As a customer, sitting down with the folks at a software development services firm to build a website may leave you feeling a bit out of your depth. It's a good idea, though, to brush up on the state of modern website design in order to see that your project will be a success. Before you get involved with a website development effort, here are some key topics worth discussing.
Mobile-Friendly Web Design
When major search engines like Google index all the pages on the internet, their main priority these days is to ensure that sites look good and perform well on a wide range of devices. The emphasis, however, is on making sure that sites are at their best when viewed on mobile devices, especially smartphones. If a page doesn't resize properly for mobile users, it's likely to take a hit in search engine results pages.
The industry term for producing sites optimized for this purpose is "mobile-friendly design." It's a good idea to ask a company you're considering hiring about their approach to the mobile-friendly movement. You should also ask to see examples of their mobile-friendly sites in action.
Page Speed
Optimizing websites to load quickly is important to the user experience, and it's also another factor in how they rank in search. Most of the simplest speed optimizations for websites are handled at the website development level. If you'll be running a blog through a website provider that offers templates and designs, the website development services team setting it up for you should make an effort to turn off all add-ons that aren't necessary.
Hosting Options
In order to be seen by the world, a website has to be set up on a server. There are many kinds of hosting options available, and it's important to find one that balances your budget against your visitors' needs.
The cheapest solutions are shared and cloud-based hosting. In these setups, resources are shared among anywhere from tens to thousands of websites. If you don't expect to have hundreds of users on a site at any one time, these can make hosting much more affordable.
Dedicated hosting is a setup where only your site is configured on a server. This approach is ideal for folks who expect high traffic. Load-balancing across multiple servers may be necessary for site owners who anticipate very high demand. Remember to explore hosting options based on your peak traffic requirements.