Drupal Development Hiring Guide

Drupal developers create web applications with a rich set of features for managing your content. This hiring guide covers everything you need to know to find the right team to develop attractive and functional Drupal applications.

Drupal is an open-source framework for creating websites and applications that contain many pieces of content, such as articles, blog posts, and announcements. Compared to other content management systems and frameworks, Drupal aims to be maximally flexible and customizable. 

It consists of a number of core modules that enable basic functionalities, including:

• Search
  
• Content moderation
  
• Content tagging and taxonomy
• Security
  
• Translation
  

Drupal also supports thousands of additional modules you can mix and match to fit your unique use cases. An effective Drupal development service uses these features to build a web application that can be scaled and customized to your strategic goals.

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What is Drupal Development?

Whether you need to build your application from the ground up, migrate an existing system to Drupal, or update an existing application, a Drupal development service will guide you through the process from start to finish.

Though every development project looks a bit different, most will follow something like the following timeline:

• Requirements analysis: The Drupal development team works closely with relevant business units to create a detailed and comprehensive list of desired features and functionalities for the Drupal application.
  
• Design plan: The requirements derived during the analysis are translated into a concrete design plan covering the general architecture of the Drupal application. The design plan should include a list of Drupal modules needed in the final application, indicating whether any custom modules will be needed to realize the business requirements. The plan should also outline navigation flows, a site map, and desired user experience/user interface (UX/UI) elements.
  
• Scheduling and timetable: Based on the design plan, the project manager creates a timetable detailing the expected schedule and key benchmarks of the development process.
  
• Application development: The development of the Drupal application proceeds according to the timetable and design plan. This involves an iterative process of development, testing, and integration.
  
• Quality assurance: The application prototype is subjected to various quality checks and testing processes. These may include stress tests (testing stability under various levels of traffic), compatibility testing (testing functionality within different operating systems and browser versions), and security testing (testing resistance to targeted attacks and exploits).
  
• Deployment and maintenance: The final application is deployed, monitored, and updated as needed based on bug reports and user feedback.
  

Finding a trusted Drupal development service is crucial for getting an application that meets your needs and comes in on time and on budget.

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5 Benefits of Drupal Development

Many businesses' web applications and websites are the frontline for customer interactions. 

In comparison with other options for web development, Drupal offers five major benefits:

1. Customization: Drupal offers thousands of free, open-source modules for customizing your application. These modules include integrations with other software services you might be using, security add-ons, and user engagement tools. Drupal also has thousands of themes that can be used off-the-shelf or customized to create your desired frontend appearance.
   
2. Accessibility: Drupal has features to improve accessibility so you can be sure your content can reach a diverse audience with no boundaries or borders. These include features that ensure content is readable by screen readers and automated translation services that perform language detection and translate all of your content into a user's preferred language.
   
3. Cost-effectiveness: With its extensive library of free modules that can be used off-the-shelf, Drupal can be more cost-effective than closed frameworks, which may charge fees to access their full functionality. It is also more efficient than writing a fully custom application using tools like React Native, which can require more time and expertise than Drupal development.
   
4. SEO-friendly: Drupal's extensive module library includes hundreds of search engine optimization (SEO) modules to improve your site traffic and search results. These include options for improving site metadata and content tagging, real-time automated SEO testing, and metrics and data collection to monitor your content's effectiveness.
   
5. Multisite capabilities: If your business currently runs multiple independent websites, Drupal has multisite features that allow you to serve and manage your content across these sites from a single codebase.
   

What Services Do Drupal Developers Provide?

Drupal development teams provide a variety of services depending on your particular needs. 

You might hire a Drupal team if you need one or more of the following:

• Development services
• Migration services
• Theme design & integration
• Maintenance & support
• Training & consultation

Development Services

A development service can include creating a brand new Drupal application from the ground up or carrying out a major update of an existing one. A development team should be brought in when your current software applications no longer meet your content needs, for example, because of business growth or technological changes.

Migration Services

Migration services refer to taking an existing content system and moving that content onto a Drupal application. For example, a business may decide that its simple HTML-based website can no longer scale to meet increasing content management demands. 

A Drupal development team can analyze your business requirements to create a Drupal application that migrates your existing content into a more structured, responsive, and scalable environment.

Theme Design & Integration

Drupal themes customize the frontend appearance of your Drupal application for end users. A Drupal development service can design and integrate a custom Drupal theme for your application. This can incorporate visual branding elements into the look and feel of your website.

Maintenance & Support

Once deployed, a Drupal application must be monitored and updated to stay responsive to user feedback and to run smoothly. Drupal development services can be retained after deployment to implement minor updates based on user feedback, bug reports, and behavior patterns that indicate when features are not working as well as they should be.

Training & Consultation

Drupal applications are fairly straightforward to interact with, but employees should still receive some training to familiarize themselves with using the application as a content management system. For example, content authors and editors should learn about the application's options for customizing and editing content. 

An experienced Drupal development service may also provide consultation services to give recommendations for improving your Drupal applications.

How To Assess Drupal Development Services

When hiring an external team for any project, you want to know how to assess the quality of the work you receive. Several metrics can help form a holistic picture of the effectiveness of your Drupal development projects.

1. Website traffic: The number of visitors to your Drupal website can be tracked on a day-by-day, hour-by-hour, or even minute-by-minute basis. Overall traffic volume is one axis along which you can measure the success of your Drupal application. You might also consider whether website traffic has improved among particular target audiences and markets. It's important to remember that website traffic is affected by many variables, so you should try to rule out confounding effects when assessing how your Drupal project affected web traffic.
   
2. Bounce rate: Bounce rate measures the percentage of website visitors who leave without significant engagement. You can define significant engagement to fit your conception of engagement, which might include staying a particular amount of time, clicking a link within a page, or filling out a form. Bounce rate can be measured to determine an individual page's effectiveness in attracting engagement. You can compare the bounce rates pre- and post-Drupal development of individual pages or across multiple pages to gauge the effects of your development project on user engagement.
   
3. Session duration: Session duration measures the amount of time users spend on your website. It is another important user engagement metric, as longer session durations clearly indicate more user engagement.
   
4. Conversion rate: Conversion rate measures the percentage of users who take a desired action on your website. A desired action may include downloading a file, filling out a form, or purchasing. An increased conversion rate indicates success for your Drupal development project.
   

What is a Drupal Development Team?

A Drupal development team consists of specialized members who perform varying roles. Some common roles on Drupal teams include:

• Drupal Designers: These teammates create high-level design plans for Drupal applications that developers implement. This is typically a senior-level role.
  
• Drupal Backend Developers: These developers program the modules and components that store and deliver data to the application. Typically, this requires competency in PHP and SQL.
  
• Drupal Frontend Developers: These developers program the user interface modules and components with data from the backend. Typically, this requires competency in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
  
• SEO Specialists: These teammates implement modules and features designed to improve search results. They may also employ these components to improve SEO on existing content.
  
• QA Testers: These testers work with prototypes and beta systems to provide feedback and note defects.
  
• Project Managers: These teammates coordinate work schedules and communication across the team and document work progress and issues for external stakeholders.
  

What To Look for When Hiring a Drupal Development Company

Hiring the best Drupal development team involves comparing options that align with your unique resources and needs. Maximizing your web application's budget means considering your scheduling, functionality, and design requirements.

Hiring an external development team is a multi-stage process. You'll start with a long list of options, which you'll need to narrow down to just a few candidates. Then, you'll conduct a more thorough assessment and sit down with the short list of promising candidates.

To narrow down your long list, think about the following criteria.

Criteria for Drupal Development Hiring

Your priorities and values can help you decide how to assess and weigh these different considerations. Clutch's business marketplace can generate a long list of Drupal developers with reliable and updated information about these criteria to help you narrow down a short list.

10 Questions To Ask When Hiring a Drupal Developer

1. Do you have any examples of your Drupal development work?
   
2. What kinds of training can you offer our employees on using Drupal applications?
   
3. What does your testing process for your applications look like?
   
4. Can you provide an estimated work schedule for a project like this one?
   
5. How much involvement of other business units do you support during the development process?
   
6. Have you had any projects where you faced unexpected challenges or changes in scope, and how did you handle them?
   
7. Does your team provide custom module development services?
   
8. Can you describe the software development methodology that your team uses?
   
9. What are your documentation processes to ensure our employees and future developers can use and maintain your application?
   
10. Do you have distinct members working on the backend and frontend or only full-stack developers?
    

Asking these questions when hiring a Drupal developer can provide key insights into the capabilities of an organization, ensuring compatibility. 

Get the Most Out of Your Content With Drupal Development

Drupal is flexible and powerful open-source software that can be used as a content management system and a web application framework. Its extensive library of free modules allows for greater customization than many other content management systems. It's also simpler and more cost-effective than fully bespoke approaches, which can require deep expertise in the latest JavaScript frameworks.

Drupal's modules also offer streamlined accessibility, SEO, and multisite features and capabilities. The right Drupal development team will guide you through this process — from the requirements analysis and design phase to deployment and post-deployment monitoring and maintenance.

Whether you need to build a new Drupal website from scratch, update an existing one, or migrate from another system, there are a variety of criteria you can use to get the best service at your price point. You should consider the developer's:

• History
• Experience
• Availablity
• Relevant work samples & client testimonials

Once your project deploys, you should carefully monitor website metrics to assess its success. These metrics include traffic volumes, conversion rates, bounce rates, and session duration.

Get a jump start on hiring your dream Drupal development team with Clutch's powerful database of Drupal developers. You can sort by rates and services offered as you explore hundreds of verified user reviews.

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