Hiring a website developer

Question

I’m launching my first start up and while I’ve built the website design “bones” it isn’t as aesthetic or functional as I’d like.  What type of engineers should I be looking to hire and what’s the best step if the out of the box solutions (like wix) don’t have what you need?

Barb Hansen · Answer

I've been in Technical Product side of startups for quite awhile  (I'm currently COO/Acting CTO of a startup that I co-founded) and you've asked a pretty big question.

There are many many technological solutions to create a web site but the first answer to your question lays with what is the purpose of your site?

Are you building a publishing platform? Then you might want to look at Drupal (open source) or something much more powerful (Tridion SDL and many others)

Are you building a community or social media network? Then you could build a custom app using React (and many other languages) or build on an existing CMS platform (Drupal/wordpress).

Do you need a mobile app as well or is your mobile app your leading tech?  Then Python or Swift are two or many technical solutions.

Are you building a marketplace? You might want to hire a team with a strong PHP for the backend and AngularJS for the front end (there are many more combinations that might work for you)

Are you building a marketing site that needs more features than Wix? Hiring a developer who can code in and around Squarespace, or Wordpress, or Drupal might work for you

Secondly

what's your budget and your product launch timeline?

If you have limited budget, you might want to look at open source solutions that come with pre-built features that can be knitted together to  build what you need (Drupal or Wordpress as your CMS and Open Solr (one example) as your search technology).

If you have money to spend, then hiring developers who can build a native solution for you might be a great solution. And depending on what product you are building, then building native might be the only solution.  Native-built solutions tend to take longer than an open source solution with plenty of 'modules' (like Drupal or Wordpress) but not always, and usually cost more.

Who should you hire? Developer(s)? UI/UX people?  An development firm?  A jack-of-all-trade person? It all depends on what you are building, your budget and your timeline.

I'm happy to chat if you want some advice from the trenches

N T · Answer

Hi anon, that's exciting to hear. Have you tried using other sites like wordpress? There are a lot of templates you can pay a little extra for in order to get a better UI (user interface) experience. I also like wordpress because you can add extra functions using plugins that are free and available. Let me know if you have any other questions. I'm happy to help.

Erin Howard-Reid · Answer

If you're unhappy with the aesthetic, it might be worth hiring a UI Designer or even a UX Designer with UI experience.

Hiring a website developer

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