It is critical to choose the right web development partner for your business needs. Your website is usually the first interaction a potential customer has with your company, so it needs to look good, function well and support other business objectives that you have.

When selecting a web development company to design and launch your company’s website, consider key factors that will ensure your business is making the right investment in terms of meeting their goals and objectives and attaining desired returns. These factors include, among others, their experience, technical capabilities, means of communication, scalability, for optimal search engine rankings, and for ongoing support.

Understand Your Website Requirements First

There are many different websites. Once you have established the basic needs of your new website you can start looking for a development company. Because, for example, a basic information website has completely different requirements than an eCommerce website, a membership website or a customer portal or even a custom web application.

Consider questions such as:

• Who will use the website?
• What actions should visitors take?
• Do you need online payments or eCommerce?
• Will you require integrations with other systems?
• How much content will the website contain?
• Will you need multiple locations or service areas?
• Who will manage the website after launch?

This will help you compare potential Web development providers for your new website and make sure they can fulfill your goals.

Look Beyond Website Design

Beauty is only part of a successful web site. The underlying technology is what makes a web site perform, secure, scalable and user-friendly on mobile devices.

Evaluate Their Ability to Combine Design & Development Services. In other words, don’t view design and development as two separate processes, look for a Web development company in Oakville that can deliver both to you.

All good web design development companies will understand how the designers’ visual choices translate into the fully functional web site, and be able to explain the underlying technical choices to ensure the best user experience.

Evaluate Technical Experience

Your website has different technical needs depending on what you want to do with your website. Ask potential Web development companies in Oakville about their experience building websites similar to yours.

Will they have experience with the type of website you are trying to develop? For example, an online store will require development of a product catalogue, payment processing (such as credit card), shopping carts, customer accounts and checkout optimization. A business with a customer portal will require custom authentication and database functionality.

As for more complex projects (like custom applications or integration with other systems or services via APIs), be sure to ask the Web development company in question about their previous experience with databases, forms, and a variety of automated tasks and processes.

Consider Mobile Performance

There are many different types of devices that your website may need to support, such as laptops and desktops as well as smartphones and tablets. It is therefore important that the website can be viewed on all of these types of devices and will provide the user with the best possible experience.

How would you optimize for page speed for forms and buttons? How would you handle images?

Make sure your new website also does not create a poor user experience on smaller devices (e.g. tablets). Even though the number of mobile users has not reached 50% yet, they could very well be half of your new website visitors.

Ask About SEO From the Beginning

By incorporating SEO into the initial stages of website design, a web development company can ensure that your new website has the ideal structure and framework to grow your business through search engine optimization.

Working with a Web development company in Oakville that understands SEO can help ensure the website provides a strong technical foundation for future search optimization.

Working with a Web development company in Oakville that understands Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important because it provides a solid technical foundation to optimize your search position down the road.

Rebuilding a website for SEO also gives more consideration to maintaining organic search visibility generated from the existing website’s content, URL’s, navigation and page structures.

Think About Scalability

Your new web site needs to grow with your business. What works for a small company today, may not work for a larger company with more services, products, locations, employees, etc.

Before hiring a developer for your project ask them to explain how the website architecture they propose will grow with your business.

Scalability is very important if you plan to expand your online business to new markets or if you have multiple locations. Your web developer should be able to build a flexible and scalable website that will grow with your business and won’t need to be restructured in the future at great cost.

Review Previous Projects

Review their Portfolio and Past Work. Just because a website looks great doesn’t mean that it was built with the right functionality for your business. Look for examples of similar business models.

Look for:

• Similar business models
• Responsive websites
• Complex functionality
• eCommerce projects
• Custom applications
• Multi-location websites
• Strong user experiences
• Fast and reliable websites

It’s worth viewing the websites themselves, on desktop and mobile, to get a feel for the individual’s approach to the user experience and to performance.

Understand Communication and Project Management

A very technical team can also generate a very poor user experience, because of bad communication.

Ask about communication, the primary contact person, how progress will be tracked, how feedback and changes will be handled etc. before committing to a project.

It’s also important to understand the development process including planning, design, development, testing, launch and post-launch support.

A project that has clear communication will avoid major misunderstandings about scope, time, functionality, and roles.

Ask About Security and Maintenance

A website requires attention after it has launched. As the software, plugins, integrations, security requirements etc. as well as the business requirements change over time the website also needs to change with it.

Ask about their process for updating/ fixing software, plugins and integrations as well as any other security updates required by their software. Also ask about their backup policy, monitoring and their technical support policy. It would also be beneficial to ask about their ongoing development for your website.

Also important to consider is what happens after your website launches and you encounter any technical problems with your website. A good support team can be invaluable to businesses with high volume of online leads and sales.

Don’t Make Price Your Only Consideration

Budget is important when it comes to website development, but the cheapest option is not necessarily the best value for your money. Sure, a cheap website development project may seem like a great deal up front, but it could well be lacking some important features, such as SEO preparation, content migration, testing, security, integrations, training and support.

Low cost initial proposals for your website development project typically do not detail all the necessary items for effective launch, including SEO preparation of content, content migration, testing and more. On the other hand, more expensive proposals sometimes have features that your specific business does not need to operate effectively online.

When comparing prices from different Web developers compare the services you will need and make sure the cheapest proposal includes all the services your business requires.

Website development projects are best viewed as an investment in the client’s business, and not as expenses to be written off.

Look for Integrated Capabilities

In addition to web development, the area of the other above-mentioned online services is increasingly converged, meaning that they are merging with each other, with web development being one of the core converging centers.

Your development partner should have a good grasp of the various areas of Web development and be able to build a website that supports your full digital strategy.

The graphic design of your website can be impacted by branding that has been established by previous advertising efforts, the architecture of your website can be affected by SEO strategy (Search Engine Optimization), and the pages of your website can be optimized for specific content types and structured accordingly to support the content. Additionally, you may need to set up specific landing pages for your advertising campaigns.

In addition, with an integrated Web development company, there is typically less chance for discrepency between each vendor’s approach to serving your digital needs.

Choose a Partner That Understands Your Goals

In summary, the best relationship with a Web development company is one that helps to deliver on your specific goals as a business.

Be sure to look for a web development company in Oakville who will help lay the groundwork for your website and will support your business goals. They should want to know about your customers, your competition, your business model and your plans for growth.

An effective Web development partner can best explain the technical elements required to build a website and grow an online business and recommend solutions best suited to fulfill the goals of your business.

Make Your Website an Investment in Growth

When you are selecting a web development company to create a website for your business, you need to consider how your website is going to assist you in reaching your goals and help you to grow your business.

Evaluate technical expertise, communication, SEO knowledge, scalability, security and ongoing support before you sign the contract. Check their previous work for examples of successful sites and more importantly for value delivered to their customers.

In simple terms a successful website will generate more business by attracting more visitors and building more credibility with current visitors in order to ultimately close more leads and serve current customers better.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I choose the right web development company?

Start by detailing your requirements for a website, then compare the web development company’s technical expertise, relevant experience, communication skills, portfolio of previous work, knowledge of SEO, and the company’s ability to scale to meet your growing business needs as well as their pricing model and the level of ongoing support they will provide.

Should SEO be considered during website development?

SEO should be considered right from the start of a Website’s development. A Website’s architecture, performance, mobile usability, URLs, navigation etc all affect how a Website will rank in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for certain search terms.

How important is ongoing website support?

Ongoing support for your website helps maintain the security and functionality of your site, keeping it current with changing needs of your business, and allowing you to add new features and services as required.