5 steps to effective web development

What comes to your mind first when you think of getting a website? Design, code - those come later. 

Planning and strategizing is the most important part as they help you define the timeline of the development process. Based on this timeline, you can derive the cost for the development.

So, if you are planning to build a website and are unsure of how to get started, here's 5 steps to ensure an effective web development process.

1. Set a goal

Have a clear picture about your requirements from the website. Know your business model and then start building the feature set. Know what the end goal of the site is and center all your features around achieving that goal. Understand your user base and targeted audience. This will help determine the design strategy.

Defining the goal and then the feature set to achieve this goal ensures that there is no functionality stuffing on your website.

2. Take branding seriously

You are building your website to support an online business. So every aspect of the branding should maintain the essence of your business. When a user looks at your website, they should be able to instantly connect with it. This way their loyalty can be gained by getting the branding registered in the mind of the users.

This way, if the user sees your website's logo or colors on any social media platforms or other marketing channels, they will have instant recall value.

For this, you need to ensure the same color scheme is maintained between your website’s logo, web pages, social media channels and any other form of advertisement along with the website’s design and overall color palette for creating a strong impression in the mind of the user.

3. Effective navigation

The sole aim of developing a website is to drive your targeted audience deeper into the sales funnel and ultimately making a sale. With the help of and effective navigation module, you can aim for higher customer retention.

So, how do you achieve this? You need to have a design which will guide the user to the next step at all times. Your website should be user-friendly. And like they say, anything which requires more than 3 clicks to register a sale will most probably be ignored.

Apart from this, make the process super simple. An amazing looking feature might eventually drive the user away if it becomes too complex to follow. So, it is important that to have cues and hints about the next step that the user must look at. The easier the user finds your website, the easier it will be for you to drive business.

4. Conversions vs Traffic

There is a lot of difference between conversion and traffic. Traffic is when you attract prospects to your website while conversion is when you convert them into your customers. No matter how good you are in your digital marketing strategy, your ultimate goal is to convert your leads to customers.

A good developer can help you increase traffic while an excellent developer will help you increase conversions with the help of landing pages and good navigation strategies. Right landing pages and call-to-actions in the right places can play an important role in the development of the web app.

5. Choose your partner wisely

We finally come to the development and the most important step. The right technology partner will understand your goal and help you with all the steps before. 

Consult a good web app development company. Read their reviews and see their portfolios. If they sound convincing, seek their advice and begin your web app development. While there are many languages and tech stacks that you can use to build your web app, you need to be very careful about the pros and cons of these languages. Ask your technology partner about heir choice and why they selected a specific technology.

A website is not only about coding and it does not end after a first version. Website development is a journey. You make it better as you get more users and understand what they need. You need to maintain it and do A/B testing to see what works and what doesn't.

Need help with your website or digital marketing? Get in touch.