01/14/2016
WHY YOU NEED A WEB DEVELOPER
When most people think about the web they think of the “aesthetic”, how it feels, looks and acts. What some miss is all of things that are happening in the background. Let me give you a scenario, if you have ever built a house then you know that the job doesn’t end at just the contractors. You also need to make sure that the house has working lights, plumbing, security, and if you are planning to expand the home later you will want to take into consideration how much of your property to plot for initial construction and think about when and where your expansions might go.
If the lights don’t work do you have an electrician? If someone throws a brick through your window are your security alarms going to go off? Will the cameras record what is happening to your home? Etc.
What if an error occurs with your site, will your designer know how to diagnose and resolve that issue? Does your site framework allow for expansion? Does your online store meet the requirements for Verisign for online payments? Is it optimized for search engines? Does the site provide you with backend support for communications with your staff members? Will you have domain support for Office 365? Will your online CRM reports play nicely with people outside of your solution? Can you gather proper BI (Business Insight) for your company or brand? Etc.
The point I am trying to make is that a home is not as simple as just building and making sure that it looks the way you want it to and a website is no different. There are tons of things that happen in the backend that you will have to refer to other professionals for, and not planning ahead for those things can put you in a bad situation.
ENTER THE DEVELOPER
Some people when they think of a develop they picture someone day in and day out punching code for desktop applications, while that is not entirely untrue there is more to it than that. For starters companies are trending heavily towards a seamless application environment that can work both on site and off. For that reason, a lot of current developers have an intimidating report with web languages and a very good understanding of the inner workings of popular web frameworks. Developers now a days need to be more than just good at programming in fact development work requires planning, coordination, creativity, accuracy and above all communication with clients.
But it goes even deeper than that. Websites change constantly what happens if your web designer doesn’t have a strong foundation in the underlining code that drives his/her environment or an understanding of the engine that drives the web. Having an unclear understanding can force you into a situation where you need to hire talent elsewhere to complete your site requirements which means retraining, which means more money, and time.
Developers due to the nature of their work have to constantly ask themselves this. “How is what I am doing going to affect the other people that are working on this”, “Is my code volatile”, “Is my code easy to understand if I don’t have a job here tomorrow?”, “Is my code efficient” etc. This isn’t to say that a designer can’t diagnose, and resolve issues, we have seen plenty of web designers who are developers in their own right but keep the “designer” in their title to avoid intimidating possible business.
DO YOU NEED A WEB DEVELOPER?
You might not need one, but if you are planning for a project that could lead to expansion in the future it might be a very good idea to show your requirements to a development firm such as our own. Will the hourly rate be higher? Probably but paying a little extra could save you a ton of money and headaches in the future. It’s not uncommon to hear clients looking for solutions that have growth built into the framework. It’s also not uncommon to hear clients talk about integrating solutions that speak to desktop/server environments, or integrate well into a cloud environment, heck maybe all three.
With the advent of Azure, Office 365 and a number of other cloud platforms it’s even more common to see systems integration going down the stack. Though it is nice to have an “online” only solution for everything it still begs the question how reliable it can be, and how dependable support is for when something goes wrong. Developers are great for this scenario because you pay for what you need and if something goes wrong the firm has your code and information on hand to support when needed, there are also designers usually onboard that can assist with a number of things.
If you or your company is interested in leading a discussion on your needs, please feel free to reach out to us. We are always happy to assist and we have knowledge on hand for on premise and/or cloud development.
Check us out at www.sdselite.com or email us at [email protected]
Thanks for taking the time to read this!
Software Development Services specializes in building easy to use software for businesses on any modern device. St Petersburg Florida office: 866-888-2586
