The Value of a Portfolio in Choosing a Proficient Application Developer

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Given the growing demand for IT specialists, finding a proficient developer is a real challenge, especially when your business is not directly related to IT, or you are not sure in skills and experience the ideal employee should have.

Whether you follow these crucial steps before hiring to find the outsource app developer or not, the candidate’s portfolio is something that you will never ignore. But is it that simple to choose a specialist who perfectly suits your business? Below are a few key points to consider in order not to lay an egg.

#1 The First Impression Does Matter

Try to catch your first impression of the portfolio. Put yourself in the potential client’s shoes. Do you like these works? Consider not only the design but also the quality of the layout, meta tags, and other details.

Ideally, you should find a ready-made website that matches the most important criteria of yours.

#2 Website Performance

Loading speed is one of the most important indicators of a high-quality website. A modern user will not wait long until the page opens – he or she will just turn to competitors’ web resources.

Statistics says that the pages with the loading speed over 4 seconds lose about 25% of their visitors, meaning every fourth user leaves before the page loads.

Check the speed with, for example, Google PageSpeed Insights. Just enter the URL of the on the PageSpeed ​​Insights page and check its speed (anything below 60 is poor). The report from PageSpeed Insights will also provide several recommendations for improving the download time.

However, even if the loading speed is low, don’t refuse the candidate immediately. After all, not every aspect is under the control of the developer, especially if the latter supports many projects simultaneously.

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#3 Functionality

Click on all buttons, fill out the forms or make a purchase. Even the smallest gap can prevent sales! You need a developer who can make an intuitive, easy-to-use website with rich features and capabilities, don’t you?

Pay attention to:

• Easiness of navigation and search.
• The convenience of sorting and filtering goods, as well as the process of ordering.

#4 Accessibility

A truly high-quality web resource should be available for all categories of users, regardless of the capabilities of their gadgets and computers. Therefore, test the websites for compliance with the general web accessibility guidelines. You can do it with, for example, WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool: just enter the URL of the page and get a report with possible problems with availability. Although not everything reported is actually a problem with availability, it is still a good tool for identifying potential errors.

#5 Code Quality

Code quality is a loose approximation of how long-term useful and long-term maintainable the code is. Although the clean and quality code is a fairly subjective thing, it can be defined as the code that is easy to read and modify. The most important parameter is adjust-ability.

• Imagine, for example, that your freelance developer suddenly moves to a full-time office job, and  you need to hire someone to finish the project. If the code is clean and quality, the new developer won’t have any problems. 

Unfortunately, most of the page code can be hidden from you. Often this is the base code written in PHP, Ruby, etc. However, you can look at some things on the surface that can be indicators of how well your candidate is coding. For example, you can use the HTML Markup Validation Service by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to get a list of warnings and errors in the HTML of the website.

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#6 Personal Projects

The best web developers are always genuinely passionate about their work, and they usually have many personal projects in the portfolio. It can be sites or applications for friends, HTML5-games, personal blogs, etc. Evaluate these works like everything else in the portfolio, paying attention to the balance in them. A portfolio should not consist only of personal projects.

A web developer is a very important person for your project. After all, he is responsible for the face of your brand, its online image, as well as for your interaction with customers. 

Take your time in choosing the suitable person in order not to harm your business. I wish you best of luck in your endeavors!

Bio:
Lucy Adams is an aspiring businesswoman. Most of all, she’s interested in covering the most intriguing topics of yours, whether they are about business, writing or literature. Share your best ideas with the blogger and get a high-quality guest blog in a week or so!

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