Web Development Brisbane

The truth is you need a combination of strategy and technical expertise for successful web development. Either one on it’s own or too much emphasis on one over the other isn’t going to work. The web development process needs to start with a great digital marketing strategy, so that any solutions are created around the needs of your customers and to achieve specific business goals.

The most common mistake business owners make with web development is to go straight to a web developer for strategic advice or to be overly prescriptive about the scope without seeking any professional guidance. Brilliant as they may be, web developers aren’t normally able to provide business and digital marketing advice and if you ask them to do something specific, they will normally try to oblige. Start by defining the journey ahead with your digital marketing consultant, seek guidance around the practicality of the scope and then tackle the web development challenges by working alongside your Brisbane web developer. At Media Heroes, we’ve created a process to help you get the very best results, so book in for a FREE Discovery Session and talk to us about your web development project.

To keep your web development project on track, we have specific points where we gain your input and sign off aspects of your design. The first stage is to design your homepage. We spend time discussing what styles you like and plan out the homepage in detail, so when you see the concept design, we aim for it to be as close as possible to the final version. Having said that, you obviously have the opportunity to provide feedback and we always include one round of design revisions within our standard web development scope. During the project there are additional points for minor design amendments, but once the core design templates are confirmed and the build is underway, changing them later usually involves considerable re-work, so we try to avoid this to keep the project on track. At the end of the day, we work very hard to make sure your web design is amazing and your website is a wonderful representation of your brand. After all, our reputation depends on it.

Providing your content’s suitable then you certainly can. However, we need to be sure, as onsite content affects conversion rates and the ability for your site to rank as part of an SEO campaign. Before we start your web development project, we’ll do a health check of your existing site, so we’ll have a good picture of whether the originality, length and quality of the content is going to be suitable to re-use. We’ll also consider the sitemap for you new website as this is commonly different from your existing site, meaning new content will be necessary for any new pages. Most new web development projects do require new onsite content, but if you’re unsure just ask and we can explore this with you.

If you ask a back-end web developer this question, they’ll nearly always say it’s best to custom code, as you can meet the technical specifications exactly, you aren’t reliant on another web developer’s work, you have much more flexibility and scalability, you can eliminate unnecessary complexity, plus lots more advantages. However, custom coding usually costs more and depending on how complex the challenge, it can add to the overall web development time. However, if existing functionality is available, the coding is high quality and it meets your scope precisely, then there’s usually no need to incur the added expense of custom coded solution. If nothing already exists to meet your requirements, then obviously you have no choice, but to custom code. The tricky choice is when you find existing code, but it doesn’t meet your specifications exactly or it has other disadvantages, such as clashing with other functionality within your build. At this point, it’s best to explore the costs of a custom coded solution and then to compare the pros and cons before reaching a final decision. Ultimately these are all great questions to discuss with your website development Brisbane team here at Media Heroes!

You must be deep into your research to ask this one! If you do a few web searches, you’ll find conflicting information, so we’ve attempted to keep the answer as clear as possible.

Themes control the look and feel of a website and they’re commonly referred to when describing WordPress builds. Themes primarily control the layout of a website and they use design templates to dictate the styling, plus they normally work with plugins to add functionality. A theme is essentially a download of lots of files that work together to create a website. You can use themes just for the layout and then customise the design and functionality yourself, so they’re quite flexible and you don’t have to use everything. Although they save overall web development time, not all themes are equal, so you really need to know what you’re doing before choosing one.

Templates are the design files that determine the specific design for particular pages. Each distinct page or design state within a website will have it’s own design template. For example, the homepage and the contact page will use different design files. If you’re developing a unique design for a website, you need to create all the design templates you are going to need within that website from scratch. If you download a theme, they usually include one or more alternative sets of design templates, which you can use or you can create your own. The term ‘design template’ is often understood to mean ‘pre-built design templates’, but design templates are actually created in custom designs too. Another area of confusion is that people often refer to ‘templates’ or ‘website templates’, when they mean themes or website builders, so it’s no wonder people get confused!

A plugin is a term used commonly with WordPress websites. It’s an existing piece of code that adds specific functionality to a website. Plugins add functionality such as adding social sharing buttons to your blog or speeding up website load time, but they can also be much more extensive, such as turning a WordPress build into an ecommerce website by installing the Woocommerce plugin. You can install several plugins within a single WordPress site, but not all plugins work well together and some plugins only work with certain themes. Generally, the more plugins you use the more problems you’ll have, so this is definitely an area where you’ll need some advice.

An extension is a term commonly used with Magento websites, but extensions do not exist within WordPress! An extension in Magento is to all intents and purposes the same as a plugin within WordPress. It’s a pre-existing piece of functionality that extends the core functionality of Magento. Just to confuse things, other platforms, like Joomla refer to both plugins and extensions, so if you’re looking for exact definitions, it’s best to search specifically what’s meant within each platform.

We hope this brief explanation helps a little to dispel some confusion! We’re always happy to share our knowledge and offer advice, so why don’t you speak to your new web development Brisbane team at Media Heroes today!