What Skills Are Needed to Become a Web Developer?

Web development is a career path that requires a number of so-called soft skills. When developing sites for clients, you’ll need to be able to communicate well with them or you may end up delivering sites which don’t quite fit the brief. Equally, being well-organised is important because most professional developers are working on several different sites at the same time. You’ll also need to be flexible because web development can mean maintaining sites around the world which also means around the clock. That said, it can be rewarding if you also have the requisite technical skills. What are the most important ones to develop?

Web Hosting and Building

To begin with, you will need to be adept at building sites for yourself and your clients as a professional web developer. These days, many of the most reputable web hosting platforms today offer web developers website-building tools they can use from the get-go. This means that once you register the URL of the site, you’ll be able to choose from a wide range of site templates which you can then tailor to meet the client’s requirements. This takes a lot of the repetitious work out of building websites. Certainly, the graphic design aspects, which can cause a headache for some web developers, are often taken care of within the website hosting service nowadays, allowing the developer to focus most on the parts that count. In short, it is relatively easy to get a website up and running these days, although finessing it may take longer.

Site Optimisation

Unless you are recruiting an entire web development team for this site(s) you manage, you will need to gain skills in SEO, the term that relates to the optimisation of digital marketing. SEO isn’t a single technique for making websites more attractive to search engines. Rather, it is a series of measures you should take to ensure the site functions well when web crawlers access it. Well-organised sites with a clear pathway will typically rank better than ones which aren’t put together with much or a rational plan, for example. Your content should be well written and well presented with clear sentences and headlines, too. What’s more, good SEO practices will also involve site audits to ensure all the links work properly and that each page loads fast without slowing access to parts of the site through slow-loading images and so on.

Back-End Coding

What sets an advanced web developer apart from one who knows some basic HTML coding is often their ability to handle back-end programming languages. If you want to take your web development career to the next level, then invest time and effort in learning the most commonly used back-end website language. A good place to start is with PHP but don’t rule out Java or Python, both of which are often used in the context of website back-end frameworks. 

Conclusion

Web development is a satisfying career path that is in demand. With so many new websites being launched every day, acquiring the skills to make them stand out from the crowd is well worth it.