The Typical Composition of a Web Development Team

Are you planning on hiring a web development team for a business project? It’s a standard business practice these days. You may be surprised by how large a typical web development team is, though, and may wonder if all those members are necessary for what seems to be a simple project.

Here is a typical composition of a web development team, to help you understand what the members are supposed to do on a typical project:

Front-end developer

The front-end developer is responsible for writing code that makes the visuals of a website. They use JavaScript, HTML and CSS for this task, and sometimes tools like Photoshop.

Back-end developer

The back-end developer is responsible for writing code that the server uses to process browser requests. They work in languages like Python, Ruby, and ASP.NET.

Full-stack developer

A full-stack developer combines both back-end and front-end development work, though this position is difficult to handle for large projects. It’s better to have two people to do separate jobs instead.

Database developer

The database developer works on how data is stored in a database. He also fine-tunes data storage and makes changes in it to make it more efficient to store data.

Graphic designer

The graphics designer is responsible for actually designing how the site is going to look, though they leave the coding to the front-end developer.

User interface designer

The user interface designer works on the UI, coding it to make it look more attractive and clean.

User-experience developer

The user-experience developer, on the other hand, is responsible for optimizing the interface and the website, in general, to make it more user-friendly and as intuitive as possible.

Data scientist

A data scientist is a new role, one that is becoming increasingly important too. However, data scientists are mostly employed by large companies and aren’t usually relevant for smaller projects. A data scientist is responsible for analyzing website data and making suggestions to the business to improve sales.

If you’re hiring a web development team, make sure that there is a specialist to cover every position. It pays to hire professionals that know what they’re doing for large projects – a large number of people send work to cheap developers and later have to pay a lot of money to professional developers to get it corrected.  

Why PrestaShop is the Way to Go for Your eCommerce Store?

An eCommerce platform allows you to build a virtual store on the Internet so you can sell your products on the internet to customers from across the globe. Of course, it’s not as simple as all that – your store is going to be competing with a lot of other stores, and it’s important that you put your best foot forward to land a slice of the eCommerce pie. There are plenty of eCommerce platforms out there, like Magento and Woo Commerce, but they aren’t always the best choice for your particular eCommerce store.

PrestaShop is a lesser-known but powerful eCommerce platform that you may want to consider using for your eCommerce store. Here are some of the top reasons to use Prestashop:

PrestaShop is open source

You can freely modify and customize your PrestaShop store. You don’t have to pay anything to use the platform, and you will also get access to updates for free.

Search engines love PrestaShop

PrestaShop was designed with search engine optimization in mind. Every product page gets a dedicated URL, which improves website hits. It is W3C compliant and can generate automatic robot.txt and htaccess files.

Prestashop is highly customizable

PrestaShop has a REST API that developers can use to modify and expand a store to custom specifications. Databases can be accessed in the XML and JSON formats.

Advanced customer management features

PrestaShop provides features to help you keep customers happy. You can send them welcome emails, create custom accounts and also help them with shopping cart woes with a few simple clicks. You also get access to a customer’s contact and shopping history.

Nifty localization feature

PrestaShop is available in over 40 languages, so your store can potentially target customers browsing from all over the world. Your website changes its language using a nifty Geo-location feature. The PrestaShop community also rolls out new helpful features with regularity.

Still not convinced PrestaShop is right for you? You could hire an eCommerce expert to look into choosing the right eCommerce platform for your business. Someone with industry experience should also be able to help you build a great online store from the ground up.  

Short SEO Guide for your Magento eCommerce Store

Magento is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms at the moment. If you have a Magento store, it’s important that you optimize it properly for the search engines to give you an edge over your competitors and boost your sales. It’s not enough to have a great website – you need to get paying customers to visit it too.

Here is a brief guide to help you improve SEO on your Magento eCommerce Store:

Do a thorough check for problems

First, it’s important that you thoroughly search for SEO problems on your website, especially on your products page. Be on the lookout for duplicate content, missing tags, and redirected links. A large number of SEO blunders can be corrected if you’re thorough. You can use tools like Screaming Frog to help you check the coding on your website too.

Are you using the right keywords?

You should use the right keywords to land the right kind of traffic to your website. Do your research thoroughly, checking for factors like keywords volume, relevancy, and difficulty in ranking. Tweak and update your keywords as necessary. Provide new content for your website every once in a while to get noticed by the search engines.

What are your competitors doing?

You should take a look at the websites belonging to successful eCommerce businesses. They are doing something right to attract as many customers as they are. Try to incorporate their structure into your website. Some online stores also get third-party services to generate links or leads for them. You can consider hiring such services yourself.

Improve the UX

User experience is very important when it comes to determining the popularity of your eCommerce store. Does your website load slower? Nothing kills user experience like slow load times. You have to make your website as fast as possible. A website that caters to smartphones users through responsive web design will help you, net additional customers.

Get customers to review

People tend to trust other people’s opinions when buying products or services. Get your customers to review your products and display these reviews prominently to improve customer trust.

Hiring an experienced Magento eCommerce developer is a worthwhile investment. Get expert help today to boost your services greatly in the long run!

5 Fundamentals of Modern Web Development

Everybody wants a website or an app these days, from students looking to reach an audience to business owners looking to sell products. Often, a website or a mobile app often determines the eventual success of your business.

Here are some important principles to keep in mind while developing your website or your app:

Keep your users in mind during development

Whenever you build a website or an app, try to build it with your target users in mind. Are you expecting a young crowd for your website? Is your app designed to provide business services? Your website should cater to your audience. Users will often not bother downloading an app unless it is very useful.

Don’t forget to take smartphones into account

These days, a large number of people browse websites exclusively through their smartphones and so it’s recommended that you follow the responsive design approach while building your website. That will enable you to make your website accessible to a large number of platforms – including iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows. Your website should be accessible and look good on smaller screens too.

Go the tried and tested route

While experimentation isn’t discouraged, it can often backfire, especially if you don’t have a lot of experience with website design or app building. It’s better to go the tried and tested route over implementing something untested. We recommend you use web technology that has been around for a while, as this will help you build an error-free app or website that works well.

Keep it simple

Users prefer intuitive, easy-to-use apps or websites to complex ones. Try to de-clutter wherever possible and keep things simple and clean. Build solid, engaging content and keep the most important content in easy-to-find places.

Reduce Loading Times

Minimize the code on your website or app to keep loading times short. Slow loading times will destroy your conversion rates.

Are you planning on hiring a developer to build a website or an app? Make sure that your developer understands the fundamentals of web development before you hire them. Do a little research and check the developer’s portfolio before giving them the job. Can’t find the right team? Hire the experts, hire Openwave!