Website development best practices 2023
Description
Technology is captivating a vital role in our day-to-day life. From a local buyer who is paying through UPI to a big tech giant who is running a successful software company, who is deprived of the effect of technology.
Nevertheless, everyone is looking for certain specific features to ease down their task. So, is the case with e-commerce businesses, they need the best website for their business. This website gives the first impression of their business. This has enhanced the need of implementing website development best practices.
This article will pour light on what website development exactly is. and its requirement in 2023. It also along with focus on the best practices to follow while developing a website.
What is website development and how is it important in 2023?
Website development includes the entire process of managing and building the website. Web developers do the work behind the curtain. They come up with creative and swift features that make the whole website what it is.
Website development is a tedious task and requires a good skill set. Research conducted in 2023, shows that there has been an enormous 15% increase in web developers over the last 5 years. This data is likely to increase over time and 2023 will see more developers with better ideas and knowledge thriving in the market.
Website development best practices
To make your website bloom with ease, and let your website attract more and more traffic and sales, here are a few industries standard Website Development Best Practice that you should incorporate into your website to enhance conversion rate and increase the search engine ranking,
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- Set a predefined plan and purpose
As a web developer, you cannot just dive in and sit beside your computer screen and begin with random coding. You need to have a set goal to target and an aim to purpose for.
You first need to take in the client’s needs and then set your plan. Create a plan that how will you work on the website, the amount of time required to spend on it and what your product will look like. This will give you a clear picture of what you need to do and how you need to proceed toward your goal.
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- Don't forget about the accessibility
Website accessibility is an inclusive process that takes into consideration that your website can be used, accessed, and navigated by any individual including those with physical disabilities or visual impairments.
If you look at the statistics, around 1 billion people all over the world have some sort of disability. You cannot ignore such a vast number. So, make your website comfortable for everyone. For example, to let screen readers explain, add ALT text to images or make your website design friendly to ease the process for one with colour blindness.
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- Take UX/UI into account: user experience and user interface
It is rightly said that a website developer should invest 70% of his time in research and design and the remaining 30% on coding, as UX/UI needs to be focused on. UX/UI of a website is extremely important for your website, and it decides the experience that users will have while navigating through the website.
The better the user experience will be, the more time he/she will spend on your website. This will in turn increase the chances of generating revenue for the business.
You can generate a mock version of your product, test potential customers or beta testers for the UX/UI, and take in their feedback to improvise the website.
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- Implement website security
Security at both the user end and developer end is extremely important these days. We are still halfway through this year, and 2023 has already seen some security breaches.
The need to protect your database and other relevant information is quite important. The foremost step is the installation of SSL certificates. They are of several kinds like single domain, multi domain SSL, Wildcard SSL certificate, which comes in a very low-price range. It is recommended to purchase SSL of well known brands like GeoTrust SSL, comodo SSL. All these SSL come at low price like cheap comodo SSL, RapidSSL, etc. You can encrypt your communication channel and let the user's trust in you stand strong.
Other security measures involve taking strong backups, using good hosting sites, and two-factor authentication and the list is endless. Just opt for the most basic one and then take in others as per your website's need.
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- High performance with faster load time and speed
The Year 2023 is the era of speed and development. The faster the better. This speedy generation cannot wait for your website to take ages to load. They will without a second thought shift to your competitor's website. In addition, the result is quite clear, you will lose your potential customers, have decreased revenue and even your search engine ranking will fall.
Make sure you develop a high-performing website. You should compress images in your website to decrease the load time, use fewer plugins to speed up the website and choose a hosting server that is not shared, as a shared network slows down the load time.
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- Responsive design
Responsive websites are a need in 2023. Such websites adapt to and deliver the best experience with a desktop, tablet, or smartphone. You can easily take a switch from small screen devices to big screen ones or vice-versa and experience the same experience. All the data and calls to action will be visible clearly.
An unresponsive website often makes a visitor lose his interest in the website and makes him deviate to other websites. A full picture of the website will not be visible and there might be a slew of other barriers.
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- Take a sprint and do not look for leaps
The complex task of website development cannot be completed in a single go. You will come up with errors and flaws that need to be fixed from time to time. Changing the entire website or taking a huge section of it for implementing changes becomes troublesome. It is better you take a sprint of it rework it and fix it.
You need to develop the website keeping in mind the future amendments that will follow it. It is for sure that the front end developed today will look old within a few months. So, instead of working on the whole website again, develop the back end imperatively, to look for minute changes in the front end only.
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- Implement high-end search engine optimization (SEO) strategies
Search engine optimization (SEO), the new trendsetter has taken the software development world by storm. Your business cannot flourish well if you have not optimized your website. Once you achieve a good search engine ranking, your website will be visible on the top pages of Google, and you will be able to reach a good amount of crowd.
Word-of-mouth marketing is no longer the need in 2023. You simply need to abide by the Google algorithms and implement relevant SEO techniques to optimize your website.
Although this section does not come under the control of a website developer, still a talk with your SEO team can ease your task of developing a correct and optimized website fourfold.
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- User clear and concise code
“Make every line of code count.” Yes, this has become a generalized rule that many website developers stick to these days.
Over-coding can occur easily i.e., you can easily end up writing unnecessary codes that are not relevant in the context. This might look tempting to your eyes, and you will feel that this complex code will add brownie points to your coding tactics. Nevertheless, the reality is different, complex codes come with bugs and issues.
Resolving bugs in such complex codes becomes a tedious task, which complicates the whole scenario. So, always use clear, concise, and useful codes that make sense.
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- Don't deviate too much from the set standards
Website development is all about showing your creativeness. In addition, 2023 calls for web developers who are creative, enthusiastic, and adaptive. However, that does not mean that you break all the rules.
In the very beginning, we said that you should set a goal, so do not deviate much from that goal. Keeping this goal as the final target, you can come up with certain amendments that will suit the new industry standards.
Rules, standards, and frameworks like keeping maps and global navigation menus the same, and keeping hyperlinks text size it, are a few standard practices that need not be changed globally.
Final takeaway
The key takeaway is that with these best website development practices, you can secure a good position as a web developer. However, to make things clear, I would say that these are only a few practices, the area of website development is so huge that you need to evolve with it.
So, do not just sit back and relax if you have mastered these points. Look for more industry standard practices that will suit your client's business goal and abide by them to develop a website that is user-friendly and at the same time generates good revenue for the owner.