What Is Web Development?
Web development is the process of building a website. Web development companies provide various services such as web design, web content development, web publishing, web programming, database management, and general web maintenance.
Essentially, web development encompasses all web-related activities, requirements, operations, and updates. Web developers are often tasked with making sure the website runs smoothly and is up to current requirements and specifications. Aside from programming and coding skills, developers should also have extensive analytical skills, testing skills, and search engine optimization (SEO) experience.
How Do You Build a Website?
The whole website development life cycle includes information gathering, planning, designing, assembling, coding, testing, launching, and maintenance.
Here are the 3 main types of web development:
- Front-end development: The design, look, feel, and interactivity of a website is determined during front-end development.
- Back-end development: This type of development is considered one of the most important phases in the web development process. It encompasses server-side codes, programming languages, and anything under the website’s hood.
- Full-stack development: Full-stack development covers both front-end and back-end development roles.
Overall, your business should have strategies and plans for front-end, back-end, and full-stack development.
Which Website Builder Is Best?
According to most critics and professionals, the overall best website builder is Wix, an Israeli-company-owned cloud-based web development service that offers free website builders. Wix is vastly different from its competitors because it offers unstructured editing, a great benefit for most beginners.
Website builders are online proprietary tools that generally allow hosts to create a website without the need for manual code editing or programming. Beginners and small businesses often use website builders instead of investing in large-scale website development projects.
Wix’s unstructured editor enables developers to manipulate and place elements anywhere they wish without many constraints. It is one of the most dominant website builders and has established its popularity through quality tools and templates.
How Much Does It Cost to Build a Website?
Web development projects can be costly: The average cost of building a website ranges anywhere from $5,000 to as high as $150,000 depending on your needs, budget, and the complexity of the project.
On the other hand, routine website maintenance services charge $30 to $5,000 every month: that’s $400 to $60,000 each year. Keep in mind that the price is affected by the design, setup, technologies, and content needed for your website.
Regardless of cost and no matter how big or small your business is or what industry you are in, your business needs a website to showcase products and services.
How Long Does It Take to Build a Website?
Generally, a web development project takes between a month and three months to complete. Web development projects go through the following phases:
- 2 to 8 weeks of discovery and planning
- 4 to 10 weeks of design efforts
- 5 to 14 weeks of content writing and assembly
- 5 to 16 weeks of programming and development
- 1 to 5 weeks of testing, reviewing, and debugging
- At least 1 day to 1 week of launching
Web development projects typically don’t have a lightning-fast turnaround. If you want an instant website, opting for website builders is the way to go rather than hiring a web development company.
If you want a personalized site that has specific features and unique designs, however, you need to pick a web developer you trust and have a good relationship with.