The idea of using a content management system (CMS) for web development is here for well over a decade, and WordPress has emerged as the top platform of choice for the majority of small and medium businesses in Singapore. Even some large companies also rely on it.
When it’s about choosing WordPress or another CMS, the decision comes easy as WP offers some obvious advantages over others. But there is a lot more difficulty involved in hiring a WordPress web development company due to hundreds of companies in Singapore claiming to do a great job. In today’s article, we’ll provide relevant information and insights to help you hire the right WP development agency.
Right Technology Stack, Skills, and Decision-Making Process
Let’s get this straight. WordPress development requires the use of WordPress as the content management system (CMS), certain markup, and programming languages, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL. We can tell you that any WordPress website design company in Singapore will claim to have the access to these technologies, and they really do. So, what makes the difference?
There are differences in how a web design agency utilises their knowledge and resources to address the concern for user experience (UX) and the designers should aim for helping the client benefit from a WordPress website in terms of return on investment (ROI).
One of the key decisions that a WordPress website designer has to make is the choice of a page builder that lets designers create and customize/ edit the layout of a WP website without tinkering in code or writing many lines of code. There are reasons why one page builder is better than the other. The WP web design company you’ll hire should know which one suits your preferences best and facilitates the design and development process.
Here is another example. The client may ask for a particular user flow for online shopping. WooCommerce is said to have been the best free WordPress plugin for the job. But WooCommerce might not be enough for that particular user flow unless the web design agency has the ability to perform certain customisations.
Sometimes, a little bit of effort from the WP developers’ side might save you costly third-party integrations. At times, third party integrations prove to be the best solution. The client may not have the idea or interest in making a choice. But an ideal web design company in Singapore comes forward with all the insights and recommendations to help the client make the right choice before the actual development process begins.
Strong Portfolio and Proven Experience
If you agree on all of the above points, you’ll find it easy to accept the fact that none of the above factors can be ensured without tried-and-true web design and development techniques that don’t come overnight.
Most of the web design companies in Singapore can demonstrate a creditable work portfolio consisting of dozens of beautiful and functional WordPress websites. You want to be sure if any of those websites reflects your needs.
However, some businesses are based upon unique ideas, which might be unknown to many. Your business may be one of them, but it must fall into a recognised business industry. So, a good web design agency in Singapore may not be fully aware of the business you are into, but the company must be familiar with the industry which your business belongs to.
Familiarity with various industries and business processes is one of the compulsory qualities. Knowing how an industry works and its audience behaves is one of the prerequisites to designing the key visuals for a website where a web design company has a crucial role to play.
Business Knowledge
A WordPress website design company may not be responsible for all the marketing work required for your Singapore-based business. However, knowing who the customers are and what their demands are definitely helps the development agency appeal to the needs and preferences of consumers as they help with designing and developing solutions that satisfy the interest of both the clients and their audience.
Knowing the competitors of the clients’ businesses is important. A good web design company never starts designing a website without knowing who the competitors of the client’s business might be. A thorough study helps them spot the areas where the client’s website can show improvement, in terms of user interaction, experience, and hence conversion.
The idea of responsive design adds an inseparable dimension to the overall scope of a WP website project. Users cannot be led to add to the bounce rate just because they couldn’t have good experiences browsing your website. Each WP website designer needs to keep this in mind.
A key objective for any business website is to get good search rankings, which is, you might think, solely the responsibility of the people engaged in search engine optimisation (SEO). A web page consists of several components, each of which influences how fast/ slowly that page is going to be indexed by Google or other search engines. So, a WordPress website design company should have an understanding of the best SEO practices.
Along with the above knowledge, the web design company should know how Google’s crawlers work. Associated with this particular topic are components like meta tags, schema, and sitemaps. All of these things need to be addressed properly by a web design company while designing a website.
In doing so, most WordPress web design companies probably use the different features and functional tools that come with WP themes, and plugins. But a reliable WP website design company knows the best way around these tools and how they affect the performance and speed of a WordPress website. Site speed is not only a ranking signal but also a critical part of what we call great user experience.
Reliable Security Support
WordPress itself is a secure platform trusted by millions of business owners. But it is simultaneously true that the assurance of safety only stays as long as the publisher/ admin follows the best practices without taking the security of the site for granted.
Business/ corporate websites have always been targeted by hackers and cybercriminals, making it a mandatory aspect for every WordPress development company in Singapore to pay attention to the security problems and limitations within their web applications.
The WP design and development agency you’re going to hire should know the most common as well as advanced security threats/ risks and the most effective ways to mitigate/ resolve them. For this, they should also be able to test the websites for known vulnerabilities.
Ongoing Maintenance and Scalability
Those of us who know why WordPress stands on top of other options when it comes to web design also know why a growing WordPress website may not be as good as it was at the initial stage. Scalability is a serious concern for many businesses running their WordPress websites.
A WP development agency in Singapore needs to have the expertise to foresee the future needs and variables when designing the website. If they fail to think of scalability (a website’s ability to cope with a growing user base that wants to interact with it) at the initial stage of designing and development process, chances are your website may not be of much use in 2-3 years from now.
Maintenance is just as important because your WordPress website will probably be using several plugins and tools which should be updated periodically, and something might go wrong as certain tools receive the update. A trusted WordPress development agency offers affordable website maintenance services so that you can opt in and have the peace of mind.
Once you know which factors to consider; you may look to proceed with the hiring process where we could save you some time and the trouble of second-guessing anything. Let’s have a chat today.
