When looking for someone to build a website, many people make the mistake of choosing the lowest bidder. While the cost is a very important factor that shouldn’t be ignored, cheap is always expensive in the long run. What I consider the most important factor is settling with an experienced website developer.
In the past few years, the web development industry has rapidly grown. Due to many companies taking their businesses online, a lot of new web developers have sprouted. Experienced and half-baked developers exist almost in equal measures and that’s why it is important to gauge whether your developer is up to the task before assigning him/her the project.
In this article, we will explore in detail why it is very important to hire an experienced developer for your web project.
But before jump there, let me first explain how you can spot an amateur developer and how you can differentiate them from the experienced ones. In this discussion, the focus is more on the freelancers/self-employed developers or start-up web development companies. Here are some of the ways you can know a developer is amateur:
They give project cost before understanding the project requirements
One of the most common and first questions clients ask is how much the developer charges for building websites. Amateur developers give the specific exact price they will charge before even asking what the project is all about. This is like a car dealer telling a customer that he/she sells vehicles at Ksh 1M. The customer could be looking for a Toyota Vitz, a Lamborghini, or even a Mercedes-Benz truck. These vehicles cost totally different amounts of money. The same thing applies to websites. Different websites are of different features and meant to achieve different goals. Thus pricing cannot be constant for all types of websites. A better approach would be to give price ranges or packages and explain what each package encompasses. The best approach would be to analyze the customer requirements then give personalized pricing based on the specific project features and functionalities.
They give a fixed project timeline prior to fully understanding it
Just like in the above point, different projects have different requirements, features, and levels of complexities. A project may take a day to complete while another would take months. Someone would be telling lies if they assure you that they will do your project in 3 days or 1 week before you explain to them what it is all about.
They do not have a portfolio to show
Before settling with that developer, ask them to show some of the projects that they have previously done. If they have nothing to show, they probably want to use your project as a test tube to do experiments. However, there is a category of those who have been working as employees and have no portfolio of their clients’ projects. You can test them through other ways though most likely they have done some personal projects they can show.
Have negligible duration of experience
The duration in industry matters. The more time a developer has spent developing websites, the more experienced they are likely to be and vice versa.
Now that you have gained an insight into how you can spot amateur web developers, lets now look at some of the advantages you gain from hiring experienced developers.
Software and website development industry has a never-ending learning process. Academic institutions teach very few skills applicable in the real world. Hence the developers have to keep learning most of the things on their own outside school. Almost every project comes with its own challenges and new features which the developers have to first do research on how to implement. The more a developer works on such projects, the more they learn and keep sharpening their skills. The second time they come across a functionality they had done earlier the faster they will implement it as it is already at their fingertips. Hence, good experience helps save a lot of time in the development process.
Since they have already been in the industry for some good time, experienced developers have learned what works and what doesn’t. Instead of just saying “yes” and doing whatever you tell them, they will give ideas on the better ways the solution can be implemented when need be. This ensures that you don’t just get what you want but what you really need.
There are best practices that need to be followed if the website is ever to deliver the desired results and be easy to maintain. These include: optimizing the website to rank high in search engine results, writing quality and clean code, following a responsive design approach, enhancing faster loading speed, creating an impressive user experience, doing thorough testing and debugging among others. Experienced developers have over time learned the importance of following the best practices in all their projects which will be a big benefit to you.
Having worked with different clients before, experienced developers have already learned to communicate clearly and express their minds. They know exactly how to communicate to you when explaining technical or non-technical stuff or to ask for information from you. Communication is especially important at the beginning of the project when gathering the requirements. At this point, they can clearly ask as many questions as possible to understand the project properly. Good requirements gathering mean a seamless development process and optimum customer satisfaction.
Experience provides a lot of exposure. Experienced developers are likely to have worked on many and diverse projects and implemented different technologies which gave them extensive knowledge and skills. You may not take advantage of their knowledge at once but in the long term they will be of much benefit to you when you have questions on technical stuff or when you need to add more advanced features on your site.
Even when the initial project requirements have all been implemented, you will often need some changes or tweaks here and there. The last thing you would wish is for your developer is not not to be available when you need him/her. Some new developers are only available for short durations and disappear when they get a job. Going for a web design comapany or for a well established freelance developer you can rest assured that they will be available when you need them.
In this article you have learned how you can spot amateur web developers and why it is important to hire an experienced one. My intention was not to condemn beginner web developers since everyone starts from somewhere but to insist on the importance of experience. A beginner developer who has a great passion for his/her work and is ready and eager to learn new things is as good as the experienced one.
The Code Pot Technologies
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