If you think of small websites as playgrounds, then enterprise web apps and websites can be considered theme parks. They have more sections, include additional features and serve larger audiences.
While the ride designs attract people to a theme park, the park’s construction and infrastructure make sure customers stay safe and have fun. Similarly, enterprise web development is the backbone and engine of large-scale websites.
Here’s a look at the unique nature of enterprise website development and best practices you can follow as you build your next one.
What is enterprise web development?
Enterprise website development refers to the ongoing process of creating and maintaining websites for medium to large companies. It may also include the development of software and web-based applications, such as when organizations offer software-as-a-service (SaaS) products.
Enterprise web development works hand in hand with enterprise website design. If web designers are the architects who draft the blueprint, developers are the ones who turn the idea into reality and ensure its functionality.
There are several key activities under the umbrella of enterprise web development.
Front-end development: Building the interactive elements of the website.
Back-end development: Managing the elements users don’t see, such as databases and infrastructure.
Integration and API management: Connecting the website to your existing tech stack, such as analytics trackers and customer relationship management (CRM) tools.
Content management system (CMS) setup: Installing and managing enterprise content management tools.
What makes enterprise web development different?
Websites for enterprise-level organizations often need to handle higher levels of traffic and serve various purposes, such as the company blog, eCommerce storefront and customer service hub. As such, development is more involved when dealing with enterprise sites than small business or personal websites.
Here’s a closer look at the unique nature of enterprise website development.
Scale: Enterprise websites usually boast more content than smaller sites, and they need to be able to grow with the business.
Complexity: Websites for large-scale businesses often have a wide range of functions, which may include the development of web apps and software.
Structure: The architecture of enterprise websites typically has more levels than that of a smaller website. Think skyscraper vs. bi-level.
Integration requirements: Enterprise web developers may need to set up integrations that support marketing, sales and customer support teams in the organization.
Conversion funnels: The design and development of enterprise websites often include funnels to help convert marketing leads into paying customers.
Collaboration: Enterprise sites are typically created and managed by a team of developers who need to collaborate with other business departments.
Build exceptional sites at scale with Wix Studio Enterprise.
The benefits of enterprise web development
Effective website development offers several long-term benefits for enterprise-level organizations, such as promoting efficiency, winning clients and boosting revenue growth. Here’s a closer look at the primary advantages.
Flexible scaling
Seasonal demand spikes? No problem. Business keeps growing? Great.
With enterprise web development, businesses can easily scale their websites as they grow. This flexibility allows your website to maintain top performance even when traffic increases, so you don’t need to worry about an influx of new users or purchases causing issues like downtime.
By developing with scale in mind, it’s also easier to add new features and services to accommodate the needs of your customer base.
Enhanced customer experience
Optimizing for user experience (UX) is a crucial component of enterprise website development. Fast loading times, user-friendly navigation and tailored content promote user engagement and positive experiences. With the right foundation in place, you can boost customer satisfaction and retention rates.
Brand loyalty
While design is essential for making a first impression, development ensures consistent performance and functionality. By optimizing the UX, protecting client data and ensuring performance at scale, enterprise website development fosters customer trust and loyalty.
Support for eCommerce revenue
Thoughtful sales funnel development and seamless eCommerce checkouts are key features of enterprise websites. As more shopping happens online (in both B2C and B2B industries), a company website serves as the engine that drives progress toward business goals, such as increasing sales volume and revenue.
Beyond providing an excellent eCommerce experience, a reliable and well-developed website ensures better post-purchase support and customer satisfaction, encouraging loyalty and repeat purchases.
Improved search engine optimization (SEO)
Optimizing for search engines is an excellent way for modern enterprises to expand their online presence and gain a competitive edge in their industries. Logical organization and reliable performance are essential for SEO, and both of these can be challenging for enterprise websites that have much more content to host.
Successful enterprise web development optimizes architecture, speeds up loading times, enhances UX and boosts security, all of which are key elements of technical SEO.
Enterprise web development best practices
To get the most out of your enterprise website, you need to take the right approach from the start. Here are some best practices to follow.
Take a modular development approach
Modular development refers to building your website or online application as a collection of individual components that enable particular functions. This approach provides several key benefits for website development.
Efficiency: The reusable nature of these components speeds up development.
Scalability: Add new sections or functions without changing the foundation.
Easier maintenance: Smaller components allow for easy updating, testing and debugging.
Flexibility: Easily rearrange modules as needed.
Learn more: See how you can use Wix Blocks to package your code into reusable apps.
Keep branding consistent
When developing a larger website with more content, consistent branding is crucial for ensuring cohesiveness and building relationships with potential customers. According to one survey, 76% of consumers say that a consistent brand experience is one of the most important factors in gaining their trust.
Creating a central CSS file that standardizes styles across the website makes it easier to scale while maintaining a seamless experience. It’s also helpful to pay attention to keeping user actions consistent. For instance, hover effects, form submission confirmations and progress bars should be the same on each page.
Use responsive design
With over 60% of website traffic coming from mobile devices, optimizing for all screen sizes is par for the course. Using responsive web development best practices ensures that customers have a similar experience across multiple devices and screen orientations.
Follow cybersecurity best practices
Security is non-negotiable in enterprise web development. With Wix Studio security, you’ll exceed all website security needs from the start, without any setup or maintenance, and count on expert coverage all day everyday.
Make it accessible
As a growing enterprise, you want to reach as much of your target audience as you can. To do this, you need an accessible website. While it’s easy to understand why accessibility is important, 95.9% of top homepages failed to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) in 2024.
The good news is that a lot of small fixes can make significant changes. The top accessibility errors across the board are low-contrast text, missing alt text, missing form input labels, empty links and empty buttons.
To maximize your impact, don’t forget mobile accessibility best practices, including making your website friendly to left-handed users.
Learn more:
Implement robust error handling and logging
Detailed logging and exception handling allow for easier debugging and monitoring. Use tools like Loggly, Datadog or Elasticsearch and track errors to monitor the website's health.
Prioritize UX
The complexity and scale of an enterprise website should never be an excuse to skimp on the UX. In fact, the more complicated the architecture, the more important it is to think about navigation and functionality from a user’s perspective.
Creating an intuitive user experience keeps visitors coming back and increases customer satisfaction. For developers, this means:
Optimizing for fast page load times
Ensuring all interactive functions work
Continually testing the website across different devices and browsers
Because enterprise websites have more moving parts, adopting an iterative process for UX allows you to learn as you go and validate your ideas before applying them to the entire website.
Sign up for Wix Studio to create your next great site today.
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