What is Enterprise Website Development?

Key Takeaways

• Enterprise website development in 2022 should be brand-forward, focused on strategic outcomes, and supported by key stakeholders within your organization.
• As an online touch point, your Enterprise website or app should engage, educate, and convert the customers that you want to attract.
• You have seven key components to consider when developing a new Enterprise website or app. Each plays a specific role in a site’s future success.

Today, whether your business is B2B or B2C, 92%+ of customers reach out through the internet (and some would say 100%). It takes less than 50 milliseconds (.05 seconds) for someone to decide if they will scroll down or bounce out.

Developing an Enterprise website or app in 2022 is more than just setting up a site, adding content modules, and picking some flashy images. It needs to be brand-forward, technically savvy, focused on strategic outcomes, and supported by key stakeholders within your organization.

For mid-size to large corporations, it’s critical to spend the time and resources to develop an enterprise-level website to represent your company. Not only does it need to be a stellar website, but it also needs to be laser-focused on a mobile-responsive experience!

What Exactly is Enterprise Website Development?

Enterprise website development takes the design and development process and turns it up a notch — or five. Sure, you want to promote your products and services, but you also want to clearly convey your key value propositions, promote your brand, establish (or reinforce) yourself as a thought leader in your field, and demonstrate to the public your commitment to higher values (through ESG or employee community engagement).

By providing tangible and measurable real-world results, your Enterprise website should attract, engage, and convert the customers that match your business. To accomplish this, you want to work with a design and development firm that understands the technical components while also being both innovative and design-forward to meet you at the highest level.

What Goes into Enterprise Website Development?

Enterprise websites and apps can be extraordinarily complex depending on the scope of the business. A large, growing infrastructure must be planned carefully to ensure things work as needed now and are set-up for growth in the future.

There can be many moving parts so a crystal-clear level of understanding in your company’s business goals and objectives is required to roll-out a successful site that captures customers’ attention and drives lead generation.

One of the biggest advantages of corporate website development, either consumer facing or employee facing, is the ability to take features and facilities much further. Let’s take a look at some of the components necessary for Enterprise websites and apps today.

Elements of a Successfully Executed Enterprise Website or Application:

• Strategically Implemented Tech Stack — You want an Enterprise website or app that can not only handle, but finesse and guide, your visitors through a multi-faceted experience. For that, you want a team working with an entire ‘tech stack’ of technologies and applications used to build the best sites. This will include:
• Front-end or client-side development using coded technologies that will include HTML, CSS, Jquery, JavaScript, as well as others, and
• Back-end or server-side coding and development to include languages such as Java, PHP, Python, etc.
• Mobile Optimization — The first quarter of 2021 showed 54.8% of global website traffic and over 60% of searches were from mobile devices. Not to mention, Google’s latest algorithmic changes are mobile-specific and sites that aren’t mobile-optimized will lose search page ranking.
• Web Development Framework — Instead of meshing together the back-end and front-end development pieces into a cooperative ecosystem, developers today are using web development framework, a comprehensive combination of various components, tools, and libraries, to build multi-faceted server and client-side applications.

By using this pre-defined infrastructure, Enterprise websites can be created with well-designed information flow and the necessary platform to interact not only with the end user, but also be scalable, streamlined, and secure.

Popular frameworks for front-end development can include React, Angular, Bootstrap, and Vue.js, and for back-end, Ruby on Rails, Laravel, Hibernate, Linux, Apache Struts2, and AWS for cloud-based applications. For back-end development, some of the most common databases include MSSQL and Azure, Oracle, MongoDB, and MySQL.

• Clear, Intentional Design — You want a site that has a visual design that intuitively leads the user to the information they want effectively and is stunning to look at.
• Strong Security and Encryption — According to Verizon’s 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report, the ever-expanding complexities built into web apps makes them an irresistible target accounting for over 70% of all breaches.

Ensure that your development team is fully compliant with the most recent security standards, testing methods, and firewall construction guidelines.

• Strong Keyword Research and On-Page SEO — Almost 70% of online experiences begin with a search engine and Google holds 91.86% of the total search engine market share as of July 2021. Ranking on the first page may seem overwhelming when there are millions of results for every search – but keep in mind, 90.63% of websites have inadequate or no on-page SEO.
• Clear Calls-to-Action — One of the most effective marketing tools ever, a ‘Call to Action’ should be direct, clear, and strong enough to illicit a response from the customer. Sometimes, you just have to ask for what you want!
• Generate Leads and Interest — While it’s great to capture people’s attention or imagination, ultimately, you want to generate leads and make sales. Be sure your site design has a well thought-out sales funnel leading to data capture or the checkout process.
• Content Strategy — Everyone loves the old Kevin Costner movie, “Field of Dreams” — but just because you build a gorgeous website, doesn’t mean people will come. You have to build a strategy for content generation and social media engagement that draws people to your site and keeps them engaged.
• State of the Art Analytics — Today, every business runs on data. Be sure your site can capture the analytics that are valuable to your company. Whether sales related, site related, or marketing spend, you want a real-time option to gather, collect, and interpret your details into an actionable plan.

Enterprise Website Services that Enhance Site Performance

During the planning and development phase, be sure your design and development team provides the following services while positioning your site:

• Brand Assessment and Analysis — Understand your brand mojo in relation to your competitors. Use that competitive intelligence to craft your site in a way that stands out from your opposition.
• Market and Competitive Research — Know your customer persona and understand your competitors and their strategies.
• Robust UI and UX Strategy — You want your site to be technically functional and be pleasing to the eye (UI) and provide the user with an outstanding experience (UX). In a recent report by the Forrester Group, enterprise corporations were able to increase their conversion rate by over 200% by improving their UI and UX.
• Content Strategy — As discussed above, understand the importance of content, explore the various types, e.g., blogs, infographics, case studies, white papers, press releases, podcasts, videos, and learn how to use them effectively on your site.
• Analytics Set-up — Find your avenue to the data that makes the most sense for your company and set it up to be viewed as conveniently as possible. Whether you use Google Analytics (and why wouldn’t you?), Google My Business, a paid web analytics program, or all the above, be sure that the information is put to use instead of shelved.
• Technical and On-Page SEO, Keywords Research — From managing page redirects and the site map to ensuring every page and post has a keyword-focused Title Tag and Meta Description, SEO is vital to draw visitors to your site.

To Sum Up

In 2022, Enterprise website development is successful when you and your design and development partners understand your business processes, customer persona, and marketing goals. These are all necessary to support an engaging website design process that provides solutions that meet your business challenges while providing an unparalleled experience to your visitors.

Through a well-thought-out development process that takes into account the overall life cycle of a website or app, you can yield premier customer-facing solutions that blow away your competition.

If your organization wants to play for keeps, talk to the Brandtenders at Lounge Lizard or visit the case studies page to see the innovative solutions provided to other Enterprise clients. We specialize in tech-forward development and rock solid security infrastructure that ensures your company provides the best interactive user experience available today.

Contact Lounge Lizard to learn more about our services and please share this article with someone you know who might find value.