Custom web development projects can be daunting, but they don’t have to be. Yes, there are a lot of steps, a lot can go wrong, and the results are important.
However, if you start by keeping the most important pieces of the project top of mind, the whole process will be easier, and ultimately, more successful.
To help keep the important stuff top of mind and move past the fluff, we’ve put together a list of the most important things to think about when embarking on a custom web development project.
Remember these aspects while the project moves along and success should follow. Here are eight tips for custom web development projects.
1. Define your Budget
A great custom web application can do wonders for your business. It can make it more efficient, more effective, and help drive growth like you wouldn’t believe. Just because you want the biggest and baddest custom web application around though, doesn’t mean you don’t have to be budget-conscious when you build it.
A great custom web development project starts with defining the budget. With a clearly defined budget, you won’t have to look at costs as an obstacle. You can make smart choices on the rest of your project so that you get what you want and won’t break the bank doing it.
2. Remember that time is Money
Once you have your budget defined, one of the best ways to stick to that budget is to create a realistic timeline and stick with it. The reason so many custom web development projects go over budget is that they go longer than anticipated.
To keep your project on schedule, the first step is creating your timeline. After that, you need to make choices that help you meet your timeline goals and deadlines. Not only does this ensure the job gets done in a timely manner, but it also saves you money.
3. Take an Agile Approach
Making good decisions to help you stay on time and under budget includes deciding on the right development methodology for your projects. Two of the main methodologies you will likely choose from include agile and waterfall. According to Liventus, Agile methodology has a few advantages over waterfall.
Agile development, which is broken up into short sprints, allows you to get feedback, course correct, make changes, and generally be more flexible in your development. These all improve your project, its timeline, and its development.
4. Be Flexible
The flexibility that agile development provides is huge for custom web development projects. A custom web app that truly helps your business can take all kinds of different forms. What you plan to build in the beginning may have little relation to the finished project by the time you’re done.
Being flexible allows you to build the custom web app your company needs, not just the one it wants. With prototyping and testing and soliciting feedback, flexibility allows you to get the best results so that your final product is as impactful as possible.
5. Get Feedback
Developers and project managers alone usually can’t create a custom web app. Along the way, even the best need input from others. Getting your app in front of potential users and other stakeholders throughout the project and getting quality feedback will simply lead to a better, more user-friendly app.
That is truly what you are searching for too, an app that people want to use. Whether it is your customer or company employees, if the app doesn’t make users’ lives better or easier in some way, it won’t have the impact you need it to.
6. Always keep Security Top of Mind
The reality of a custom web development project is that you can create the best app in the world but if it’s not secure, it will all be for naught. We are slowly emerging from a global pandemic where cyberattacks skyrocketed. Every custom web app needs to make security a top priority.
This means that developers need to think about security in every step of the development process, not just make it a stand-alone step. They also need to leave room for patches, upgrades, and additional security fixes down the line because the scariest cyber threat right now is the one we don’t even know about yet.
7. Choose the Right Partner
A custom web development project is something that most companies aren’t equipped to take on alone. Even if you do have the employees in-house with the expertise to build a great custom web app, how will a project like that affect their normal job responsibilities?
To choose the right partner for your custom web development project, you can make sure they are in sync with you on all the issues above. Also, you want to make sure they have enough of an understanding of your business so that they can help build an app that is functional and fits your needs. If you find that in a partner, the project will go much smoother.
8. Look towards the Future
A custom web app shouldn’t just solve your most pressing concerns right now (although it is nice when it does that too). It should also be scalable in a way that means, if it works like it’s supposed to and helps you grow, you won’t be back to the drawing board in 6, 9, or 12 months starting a new custom web development project.
Just like security, scalability should be baked into the entire process. What happens when capacity doubles or you need to add new functionality in the future? Asking these types of questions upfront will save a ton of money and hassle in the end.
Conclusion
There is no way to completely guarantee that your custom web development project will produce phenomenal results that will make users and stakeholders happy while driving growth in the exact way you want. But by keeping these eight tips in mind, you will be setting yourself up for success and a better finished product in the end.
