No matter how great a product or service an enterprise offers, an enterprise website must typically overcome the same kinds of problems as all of the other websites. Not the least of these problems is that around 200 million active websites will compete with yours for customer attention.

With all of that competition in play, enterprises need a premium website design that delivers on all fronts. Even if you hire a premium web development company, though, problems can and do still crop up with enterprise website development.

If you’re considering an enterprise website for your business, keep reading for five common problems that come with enterprise website projects.

1. Poor Website Development Process

The website development process can fall apart in a lot of ways, and it’s not always on the side of the web design service. A good web design service will ask you a lot of questions about what you want. This will often include things like:

• Features
• Functions
• Appearance
• E-commerce options

Then, the design service will take that information and go to work. Unfortunately, their working prototype will only prove as good as the information they get from you.

All too often, enterprise management or business owners don’t really know what they need or want when they start the development process. They fail to include key stakeholders in the conversation. Then, when new and relevant information crops up, cue scope creep.

The client asks for changes that can require significant changes to the underlying website code. That can delay delivery, drive up project costs, and leave you with a clunkier website than you would have gotten otherwise.

2. Overlooking Technical Needs

As a general rule, website development companies these days assume that every website should operate as a mobile-friendly website. Search engines expect and rank sites and pages based on whether or not they’re mobile-friendly.

Yet, customers should never assume that any given website developer or web development company will provide a mobile-friendly website or even consider it when designing enterprise websites.

At the very least, you should confirm with the website developer that they will build you a mobile-friendly site.

Beyond that, you want a site that poses the fewest possible technical hurdles for your customers and hosting service. The site should use optimization best practices that improve load times, such as:

• Optimizing image sizes
• Limited Javascript
• Limiting or eliminating redirects after website updates
• Asynchronous loading for CSS and Javascript

Addressing these needs explicitly or asking how the developer will overcome them can save you substantial trouble later on.

3. Lack Of Content

No matter how well-coded a website is, the developers can only include the content that you provide them. The only exception to that is if the developer is also a marketing company that offers content services like copywriting or blog content writing.

Otherwise, it’s all on you to provide them with the content that will help your future customers connect with your business, brand, and products. Unfortunately, many businesses treat their website more like a digital brochure than an active marketing tool.

The content they provide is thin, at best, and often amounts to little more than a few snippets about the company and products. The business often tries to make up for this dearth of content with a lot of pictures.

While pictures can help you flesh out a website, it’s not a substitute for written content. Minimally, you need fleshed-out content that covers the following ground:

• About us
• Detailed product or service descriptions
• Contact information
• Process information for services or how-to content for products
• Blog posts

All of that information helps make your site feel like it belongs to a serious company that offers quality products or services.

4. Poor User Experience

Almost everyone experiences the problem of poor user experience on a website occasionally. You go onto the website and just can’t seem to find anything. Or, you find what you want but can’t make the shopping cart process your order.

These kinds of problems all detract from the user experience. While the occasional problem won’t necessarily drive someone away, some kinds of problems will make a visitor abandon your website in favor of a business with a website that offers a better user experience.

Responsibility for developing the user experience is a shared one between the development company and the client. For example, the company should use best practices and the best web design tools to ensure that everything works optimally.

On the client side, though, you must think through factors that will confuse or slow down your customers. The development company can build a navigation menu with as many drop-downs and categories as you want. You must consider how complicated you want to make navigation on your site.

Do you really want a menu with 75 subcategories or just have the company build a search feature? Have someone not involved in the process test the website before taking it live.

5. Cluttered Visual Design

Clients often approach a web development service with a lot of ideas. Bringing ideas for the website has value, but insisting that every one of those ideas appear on the website can leave you with a very cluttered visual design.

Cluttered visual design can make your website confusing, hard to navigate, or even ugly. Good visual design will strike a balance between content, navigation, and clarity. A minimalist approach in visual design can often make your site more user-friendly for visitors.

Enterprise Website Development And You

Enterprise website development can go wrong in a lot of ways. If a client asks for a website but lacks clarity in terms of the features and functions they want, it can cause scope creep and leave you with a lesser website.

Overlooking technical needs can degrade the website’s performance and ranking. If you don’t provide enough content, your website may not convert visitors into customers.

Poor user experience and cluttered visual design can also drive visitors away.

The Best Media provides marketing solutions and web development. If you need an enterprise website, contact The Best Media today.