The Actionable Guide to Web Design Planning (16 Questions to Answer)

Planning a new web design project or a redesign is a tough exercise growing organizations go through. And in the era of $59 premium templates, understanding the rationale behind spending months in conceptualization, mockups, and prototypes requires some business insight. There are three reasons custom web design solutions are important to businesses: Corporate/brand identity User experience Conversion rates It all boils down to solving the business problem of generating new leads or customers through the front-facing web technology. According to a study by Top Design Firms, a directory of digital and creative agencies, half of consumers (50%) say a company's website design… Continue Reading

How to Find Leads for a WordPress Development Company?

In order to grow as a professional WordPress developer, you have to work with businesses that believe in expert development and value long-term results. More often than not, business owners are fooled by the media and marketing collateral online explaining how easy development is, solutions sold for $20 - $100, or site builders that would supposedly “revolutionize your business online”. Here are some tips that would steadily grow your value and bring some business to you. 1. Perfect Your Skills When I switched to full-time freelancing, I already had a 5-year technical college degree, 4 years of full-time development experience,… Continue Reading

What You Need to Understand When Building SaaS for Business with WordPress Multisite

We have built 7 successful SaaS solutions on top of WordPress, some having tens of thousands of subsites in a Multisite environment. I’ve personally consulted and built extensions for a couple more with over 100K subsites in a network, which was pretty cool. Basically, no project is complicated or problematic until it grows. Real issues are faced once your regular traffic and user base grows and you start hitting various limits in terms of performance and security when serving data to your visitors.  1. You Need to Bridge the Disconnect Between SaaS and Enterprises Let’s leave WordPress aside for a… Continue Reading

Practical Tips for Selling a WordPress Platform to SMBs

Selling a WordPress-driven platform to small or medium-sized businesses (SMB) is a major challenge for freelancers and small businesses. Every SMB is unique, with its requirements, goals, and visions. A generic pitch might not resonate with them. Customization and understanding individual business needs are crucial to making the WordPress platform appealing. Not all SMB owners or decision-makers are tech-savvy. Simplifying technical jargon and presenting the benefits of WordPress in an easy-to-understand manner can be the difference between locking the deal or losing a potential client. During my last research, there were over 2 million freelancers offering WordPress development services on… Continue Reading

What Does Technical Debt Mean?

What makes a $2,000 development project different from a $40K one? Code quality. The $2,000 project incurs the so-called "technical debt". A messy, spaghetti-like codebase is 5x, 10x, 20x more complicated to maintain, which skyrockets the maintenance costs over time. Technical debt is a well-known phenomenon in tech. But due to the price cuts, it happens all the time. The chart below shows the result of a survey conducted by CodeAhoy among software developers. Accordingly, the majority of the respondents are swamped with projects that have technical debt. [Tweet "There is a fine balance between providing a usable piece of… Continue Reading

25+ Business Scaling Mistakes Running a Large WordPress Website

Running a successful large WordPress website that generates hundreds of thousands or millions of page views a month comes with its own challenges. Business owners often become victims of various dangerous mistakes while scaling their online presence leading traffic to a platform that couldn't handle the volume of users or content published on a regular basis. Since this guide represents a long-form reference sheet, here's a table of contents that would help you navigate easier in the complex world of WordPress stability challenges: WordPress Websites in a Nutshell WordPress is a wonderful platform which currently powers over 35% of the… Continue Reading

WordPress Security: Critical Vulnerabilities In 10 Popular Plugins (2020 Case Study)

WordPress is often portrayed as an insecure platform that should be avoided for enterprise-grade projects. Having spent the past decade deploying WordPress for SMEs, I’ve busted this myth numerous times – including our guide for important security considerations disclosing our experience working with banks and other financial institutions. As the ubiquitous platform now powers over 40% of the Internet, being a vendor common to attacks from hackers is expected. Any industry leader in tech gathers more attention and “script kiddies” when popularity exceeds a certain point. The Main Security Risk With WordPress The WordPress Core platform (the free software available… Continue Reading

How to Manage A Network of Websites

A common question that we get from companies maintaining multiple sites, advanced or medium businesses with multiple publishing websites, and other forms of organizations that have to maintain several websites at once is: How do you manage and maintain a network of websites? Most of their concerns revolve around finding the best ways to offload, outsource, or work with maintenance and development companies to ensure efficient management of these websites.   Here are several steps that you need to consider when you need to offload your websites to a third-party vendor or build the right team that will help maintain this… Continue Reading

The Definitive Sales and Business Development Process For an Outsourced WordPress Company

We’ve sold several 6-figure projects over the past few years remotely. I have never met some of our customers, and others we’ve met later on (8–12 months after we’ve already started the business relationship). Selling expensive software remotely is a challenging endeavor. It requires a good amount of reputability in the industry, a terrific track record of successful projects, a portfolio of respectable companies, good reviews and testimonials, great folks running the project, and ongoing marketing activities. And yes, we’ve lost a number of projects simply because we are not a local agency with an office next street, but that… Continue Reading

Reply: Handling WordPress Project Management And Sales (Video)

One of the members in my Mentorship Group group has asked me a few strategic questions regarding the way we do business at DevriX. I'm trying to cover different areas related to running a business, handling marketing activities, becoming a better developer and solving business problems. This time I've decided to record a video since the questions would have taken a good chunk of time to write down and sum up as compared to a 13min video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5S_qlIssGo Here are the 5 questions I've covered in my video: How do you manage multiple client requests in a limited… Continue Reading