How Dedicated Web Developers Can Boost your Online Presence

Introduction

The web development market was valued at USD 65.35 billion in 2023 and is expected to double in valuation by 2032. Wondering what is fueling this growth? Increasing internet usage, widespread smartphone adoption, and the booming eCommerce sector have all highlighted the immense potential of a strong online presence. While many businesses recognize this opportunity, some have taken the DIY route, using website builders to create their own sites. These tools make the process accessible, especially for those without technical expertise, but they come with limitations. If you’ve tried building a website with a free platform and haven’t achieved the results you hoped for, you’re not alone. In this write-up, we’ll explore how hiring web developers turns out to be a better alternative to free website builders, especially when you need a highly dynamic, performance-optimized website.

Challenges in Using Free Website Builders

1. Limited Functionality of Drag-and-Drop Websites

With the rise of DIY trends, many users gravitate toward free website builders like Wix (holding a 43% market share) and GoCentral (5.1%). These platforms offer easy-to-use drag-and-drop features, making them attractive for beginners. However, this simplicity often comes at the cost of flexibility. As you explore these tools, you'll realize that complex customizations or unique designs (required to build a unique brand reputation) are hard to achieve, leaving you with a generic and static website.

2. Performance Bottlenecks

Websites built on these DIY tools are often hosted on their servers, which may not be optimized. This may result in slower loading times and other performance issues. With growing website traffic, this can negatively impact both UX and SEO rankings. This is why, for websites requiring proper speed, such as eCommerce websites, it is advised to hire dedicated web developers to ensure they are optimized for speed.

3. Security Vulnerabilities

Security is often an afterthought with free website builders. Many of these platforms do not offer advanced security features like SSL certificates or firewalls, leaving your site exposed to potential hacks or data breaches. This can result in costly breaches, loss of customer trust, and even legal ramifications.

4. Customer Support and Maintenance Challenges

Once you build a website using these DIY website builder tools, you are often left with yourself to troubleshoot issues if you find any. These tools often do not offer comprehensive customer support. This can lead to extended downtimes, which hampers your business performance. This is another reason why many businesses hire web developers for ongoing support post-web development.

How Custom Web Development Solves these Challenges?

Hiring dedicated web developers to build custom websites helps you overcome the rigidity of DIY website builders by offering expertise and flexibility. You can design and develop your website from the ground up, configuring every aspect to your specific needs. Whether it’s complex layouts, interactive elements, or unique functionalities, they can add it all.

Moreover, with custom web development, performance optimization is internalized. Web developers use advanced coding practices and offer committed hosting resources to ensure your website loads faster and runs more efficiently.

Another benefit of investing in custom web development, especially for small businesses, is the strong security focus. Security is instilled from the start, through SSL certificates, data encryption protocols, firewalls, and other critical safeguards. You can also conduct security assessments, regular updates, and patches to make sure your website remains protected.

Can I Build My Own Website?

If you have the necessary knowledge, an in-house web development team, and the time to do so, you can develop your website. Working internally gives you full control over your web project, but this approach requires a deep understanding of development.

Alternatively, you can hire professional web developers who bring specialized expertise and relevant experience in developing custom websites using technologies like Laravel, PHP, MEAN/MERN/LAMP stacks, Node.js, Django, etc. They can also help integrate essential features, APIs (GraphQL, gRPC, RESTful, etc), and functionalities that align with your business goals.

A third option is to outsource the project to a web development company. This allows you to benefit from an entire team of web experts handling the design, development, QA, and maintenance, while you focus on your core business activities.

Hereon, we’ll dig deeper into the second approach: hiring professional web developers.

How Hiring Web Developers Can Boost your Online Presence?

Despite the digital age, 28% of businesses, especially small enterprises, still lack a website. This might be due to tight budgets, not knowing where to start, or simply feeling hesitant to go online. However, having an online presence is becoming increasingly essential for future growth and sustainability. If you’re in this group and looking to test the waters, hiring web developers is a smart and cost-effective way to begin building a strong and impactful online presence.

Here’s how web developers help build and boost your online presence.

1. Personalized Designs

Professional web developers are experienced in various technologies and working on diverse web projects. They can tailor a website just as you need, with unique features, functionalities, and third-party integrations. This allows you to finalize a website that stands out from other cookie-cutter web pages that do not add any personal touch. Moreover, hiring web developers also allows you to work on a consistent brand image, as they can adhere to your brand identity and style guidelines.

2. Mobile-Responsive Designs

Responsiveness is a crucial aspect when it comes to a holistic online presence. With over 4.88 billion people owning a smartphone (as of 2024), it is imperative to make your website responsive for mobile phones. Web developers use a wide range of design techniques and tools to ensure your website stays responsive to various devices. Technologies like CSS frameworks (such as Bootstrap and Foundation) provide a solid foundation. Beyond that, they use Flexbox and CSS Grids for more precise control over complex layouts.

3. Integration of Advanced Technologies like AI

To make your website more interactive and functional, developers can integrate features such as AI-powered search bars, prompt-engineered chatbots, and smart product recommendations. These additions enhance CX by offering an overall interactive experience. Moreover, they help retain visitors, increase conversions (by up to 30%), and reduce abandonment rates.

4. SEO Optimization and Social Media Integration

For a more cohesive online presence, web developers can make sure your website is optimized for search engines. They use clean, efficient coding practices and implement SEO-friendly techniques, ensuring fast loading times. This helps your website rank higher on search engines like Google, making your business more visible to potential customers. Additionally, they can also implement social media integration for websites, allowing visitors to move on to your social profiles.

5. Security Enhancements

With more than 2,360 cyberattacks in 2023, security is a primary concern for all website owners. Hiring dedicated web developers in India can be a great way to ensure your site is built with the highest security standards in mind. They can implement SSL protocols and firewalls and integrate vulnerability scanners to safeguard your site from potential cyberattacks.

6. Ongoing Maintenance and Support

When you hire web developers, you gain strategic team members dedicated to providing long-term support. They handle regular updates, security patches, and bug fixes to ensure everything runs smoothly. Additionally, dedicated web developers conduct security audits to identify and resolve issues like broken links, slow load times, or outdated plugins. This ongoing maintenance ensures your website remains efficient, secure, and up-to-date.

Different Ways of Hiring Web Developers

There are several ways to work with web experts. You can either hire freelance web developers, augment your in-house development team with specialized web developers, or hire a dedicated web development team.

1. Hiring Freelance Web Developers

Freelancers offer flexibility and are perfect for small-scale web projects. They can be a cost-effective solution for web development for small businesses needing specialized expertise in areas like social media integration for websites or implementing digital marketing strategies. While this approach is flexible, it is subject to the freelancer’s availability and dedication.

2. Hiring Web Developers to Augment your Teams

Hiring individual web developers can be a great option if you already have an in-house team but need additional expertise or want to scale your projects. This approach helps integrate new skills without having to commit full-time. Ideal for specific, moderately long-term projects.

3. Hiring a Team of Web Developers

Hiring a web development team is the most effective approach for complex web development needs. This is particularly beneficial for large-scale, ongoing projects. A dedicated team can handle everything from custom design and development to ongoing maintenance and advanced feature integration.

Tips to Make the Most of Custom Web Development

1. Before you hire web developers, understand your needs and web development goals. Outline what you want to achieve with your website.
2. Determine what technologies you are comfortable working with. Look for web developers who have a strong track record and relevant experience in those technologies.
3. Plan your budget. Every decision has a cost implication, so decide how much you want to spend. You can hire a website developer in India starting at $18/hour/developer.
4. Set a realistic timeline to keep the project on track and within scope.
5. Make sure the web developers you hire are current with web development trends.
6. Emphasize website security from the very beginning. Make sure the developers also focus on the same.

Get started today and hire dedicated web developers to cement a remarkable online presence!

The Takeaway

In this write-up, we have established that custom web development takes precedence over building websites using DIY builders. While the latter is a faster and newer approach to web development, it is yet to match the level of flexibility and customization scope in developing a custom website. Additionally, when you hire web developers for custom development, you have full control over design, features, and integrations. They can personalize experiences, incorporate security features from the very beginning, and ensure that your website is built with best practices in mind, offering superior functionality, security, and ongoing support—things DIY builders simply cannot match.