Web Development Singapore

The Formula for Successful Web development

Website Development… Developing a Website… Designing a Website… These are buzzwords heard one too many times.

“How do I build a website that brings REAL ROI for my business?”

THIS is the question that our clients should be asking, instead of finding the cheapest alternative.

Learn how we increased our revenue by 400% just by adopting the right web development strategies. Let’s rock and roll!

SleekDigital is an app development and web development company in Singapore. We focus on developing high-quality websites and mobile apps at not-so-crazy rates.

Starting out in the business during my poly days, I remember just having a super simple website to basically tell my clients about our services (literally a 1-page website).

I was a newbie web developer that built our own website, wanting to offer web development services. I felt like a king having my own website, to be honest.

Then I realised something…

No one is viewing the website! I had a website that had no viewership, basically a white elephant. How am I going to grow the business if I were to have a website with no attention to it?

So I started to find ways to get more leads, to get more people coming to my website to know that I am a web developer.

The most popular channel for marketing was Carousell then. I started to post ads on Carousell regarding our web development services while linking my website in the description.

This way, I got some eyeballs on my website.

However, this is still not a reliable and stable source of revenue.

I started to offer app development services to complement our web development service as a value add; with the assumptions that companies who wants a website can also benefit from app development.

After studying the stats of our website over a couple of months, I realise that people are coming to our website but not taking much action.

In other words, people are coming to our website, not even submitting a contact form and leaving to somewhere else; probably to a competitor’s website.

This is where I learnt the hard truth: Our website was not valuable enough.

A successful web development project has to be valuable to the user.

Therefore, I started writing more and more content to make sure that the content is helpful for my potential clients to find answers to the questions.

A blog like the one you are reading now, information on our services, our portfolio, basically answering all the questions that the potential client might have.

With these valuable content available widely in your website, clients tend to trust us more.

We also write texts that are convincing, such as “The Growth-Driven App Development Company You’ve Been Looking For”, which resonates with our company vision; GROWTH.

Does Design Matter?

Our first website had literally on black and white colours were built with a free template that I downloaded online. It was in HTML and CSS with no CMS. I had to code everything from scratch.

I had a theory that my designs for the website were not satisfactory as well, as everything is black and white and the texts were hard to read.

Therefore, I did a full design revamp on the website.

Adding more live and colours to the website, adding more vibrant icons, yet making the texts more readable like the ones that you see in the current site.

Making sure that the font is not too boring or small so that the visitor has a hard time reading from the website.

Website design and web development are different things. Web design is designing for the web without programming, but web development is the programming of the web elements.

Web design tells customers about our brand. With better web design, companies trust us better in developing mobile apps for them.

Marketing your website for the now

After I have done the web design and web development for our website, it was time to get ROI from the website.

ROI… Sounds tough… How do I get ROI from a simple website that I have built?

From what we have researched, the quick answer will be to do digital marketing. The main channels that we were focusing on were for search marketing. Social media was another option but it was slightly more challenging for a B2B company like ours.

We started to run Google Ads and started to get a good amount of leads: at least one lead per day, which was INSANE!

But we were burning cash…

For a small startup like ours, burning S$2,000/month or more is something that we cannot afford if we don’t close deals.

Therefore, we started to do SEO (search engine optimisation) ourselves.

This was the key to our success.

By investing time and money in the initial phases of SEO, we manage to get a very constant inflow of leads at no fixed cost.

SEO for us was a lengthy process of attaining backlinks, writing valuable high-quality content that resonates with the customer, improving on the quality of the website, etc.

Web development without SEO is like a gun without bullets.

They work hand in hand and should be considered from the start.

After all these fancy stuff, you might be wondering… What’s next?

Is this all I need to know about web development?

Certainly not…

Now, we move on to more technical stuff on the website to improve the overall user experience and quality of the website.

Website Security: How Important Is It?

By having a secure website, it reduces the risk of our potential clients’ data being leaked.

The first part of web security is encryption.

I would have to install encryption for my website via SSL. Most web hosting companies provide SSL as part of their web hosting packages.

Personally, we use Vodien for almost all of our web hosting.

SleekDigital’s web development server is also from Vodien, which is very trusted in terms of service quality and security concerns.

Selecting the right web hosting company will also help in improving website security.

If we select a non-trusted web hosting company, attackers might get into your system much easier than if you have a secure website hosting company.

Vodien also provides email notifications to you if there are any security risks in your server files.

For example, if there are malicious files or suspicious activity in the web hosting, the company will automatically inform you via email, which is AWESOME!

Website Performance: Fast always wins

Have you ever tried to visit a website and left halfway because it was loading too slowly?

Speed is everything when it comes to the first impression in web development.

Imagine having to wait 10 seconds for a website to fully load.

Most visitors would just click the red “X” at the top of the page.

There are many strategies to improve the speed of the website.

For example, instead of using heavyweight templates or themes for web development, we can use custom-coded designs that only have necessary codes that are needed.

Tech and Speed

The use of different web development technologies also plays a part in determining the speed of the website.

Latest technologies like Gatsbyjs allow websites to load at lightning speeds.

If you are using WordPress, then you can download certain plugins that help you cache your files so that they load quickly.

Compressing your files and media also will help with the speed of your website.

Ensuring that you do not upload MASSIVE-SIZED images will prevent your website from loading slowly too.

Content Management Systems that we should use

Having a proper content management system (CMS) in place will allow you to add pages, blogs and even change content for your website easily.

As compared to programming everything from scratch in HTML and CSS, having a CMS is much more convenient for the layman.

Without having any web development knowledge, you will be able to edit your website like a pro.

On the design side, you are also able to do tricks like change colours, positions, shapes and even add shadows and borders to your website elements.

This can help you to save cost in terms of hiring a web developer to make the changes for you.

Path to successful web development

The above web development tips are the main core of having a website bring back the highest returns on your investment.

Many companies make the common mistake to build a website and end up having nobody visit it, and just lay there stranded.

A website is the first step to helping you grow your online presence. Having taken web development seriously in our business, we manage to quadruple the number of leads and business that we have in our company.

With these tips in mind, I believe that you too can grow your business that you might not expect to be possible beforehand.

Speak to our web development team for more tips on how to grow your website’s online presence.

We will do a deep dive into your business model and understand the ins and outs of the business before proposing appropriate web development ideas for you.

SleekDigital is an app and web development company in Singapore specialising in high-ROI web development.