STEP 4 - Website Development
The web design industry is full of fast talking sales people. People who promise the world and delivery a picture of a globe. They impress people with great concepts of success and convert sales. Then they deliver a product which is usually inferior.
At Sites By Design we dont do our development like that at all, we keep things transparent. We are always happy to disclose the frameworks we use to achieve what you need.
Website Development needs to be done right
There are many ‘Web Designers’ out there who sell websites which look ok on the outside. However they are built on layers of bloated code. They also often include lots of plugins which are not needed. The problems that remain afterward are slow loading websites which can be ‘editor friendly’ but not very secure. They can be quite an offence to search engines.
Bloated Code and Website Development
These layers of bloated code are often created by ‘Website Building Software’. This software is built into the theme they have purchased. Essentially this software is not much different to using Wix.com to build yourself a free website – so why would you pay someone else to do what you could actually do yourself? These themes are often purchased for $39 – $59 USD from Theme market places. They are created and uploaded by people who could have created backdoors or poor quality code and no one would know the difference – except a real developer.
Website Development and the overuse of Plugins
There is nothing wrong with using the right plugins for your WordPress website. However you need to remember that the more plugins your website needs to load – the slower it loads.
Another common problem is ‘Web Designers’ who leave unused plugins active and installed. It is common to find up to 30 unused plugins on a website which has been created by an un-professional. This is a problem due to the site loading speed as previously mentioned. On top of that issue, each of those plugins becomes a serious security issue as they are often left without being updated for years.
Website Security and Website Development
Website development needs to be done in a secure way. Website security is most commonly breached by kids with hacking scripts which take advantage of plugins (or un-updated WordPress sites) that are old and have not been updated. The plugin updates renew the code with the latest version of the plugin. This patches your website from new ways of exploiting the plugin. This is not something you would want to avoid doing. Updates are very important.
Website Development and Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation is important to most business websites, unfortunately it is often not done right – if at all.
One reason for that is the lack of SEO Planning for the site. Most web companies dont plan the success of a website before building it, instead they get the site made, get paid and launch the site. They leave the planning to the future Marketing Manager.
The other reason is that they do their web development with pre existing framework like ‘site builders’ and ‘page builders’. These can become painful to the SEO professional who is implementing the onPage SEO onto your site later. At Sites By Design we ensure the SEO is planned in advance so that it can be implemented in the development phase of your website project. This helps your site to be SEO ready before it is launched.
Two Options for your Web Development
At Sites By Design we have 2 options for your Web Development.
Option 1 – The Purist
In Option 1, the more expensive option, we have our developer custom build your website. This is done with clean code and from scratch. IT is done using no page builders or purchased themes. This way of doing things is only able to have changes made by our developer which makes it a bit more of an expensive route.
Option 2 – The Hybrid
The Hybrid is the most commonly chosen option. We use a theme purchased from our premium Theme club, one that has been built with good code foundations. We also use a single plugin which provides some special effects that will make your website look nice. We use this option ourselves as it’s easier to manage without having to go back to a developer for every change we want made.
With option 2 you can also have a quality page builder used if you would like one, the only reason to do this is so that you can make formatting changes yourself if needed.
