7 Tips For Hiring A Great Web Development Company

Every business willing to stay on top of its competition today has to, sooner or later, either think about establishing its own web and software development department or outsourcing these activities to professionals.

7 Tips For Hiring A Great Web Development Company

Every business willing to stay on top of its competition today has to, sooner or later, either think about establishing its own web and software development department or outsourcing these activities to professionals. At the very least, a self-respecting business has to have an app to improve bonding with its clients. After that, there are many areas of IT that can help almost any business: cloud computing, big data, evolution toward omnichannel commerce, you name it.

So what tools, methods, and approaches should you use to both select the development company that would best suit your goals and prepare your business to it?

1.Decide what exactly you need and whether the company covers these requirements

Web development companies offer wide and varying sets of services, sometimes including web design, copywriting, ecommerce and suchlike. Before you make a deal, decide exactly what you want from your contractor and see if they are capable of providing the needed services in their entirety.

2.Find out if the company follows coding standards and uses a framework

If you know anything about coding, you should understand that web development’s relation with exact sciences is a very tenuous one. Coders have styles of their own: one coder will always have certain difficulties following the code written by someone else. It may take 3 lines of good code to achieve the same task it takes 10 lines of poor code to do, minus memory leaks and bugs. However, if a company uses a universal coding standard and a web application framework, it makes it much easier for all its programmers to understand each other’s code and better work in collaboration.

3.Prepare your customers

A conservative part of existing customers (especially those who had been around for a long time and in businesses that are traditionally not tech-oriented) can be put off by a sudden introduction of new technology. In order to keep them, you should make sure the developer you choose has sufficient experience in adapting and integrating legacy systems and carrying out gradual transitions towards new tech, without bringing havoc into the lives of more traditional clients.

4.Study the company’s portfolio

Does the company have notable examples of work they’ve done for previous customers? If they can show you some fruits of their labor, you can see if there is any diversity to the work they do, how well their websites and apps perform, if their navigation is intuitive, how well they understand and follow modern design trends. Ask questions. Why this look the way it looks? You may find out that some elements you dislike were done exactly in the way client asked for them.

5.Ask for case studies showing the results of businesses adopting their solutions

A good example in the portfolio is nice, but what about practical results? Does it do what it was supposed to do? Can the company provide case studies demonstrating specific results (conversion rates, sales boosts, etc.)? You don’t pay them to do beautiful things. You pay them to do things that work.

6.Does the company outsource any of its work?

Some web development companies hire independent specialists to perform parts of the job. There is nothing reprehensible about the practice as it is – it allows the developer to broaden their range of services without having to keep experts they don’t need on a daily basis on a full payroll. However, if you find out this approach is used, make sure to ask for the credentials of all the contractors that will work on your project and how the collaboration with them will be handled.

7.Find out what the company’s pricing policy is

How exactly does it approach pricing its services? What is included in the price you agree to pay? Ask for an itemized list of everything that will be covered by this price and what won’t be. For example, some companies don’t include maintenance and support into the general price, so find out on what conditions you will have to pay for it.

Selecting a web development company to cooperate with is a tough and important decision, especially if you are looking for a long-time collaborator. We hope that these tips will help you make the right call.