Every business must have an internet presence. In fact, some may say that every person requires an internet presence (personal branding). Whether you are a business owner who likes to undertake their own web development, a high level web developer working for a company or an agency, a freelancing web development gun for hire, or an enthusiastic web amateur, you may fall prey to various mistakes when developing your web site.
Mistakes often do happen, errors can be corrected, and false steps can be undone. It may surprise you to learn that these critical mistakes are quite common and yet easy to avoid.
5. Building Your Site on a Custom Platform
Unless you are a web application or a software as a service (SaaS) company, you’ll be better off running your business on a common framework. If the majority of your needs are updating the company’s content and look and feel, you should use a common content management system (CMS) such as DotNetNuke, WordPress, Joomla or Drupal.
If you want to sell something online and need a shopping cart platform, use something like Catalook netStore, ASPDotNetStorefront or any one of those popular readily web applications.
The main reason you want to look for commonly used web development platform is maintainability. You do not want to be in the situation where there are only a handful of people in the world who can update or upgrade your website.
And migrating from one platform to another is a real pain in the neck. So, choose your platform wisely.
If an agency is working on your website, make sure you ask them to use a well-known platform to build it on. Don’t go with the agency’s “proprietary” platform, which happens quite often as they try to push you into their web ecosystem.
Conclusion
Most of these items may not be a surprise to you. However, do you use that knowledge to avoid the problems? Or do you just keep falling into the same traps, because you’ve never taken the step of avoiding them? Make a conscientious effort to avoid these pitfalls in your next web re-design and implementation.
5 Common Mistakes in Web Design and Web Development
1. Reinventing the Wheel
2. Not determining a clear call to action
3. Thinking You are a Web Designer or Web Developer
4. Thinking Your Web Designer Understands
5. Building Your Site on a Custom Platform