WordPress Development Services Hiring Guide

Developing a website on WordPress has many benefits, such as SEO-friendly themes and mobile-responsive designs. However, you can only enjoy these perks if you have the right team to set up WordPress correctly, customize the themes to your specifications, and implement technical SEO best practices. 

WordPress is the world’s most popular website development platform and content management system — it powers almost 50% of all sites. Because WordPress comes with thousands of pre-built, customizable, no-code website templates, the platform makes it easy to build a website, even if you don’t have technical expertise.

WordPress simplifies web development. However, using it to create a fully functional website from the ground up can be a lot of work, especially if you are already overwhelmed with daily business activities. 

A WordPress development team can handle everything in your website creation project, so you don’t have to spend countless hours figuring things out. With a team of specialized experts, you’ll end up with a professional WordPress website that’s visually appealing, user-friendly, and tailored to your specific business needs. 

This guide reveals what you need to know about WordPress development and how to hire WordPress development services. 

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What is WordPress Development?

Businesses can use the website builder for free to build a website on their own, but most hire WordPress developers for professional website creation. 

Typical tasks in WordPress development include: 

• Setting up and configuring WordPress on a server
  
• Creating a custom website theme from scratch or editing pre-built WordPress templates to meet your website’s design needs
  
• Developing plugins, which are packages of code that enable additional functionalities on your website, on top of what WordPress already offers
  
• Managing website content using the WordPress editor
  
• Keeping your site up-to-date with the latest version of WordPress and plugins to ensure security and functionality
  

Businesses can leverage WordPress development services in several ways to achieve their objectives. If you want to establish an online presence, a team of WordPress developers can help you set up a professional website showcasing your products and services. 

When looking to enhance branding, the team can customize WordPress themes to reflect your brand’s unique style and identity. As a result, your business becomes easily recognizable online. If you want more visibility in search results, a WordPress development team helps you build SEO-friendly web designs that can improve your ranking on search engines like Google. 

In other words, the right WordPress development team offers tailored services to meet your needs and help you achieve your business goals.

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5 Benefits of WordPress Development

Having a robust online presence is necessary to keep up with competitors and meet the modern customer's expectations. 

Developing your website using WordPress is a great way to establish and optimize a web presence. The website builder is easy to use for beginners and offers more functionality than most alternatives. 

But these are just a fraction of the benefits of WordPress development. Here are other reasons why WordPress is the most popular and the best platform for developing your business website:                                                                                        

1. SEO-friendly: WordPress website templates are optimized for SEO by default. For instance, template elements are strategically placed to make it easy for search engines to crawl your site. Additionally, WordPress has numerous built-in SEO tools and plugins for optimizing your content and analyzing your website’s SEO performance. That way, you can improve your online visibility and drive traffic to your site. 
   
2. Extensive customization options: With thousands of WordPress themes, you can choose your favorite from a vast pool of website styles and layouts, no matter the type of website you want to create. Once you select a theme, you can easily customize components like color schemes, page layouts, and typography to meet your branding requirements. If you can’t find a theme that matches your needs, a WordPress development team can help you design a professional, custom theme from scratch. 
   
3. Efficiency: WordPress is famous for its user-friendly interface and intuitive content management system. As a result, creating a WordPress website, uploading content, and adding new web pages is easy and quick if you know the ins and outs of the website builder. 
   
4. Scalability: As your website grows, you’ll likely add more content and get more traffic. That means you’ll need more storage space and increased bandwidth over time to prevent your site from slowing down or crashing because of traffic spikes. WordPress provides a web hosting solution that accommodates the growing demands of your website. So, as you upload more media and more people visit your site, you get additional server resources to keep your website running smoothly, regardless of the number of people trying to access it simultaneously. 
   
5. Responsive design: A responsive web design can scale itself to perfectly fit the screen size of your web visitor’s mobile or desktop device. This prevents horizontal scrolling or zooming, improving your site's user experience. All WordPress website themes are responsive. And even if you don’t use a pre-built theme and decide to design your site from the ground up, WordPress developers can help you build a responsive website.   
   

What Services Do WordPress Development Providers Offer? 

WordPress developers can provide everything you need to create a fully functional website. 

These organizations can offer the following WordPress dev services, depending on your WordPress development needs: 

• Setup and installation
  
• Development and design
  
• Plugin development and integration
  
• Theme customization
  
• Maintenance and support
  
• Training and consultation
  

Setup & Installation

This service involves downloading WordPress files, uploading them to a web server, and creating a database necessary for WordPress installation. It also includes editing configuration files in WordPress to meet specific requirements. Without technical skills, completing these tasks quickly and correctly can be challenging. If you hire a WordPress development provider, you let experts handle the WordPress installation so you don’t get bogged down with technical details.  

Development & Design

WordPress has thousands of ready-made themes to choose from. But if none suits your liking, a WordPress development team can design and create a unique theme that reflects your brand identity and website goals. WordPress developers will also leverage their knowledge of coding languages like HTML and CSS to design your website from scratch. 

Plugin Development & Integration

When looking to add specific functionality to your website, such as a custom booking system for appointments, WordPress developers can use their programming skills to build a plugin that addresses that particular need. If necessary, they can develop the plugin to integrate with third-party applications like data extraction software, payment gateways, and marketing tools. 

Theme Customization

Once you choose a prebuilt WordPress theme, the right WordPress development team will help you edit navigation menus, color palettes, page layouts, and other elements to meet your specifications. The service provider will then test the customized theme to ensure it works properly across browsers and devices. 

Maintenance & Support

WordPress development does not end when your website is up and running. Ongoing maintenance and support ensure the site stays current with WordPress security updates and best practices. The service may also include regular website performance checks, plugin updates, downtime monitoring, daily cloud backups, and technical SEO monitoring. 

Training & Consultation

With this service, a team of WordPress developers equips your in-house staff with WordPress knowledge. That way, your employees can do basic tasks like managing website content updates and creating new web pages without relying on developers. 

Apart from training your internal team, WordPress development teams can be consultants who help you define your website goals. They can also advise on best practices for WordPress security and help you choose the most cost-effective solutions for your website needs. 

How To Assess WordPress Development Services

When you hire a WordPress development team, measuring the success of your partnership helps you determine whether the collaboration is worthwhile. It can also reveal what you need to improve on your website to achieve your business goals. Here are the metrics to track the performance of WordPress dev services: 

• Conversion rate: It measures the percentage of web visitors who complete a desired action, such as buying your services or submitting a contact form. WordPress developers don’t directly control web visitors’ behavior. However, a high conversion rate can suggest a well-designed, user-friendly website that makes it easy for people to take desired actions.  
  
• SEO metrics: WordPress development partners typically handle technical website aspects like crawlability, indexability, and HTTPS — all of which influence SEO. Tracking SEO metrics like the number of indexed pages and index coverage errors helps you determine if the WordPress development team you hire is doing its job competently.
  
• Web traffic: When the number of website visitors spikes after a WordPress development project, it can indicate that your site is becoming more discoverable. This traffic surge may suggest that your WordPress development partner has fixed errors in your website’s code, improved SEO practices, and enhanced overall site structure for search engines to correctly crawl and index your web pages. 
  
• Customer satisfaction: This metric measures how well WordPress development services meet or exceed businesses' expectations. Ratings and testimonials on platforms like Clutch can show previous clients' satisfaction with a company’s WordPress development services. 
  
• Return on investment (ROI): ROI tracks the financial return you gain from investing in WordPress development. It compares the net profit generated from your website against the total cost of WordPress development services. With this metric, you can determine whether the investment is worthwhile over time. 
  
• Page load speed: This metric, as the name suggests, measures how fast the content of a web page loads. You can use tools like Google Lighthouse, WebPage Test, and Pingdom Website Speed Test to measure page load speed. The quicker the load speed, the higher the potential of ranking better on Google. A fast load speed shows that your WordPress development team has implemented best practices like reducing HTTP requests, compressing images, and minimizing website code. 
  
• Mobile responsiveness: This metric shows whether your WordPress website design is mobile-friendly, a critical ranking factor in search results. Tools like Google Lighthouse and Search Console can help you measure mobile responsiveness. 
  

What Is a WordPress Development Team? 

A WordPress development team specializes in designing, customizing, and optimizing WordPress websites. Each provider has a diverse team whose members have different responsibilities.

 Here are the common experts in a WordPress development team: 

• Project Manager: They plan and oversee the entire WordPress development initiative. This person ensures the project is completed on time and meets your requirements. 
  
• Frontend Developer: They create the user-facing side of your website that your web visitors see and interact with directly. In other words, a front-end developer builds your website's user interface. 
  
• Backend Developer: This developer focuses on background processes that keep your website running. This person deals with servers, databases, and application programming interfaces (APIs) that power your website's functionality and data management. 
  
• UX/UI Designer: A user experience (UX) or user interface (UI) designer creates and designs the user interface of your website. The goal of a UX or UI designer is to brainstorm visually appealing and user-friendly website layouts. 
  
• SEO Specialist: They ensure your website follows best practices for technical, on-page, and off-page search engine optimization. The aim is to increase your visibility on search results. 
  
• Content Creator: They write, edit, and publish content on your website, including blog posts, case studies, service pages, product descriptions, and landing pages.
  
• QA Tester: A quality assurance (QA) tester uses website testing tools to check for errors and works with developers to correct identified issues. This person troubleshoots a website to ensure it’s running properly and meets a brand’s requirements. 
  

What To Look for When Hiring a WordPress Development Provider

If you're looking to create and maintain a website but don’t have the expertise or time to do it yourself, hiring a WordPress dev is the right solution. There are multiple options, but not all of them deliver high-quality services. 

You need to determine your website development goals and only hire WordPress developers who offer services that can help you achieve those goals. But this is not enough to select the right developer. What additional factors should you consider when hiring WordPress development services? 

Criteria for WordPress Dev Hiring

It’s best to shortlist several options that meet your requirements, compare their services side-by-side, and then choose the one that best suits your needs. 

A service directory like Clutch can help you evaluate your choices. It lets you compare thousands of WordPress developers by rates, services offered, client reviews, and more.

Wondering how to hire WordPress development services? The following are the top 10 questions that will help you find the right provider.

10 Questions To Ask When Hiring a WordPress Development Team

1. What’s your website design process? 
   
2. How long have you been specializing in WordPress development?
   
3. What are the skills and expertise of your team? 
   
4. Why should I choose your WordPress development team? 
   
5. Which WordPress developer tools do you use? 
   
6. Do you offer ongoing maintenance and support after the initial website launch? 
   
7. What technical strategies do you implement to optimize WordPress websites for SEO? 
   
8. How do you set a timeline for WordPress development projects? 
   
9. What’s your client communication and collaboration approach? 
   
10. How do you enhance usability and user experience for my web visitors? 
    

Choose the Right WordPress Development Services To Build a Professional Business Website

With SEO-friendly website themes, extensive customization options, and responsive web designs, WordPress is a great website-building platform. However, developing a site from the ground up without professional help can be challenging, especially if you don’t know where to begin. 

Hiring a reliable WordPress developer ensures you don’t rely on guesswork when creating a business website. Instead, you let experts handle the entire process to avoid costly and time-consuming mistakes related to do-it-yourself website development. Always evaluate your options carefully when selecting a WordPress development team.

Clutch can connect you with the right WordPress developer that suits your website needs and business goals. 

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