seriously. Considering the no. of malwares and viruses being launched by hackers, security needs to be no. 1 priority, specially, if customers’ data privacy is at risk. A seasoned hacker should not be able to find holes in security or to take advantage of the functions of a website to infect the web visitor.

10. Simple Maintenance

Website should be designed in such a way that it is easy to maintain on a long-term basis. A professional web development company would have automation strategies and features that are made available to the client to reduce manual interventions. Whether you are looking to do a routine website backup or upgrade it to latest version of plugins, it should be fairly simple, whether it is done by the web development company or by yourself.

11. Take on any Challenge

A web development company that is truly an expert in their domain will take on any challenge that you throw at them. No matter how complex the business requirement is, they should be able to tackle it with a positive attitude and be able to deliver, as per your expectations, within the budget and before the project completion deadline. Also, they should be able to handle all aspects, including CMS, customer login portal, e-Commerce, etc. If you hear excuses of technology or system constraints, that is a red flag for you to re-consider your choice.

12. Customized Solution

Since your website is unique, you should be expecting a unique, customized website for your business. Website built using a cookie cutter template will not do justice to your brand, unique value prop, and key offerings. Anyone can build a website using GoDaddy, Wix, or Weebly platforms, which allow drag and drop functionality to build an entire website. But it restricts the design and layout, due to which your website will look like a plain template website. Web development company should design a customized website using any popular CMS platforms like WordPress, Drupal, Magento, Shopify, with HTML/CSS, to highlight your unique brand and offering.

13. Complete Development Services

A well-established web development company should be able to handle both back-end and front-end design and development. Not only that, but they should be well-versed in all essential and modern development tools, like PHP, Python, Django, Angular.js, or React.js. With all tools in their arsenal, they would build using the technology that is most suitable to meet your business requirements.

Once you have shortlisted a web development company based on the 13 traits explained above, you can be confident that you have chosen the right partner for a key part of your business. Once the web development project starts, you will not face any unpleasant surprises and the project will move smoothly towards successful completion.
With more than 5 years of experience in web development, Telkoware has successfully delivered 100+ projects and has gained reputation of a trustworthy and reliable partner. Feel free to connect with us for a free consultation at info@telkoware.com or (437)223-1771.