12 Tips for Developing a New WordPress Website
Do you want to design a new WordPress website? Review our twelve must-see tips before getting started to maximize your investment.
Developing a new WordPress website or redesigning an existing site can be a big project for a business to undertake. Preparation is key to saving you time and money. Below are some helpful tips to keep in mind before getting started:
- Have a budget: Know your budget range from high to low and get bids from multiple vendors before you hire a developer.
- Establish a timeline: The average time to develop a new site is between 60 and 90 days.
- Understand your warranty: Review your service agreement with the vendor to understand your responsibilities so you don’t risk voiding the workmanship warranty.
- Own your web hosting: Purchase high-quality hosting services that are made for WordPress, and make sure you own the account vs. a third-party vendor that has control over your files.
- Responsive design: Design the site for multiple browser types (Safari is the most popular) and operating systems and make it mobile-friendly. More than half of web traffic is from mobile devices, with 98% of Gen Z’ers owning smartphones.
- Install minimal plugins: Install minimal plug-ins that are vetted and updated frequently to prevent performance and security issues, like hacks. Avoid do-it-all plugins.
- Optimize content for the web: 36% of visors will leave your site if it does not load within 3 seconds. Scale images and video for file type, size, and resolution. Enhance the speed and performance of your site post-launch using code optimization strategies.
- ADA compliance: An ADA-compliant website makes your content accessible to all and can protect your business from lawsuits and fines.
- Perform monthly maintenance: This includes daily backups to your site along with updating WordPress, website theme, and plugins monthly to ensure your site performs optimally without security issues.
- Including metadata to enhance SEO: Include metadata on main landing pages with industry-specific keywords in the page title, meta description, and image ALT tags for every page you want to be crawled by search engines.
- Track your website performance: Install Google and Bing Analytics and Webmaster Tools on your site with automatic reporting to track performance.
- Choose the right developer: Hire a website developer with multiple in-house divisions to avoid outsourcing your project, and request customer reviews and a portfolio of sites built in the past 12 months.