5-commonly-overlooked-things-web-developers-need-to-avoidBuilding websites is now more accessible than ever. There are more tools, plugins, and CMS systems than previous years, and these systems are also much more advanced. This means that, more than ever, people can begin creating their own websites even with very little experience. The downside to this is that many overlook things that experienced developers know is important.

1. Responsiveness

You’ve just fired up your website and created something that looks simply beautiful. The layout, the images, and even those stylish parallax headings look incredible on your 27” iMac. But the question is, will it still look good on a phone? Mobile traffic is now more than 50% of online users, so ignoring these users means that your website is completely unusable to most of your visitors. One of the core ideas of dot com development involves creating a ‘responsive’ website. This means making something that will work regardless of screen size and orientation.

2. Scalability

If you’re launching a product, you should make sure that you’re ready to scale at a moment’s notice. That google contact form you embedded into your Wix website might be fine when you’re small, but when your site goes viral it just won’t cut it. One solution that’s been increasingly popular with developers is to take advantage of cloud hosting, so your hardware can scale with your software.

3. Compression

Although this is already a major factor in scalability, it’s extremely important. Your bandwidth is going to have a direct impact on your websites expenses, and the performance of your website for users. To properly compress your page, make sure you’re minifying all of your Javascript and CSS, using server side HTTP compression, and optimizing all images for the correct display resolution.

4. Onpage SEO

Your website will only be valuable to users if they can find it, and onpage SEO is the first step of the process. Make sure that you’ve done your keyword research, and are creating the information that people want to read. Once you’ve got a plan, develop a proper website structure and stick with it. Having to go back and change everything later on is going to be a lot of unnecessary work.

5. User Experience

This is a technique used by the software development community to make sure that users are actually able to use your product with ease. Everything from design to writing is a factor. The main questions you need to ask yourself are “can users find the information they want?” “Is it frustrating to complete certain tasks with my current layout?”

6. Conversion Rate

Once you’re making sales, the work is done, right? Unfortunately, there is still more to be done. At this point, you need to begin conversion rate optimization. You can compare two different landing pages and see which one gets more hits. Simple things like the text used for calls to action, the location of buttons, and the site structure can all have a very powerful impact on your conversion rate.

For new web developers, all of these things can seem overwhelming at first. But we can all take a page out of the book written by the Los Angeles software development community. Just remember to take it one step at a time, and work through everything slowly. Before you know it, you can have a stunning website that you’re proud of.