Hiring a WordPress Developer? – 7 Things to Consider!

Having an online presence is the prerequisite for businesses. Whether you want to enhance the functionality of the existing website or to develop a new website with custom-tailored design, you look for ways to start the development with.
It is no surprise that enterprises choose WordPress for developing websites because of:

• ease of using
• flexible architecture
• versatility and simplicity
• plugins
• customization features.

WordPress is used globally and powers more than 23% of the websites. With the hundreds of thousands of plugins, you can manage the web traffic and can make websites like e-commerce, business websites, portals, personal blogging, portfolio websites, niche affiliate websites and much more.

Your Website is a Long-Term Investment

A website is the powerful marketing tool in your assets and through it, you can easily connect with the people breaking through all the limitations. To sell products, bring in leads, customer support services etc. all these are feasible through a WordPress website.

The website is an investment that pays you a high return on investment (ROI). It is the fulcrum of your marketing stratagem encapsulating all your efforts. But developing a WordPress website is not everyone’s cup of tea as you need to have good working knowledge of programming languages like PHP, JavaScript, HTML and MySQL plus you need to be familiar with certain technicalities such as SEO, Photo editing, designing etc.

Therefore, if you are looking forward to developing a website, you better hire a professional WordPress website developer. What aggravates the problem is that people with non-technical backgrounds or people who find coding drudgery want to create a website, then it is imperative to hire a WordPress developer who has adequate knowledge and experience in this domain.

Focus on your core competencies and do what you are good at and leave the implementation of the website to the developer but before hiring a WordPress developer you need to take into account certain points that will help you narrow down the options and assure that you choose a reliable developer who can meet your requirements.

Things to keep in mind before hiring a developer:

I.) –  Review Relevant Experience: before you hire a developer, it is recommended to check the portfolio and the relevant working experience in the similar field as experience counts more than anything. More the experience is more capable the person is to resolve any issue. Have a look at the websites the developer has created in the past and see if everything is working properly. If you can get feedback from their former client’s, then it’s a plus else you can easily make up your mind after going through the website developed by the them.

II.) – Cost Estimation: before developing a website you must have set a budget for it, therefore, choose a developer who will render the service within your budget and discuss beforehand the cost estimation of the project. There is the probability that due to some factors like project extension etc. might raise the budget. To compensate for that, you can apply cost-effective methods and cut down on other things. Discuss all these factors before commencing the project.

III.) – Technical Skills: Your website should be developed by following web standards that enable it to function uniformly on all browsers. You need some specific features for your website, do a cross-examination if the potent developer owns the required set of technical skills. Ensure that the developer uses neat codes and is proficient in basic languages like JavaScript, MySQL etc.

IV.) – Site Maintenance: Though developing a WordPress website is a one-time process but its maintenance is required from time to time in order to make it more optimal. Ensure that the developer provides the maintenance of your site even after delivering the project. This may raise the bar but it is worth to go for.

V.) – Delivery Timeline: Will you like it if the developer delays in delivering your project? The answer is obvious – no. Before the commencement of the project discuss the estimated delivery time of the project to ensure better results and agree upon a fixed delivery period.

VI.) – Website Security: Websites are susceptible to threats, therefore, you must also focus on adding an extra layer of security. Ask questions regarding the security of your site and ways to enhance it. Though, securing a website is not easy but you must ask the potential developer what preventive measures he would use for the security of the website. A website can be secured as long as the developer has taken the appropriate measures (mentioned below) to prevent script injection, hacking etc.
– proper coding
– timely updating the site
– choosing right plugins and themes.

VII.) – Website’s SEO value: In order to stay at the top on search engines, it is crucial for websites to perform optimally. Talk to the developer about how he/she is going to make the website responsive and SEO-friendly. Broken links, drop in organic rankings, the increase in 404 errors etc. hinders the SEO perspective. Make sure that the developer incorporates SEO functionality in the website.

CONCLUSION:

As already discussed that a website is a crucial tool at your disposal and to have an optimized website it is important to hire the right potential developer having relevant experience and knowledge.

The aforementioned points will help you find the reliable and efficient WordPress developer.

Are you ready to launch your WordPress website now? If not, talk to our experts now!