9 Common Misconceptions about Web Development

Web development is a fundamental part of any digital marketing strategy. Now more than ever, eCommerce businesses are relying on online presence to achieve success and reach their goals. Having a website that is both attractive and functional is what makes you sell your products or services online, especially to today’s savvy and techie consumers.

It is essential to have a website that would represent and resonate with your consumers — a website that would speak both professionalism and quality that your brand brings to their tables. However, most business owners still don’t recognize the amount of work that goes into developing a website. One of the most common misconceptions about web development among non-developers is that creating one is as simple as posting content or video on a page.

There are an approximately 1.94 billion active websites across the globe, it is crucial to make your site stand out and additionally, an estimated 1.92 billion people expected to purchase something online by this year, according to a report from Hosting Facts. Therefore, it is only right to determine web development misconceptions to help you clear your assumptions.

Let’s go over at these 9 misconceptions about web development

1.Web development can be accomplished over the weekend

It can be true that a drag and drop website can be easily and quickly created. However, a brand that means serious business and wants an excellent website is not going to find a drag and drop template sufficient. Get yourself away from the false impression that ready-made templates would fit all the requirements for your digital marketing strategy and these templates lack the components and features your website needs.

Keep in mind that custom-built websites, which are created with your brand image and positioning strategy take time to develop.

2. Web development is just about writing codes

Yes, this is technically correct — web developers write code. However, there is more to their responsibilities in developing a website because these experts anticipate and see problems before they even happen. They would advise which trends and technologies will best work for your website.

These web developers optimize your website to gain leverage in the eCommerce industry. Let’s list down some critical aspects you may not know about what a web developer does before they launch a website:

• Increasing a website load speed through image optimization, caching, compression, and server performance
• Securing your website so it won’t get hacked
• Ensuring that your website works with your CRM (customer relationship management) and marketing automation to bridge the distance between your marketing and sales

3. Web development is a pretty simple and quick process to accomplish

The time spent developing a website is 30% to 40% writing codes and the other 60% to 70% is building its pages, also called content migration and testing the website to ensure that the website works excellently on all browsers.

Content migration is the process of building each page by putting content (words), images, videos, and files into the website. When content is brought over from a legacy website the web developer needs to find the mechanism to be used for the transition. This can do done in two ways:

• The web developer would need to research different technologies to know a way to seamlessly transition the information over, or
• The web developer will directly cut and paste the content which is a tedious process because the content needs reformatting to fit the new website

4. You can save more, budget-wise when doing an in-house web development

Think about it, if it’s really less costly to do in-house web development then companies would not be outsourcing their web development projects.

Most of the times, in-house web developers that build and support applications are skilled resources. However, building a website requires a different set of skills, may it be choosing a content management system (CMS) to use, ensuring HIPAA compliance are met, testing image compression or page speed, or setting up lead-functionality which integrates with CRM and marketing automation systems is out of their expertise.

A web development expert can smoothly handle these website-specific issues and requirements, making them more efficient in building your website.

5. When you outsource web development, you lose control of the process

Loosening up on control when it comes to outsourcing web development is sometimes a good thing. If you give up some control of the whole project, you’ll gain expertise, industry experience, and insight from a professional who knows best when it comes to leveraging the potential of your business development.

Participation from all parties during the process is both beneficial for your business and the web developer to better understand the must-haves and nice-to-haves features of your website. Communication is the key, use the web developer’s expertise and list down all of your expectations because they all like challenges.

6. Web developers can only handle one project at a time

Web developers almost always deal with competing priorities — they are also pulled into different directions, especially those who are on a web development agency. Unless you have an unlimited budget, you can never really expect an agency to put their entire focus handling one project at a time. Please keep in mind that this is a realistic expectation because it would be unwise to have a web developer concentrate and work on just a single project at a time. However, these experts have the ability and skills to handle such demands because they do that kind of work every day.

7. Purchasing a ready-made template is an excellent alternative to a customized one

Let’s face it, a business that takes business development and branding seriously won’t settle for a ready-made template. These templates won’t allow you to clearly represent your value proposition and include all the kind of information you need to convey to your audience. Cookie-cutter website templates are easier to launch but these won’t help you generate more business opportunities.

Here are the advantages of custom-built website templates:

• Easier for multiple team members to update
• Having a deliberate path for leveraging lead generation and the tools to make it happen
• Integration with CRM and marketing automation

8. There is no way to change a website once it has been developed

Gone are the days where making changes to a finished website is impossible. Having insightful information and utilizing those to improve lead generation on your website is a must and this should be done every two weeks. A fully-developed website allows you to access and add information, make revisions as needed to both the existing images and information, but you cannot really edit its general feel and look.

9. You have the final say on the design

This is one of the biggest misconceptions business owners have about wed development. Of course, you should have a say in the direction of how the project process takes because it is your brand’s website. However, micromanaging the web developer is a definite no, unless you have the technical experience. You should trust that your web developer knows what would work best for your website while giving them the direction you want to be taken — sit back and let your developer do his/her job. You can ask for revisions once they have presented you with the perspective demos.

Web development is essential and necessary for undertaking business. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of business owners who don’t understand that the skills and talent needed to build an attractive and functioning website costs effort, money, and time. So it is wise to know these misconceptions and eliminate them from your thoughts.