Ultimate Guide to Enterprise Website Development

Ultimate Guide to Enterprise Website Development

An enterprise's website is often the first touchpoint for customers and a critical tool for achieving business goals. However, developing websites for large, complex organisations comes with unique challenges compared to small business websites. Enterprise websites must be robust, secure, integrated with multiple internal systems, and built to support high traffic volumes. At the same time, they need to deliver a seamless user experience across devices.

This guide will explore best practices and critical considerations for building, launching, and managing enterprise website development.

Planning for Enterprise Website Development

The first step when embarking on an enterprise website project is clearly defining the goals and target outcomes.

Aligning Business and Marketing Strategies

The website objectives must support overall business goals and marketing strategies. Common high-level goals include:

• Generating leads and new customers
• Reducing customer support costs by enabling self-service
• Increasing brand awareness and loyalty
• Launching new products and services
• Improving employee recruitment and retention

Gathering Input from Stakeholders

Next, gather input from all key internal and external stakeholder groups:

• C-suite executives – understand their vision and expected ROI
• Marketing and sales teams – incorporate lead gen and customer acquisition goals
• Product managers – plan for new product launches and campaigns
• Channel partners/resellers – support their initiatives and co-marketing needs
• Customer service – facilitate self-service to lower support costs
• HR/recruiters – enable outreach to candidates and improve hiring
• Customers – learn usage patterns, pain points, feature requests

Defining Detailed Requirements

With goals aligned to strategy and stakeholder needs gathered, detailed requirements can be developed across critical dimensions:

• Content – specify all needed content types, formats, and tone
• Functionality – identify essential features of the site and integrations
• Performance – set traffic volume and response time goals
• Security – define security and compliance requirements
• Global reach – determine localisation strategy and languages

Creating Success Metrics and KPIs

Finally, work with stakeholders to establish success metrics and KPIs that align with goals, such as:

• Website traffic growth quarter-over-quarter
• Lower bounce rates signalling high engagement
• Increased conversion rates on desired actions
• Higher customer satisfaction survey scores
• Faster issue resolution via self-service

A sound plan sets the stage for executing a successful enterprise website project.

Assembling a Skilled Website Development Team

Creating an enterprise-class website requires various specialised skills and roles – attempting a DIY build rarely ends well. The core team should include:

Seasoned Project Manager

A project manager experienced in orchestrating complex web projects is invaluable for keeping everyone aligned and hitting milestones. Their responsibilities include:

• Driving process efficiency
• Coordinating internal teams and external vendors
• Maintaining project plans and timelines
• Tracking risks and action items
• Managing costs and change control

Technical Architect

The lead architect guides technical decisions to ensure optimal performance, security, scalability, integration, and flexibility for future initiatives. Key duties include:

• Designing infrastructure, integrations, and data flows
• Selecting platforms and technologies
• Directing build vs buy choices
• Overseeing coding standards and quality
• Conducting security reviews
• Planning hosting strategy (cloud, on-premises, hybrid)

User Experience (UX) Lead

The UX lead focuses on understanding users to craft intuitive, engaging experiences. They are involved in the following:

• Develop a UX blueprint documenting user journeys
• Wireframe site content structure and flows
• Execute usability testing to refine designs
• Ensure compliance with the brand style guide
• Continue optimising post-launch

Visual Designer

Visual designers give the site its look and feel. Working from UX wireframes, they specify:

• Site layouts for desktop and mobile
• Typography, colour palette, and imagery
• Animation treatments
• Custom graphic elements
• Page templates

Copywriter

An experienced copywriter helps shape messaging to achieve goals, whether driving conversions or conveying thought leadership. They define:

• SEO-optimised titles, headings and body content
• Compelling calls-to-action
• Site search keywords
• Consistent tone aligned with brand identity

Software Engineers

A front-end, back-end, and full-stack developer team builds the entire technology layer. Key skills include:

• Programming languages: JavaScript, .NET, Java, PHP, Python
• Frameworks: React, Angular, Django, Node.js
• Cloud platforms: AWS, Azure, Google Cloud
• Traditional or headless CMS platforms
• Search, analytics, personalisation integrations

Filling all these roles requires engaging a mix of internal team members and external consultants and agencies. Larger firms may also leverage offshore development talent.

Selecting the Optimal Web Content Management Platform

A major decision is which content management system (CMS) will power the website. The platform must balance robustness and security with developer productivity.

Comparing Open Source vs Commercial Systems

The leading open-source PHP/MySQL platforms like WordPress and Drupal are popular, given their flexibility and extensive plugin ecosystems. However, most commercial Java-based CMS options like Adobe Experience Manager offer more advanced functionality that is out-of-the-box along with enterprise-grade support and maintenance. Be sure to reach out to a Drupal development company if this is something you are interested in.

Open Source Benefits

• Lower licensing costs
• Wider developer skills availability
• Easier custom integrations
• More control over the roadmap

Commercial Platform Benefits

• Streamlined security, scalability, and resilience
• Improved collaboration and workflow
• Higher productivity with less custom code
• Expanded analytics and personalisation

When evaluating options, IT and business teams should align on priority capabilities to guide the decision.

Optimising for Headless CMS Model

Many modern websites now use a headless CMS approach where content is decoupled from front-end presentation:

This offers greater front-end flexibility to render experiences across devices, while content editors can focus on creating content in the repository.

API-based integrations must be implemented for real-time content syncing. Microservices can also connect to the content platform as the centralised hub.

Considering Fully Integrated Digital Experience Platforms

All-in-one digital experience platforms (DXP) like Sitecore combine CMS, analytics, testing, personalisation, and optimisation tools into a single interface:

This consolidated model can simplify technology management with a single vendor. However, it may force some compromises relative to more specialised solutions.

Regardless of which platform is chosen, ensure it meets stakeholders' needs now and into the future.

Architecting a Secure, Scalable and Resilient Website Infrastructure

With exponential cyber attacks and outage growth, enterprise websites must be hardened against threats. Multilayered defences combined with failover measures help mitigate risks.

Safeguarding Sites with Web Application Firewalls

Deploying a Web Application Firewall (WAF) protects sites by scanning traffic to counter vulnerabilities like:

• SQL injection
• Cross-site scripting
• Probing reconnaissance

Imperva, Barracuda, and Cloudflare provide managed WAF services on cloud platforms.

Adding DDoS Protection to Withstand Volume Attacks

A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack floods infrastructure to take sites offline. Leveraging providers like Akamai or AWS Shield blocks malicious traffic without legitimate users experiencing issues.

Enabling Disaster Recovery with Multi-Region Hosting

Mission-critical sites warrant deploying duplicate production infrastructure across different geographic regions. If one area is knocked offline, failover mechanisms divert traffic to the secondary disaster recovery site seamlessly.

Azure Front Door and AWS CloudFront offer this capability across their globe-spanning edge networks.

Scaling Seamlessly via Auto-Provisioning Rules

Unpredictable traffic spikes risk crashing websites lacking excess capacity margins. Auto-scaling functionality dynamically provisions additional cloud-based containers, bandwidth, and storage when certain KPI thresholds are exceeded. As loads decrease, resources are automatically de-provisioned to minimise costs.

Platforms like Azure and WordPress Auto Scale simplify establishing threshold-based rules.

Separating Content Delivery from Application Logic

A content delivery network (CDN) like Fastly or Cloudflare replicates content globally to accelerate delivery speeds. This optimises caching and bandwidth utilisation by isolating volatile application code running separately. Only static assets reside on the CDN, while dynamic pages render at the origin web servers.

Together, these measures significantly harden website availability, security posture, and scalability – essential for enterprise-grade resiliency.

Building an Optimised Mobile Experience

With growing mobile usage, delivering excellent responsive site experiences across smartphones is mandatory. However, unique UX considerations and technical build processes exist.

Crafting Intuitive Touch Experiences

Fingertip navigation patterns differ vastly from using a mouse and keyboard. Interface designs should:

• Feature larger buttons for error-free tapping
• Expand critical menus like search
• Adapt multi-column layouts to vertical stacking
• Resize images/video proportionally

Text density should also decrease on smaller viewports.

Testing Physical Devices During Development

Emulators fail to uncover real-world mobile issues around varying device dimensions, inconsistent latency, intermittent connectivity, and fingerprint smudges obscuring views.

Testing directly on current iOS and Android devices ensures designs hold up. Maintain a device lab covering key models employees and customers use.

Building Lightweight Code for Speedy Delivery

Bulkier desktop sites overwhelm mobile processors and bandwidth. Tools like Google Pagespeed identify optimisation fixes like:

• Compressing images
• Minifying CSS/JavaScript
• Removing unnecessary libraries
• Lazy loading lower priority content

Implementing AMP or Apple Web Clips

Publishers can leverage Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to cache content closer to users, bypassing round trips to origin servers.

For frequently accessed mobile tasks, Apple web clips shortcut iOS home screens to pages preformatted for tap-based usage sans the Chrome browser.

Rising mobile adoption makes optimising websites more pivotal every year.

Driving Personalisation with Behavioural Data and Machine Learning

Generic one-size-fits-all site experiences frustrate customers. The ability to tailor content and offers propels engagement and conversions.

Seeding Profiles with First-Party Registration Data

Capturing user details during signup, such as role, location, preferences and past purchases, jumpstarts personalisation by populating profiles. Ensure privacy policies disclose data usage.

Observing Behaviours for Enriched Understanding

Recording ongoing activity via analytics supplements provided information:

• Site search queries indicate intent
• Shopping cart additions signal interest
• Support forum views identify pain points

Over time, rich histories build, unlocking customisation powered by machine learning algorithms.

Building Segmented Audience Clusters

Divide users into clustered groups correlated with behavioural driving outcomes. Profile attributes aid segmentation:

Personas

• Job Titles
• Roles
• Seniority

Engagement Levels

• Repeat Visitors
• Time on Site
• Page Depth Reached

Interests

• Content Topics Viewed
• Campaign Responses
• Search Queries

Aligning Experiences to Audience Needs

Deliver tailored experiences matching each cluster’s priority requirements, including:

• Relevant content modules based on behaviours
• Channelled navigation and calls-to-action
• Dedicated email nurture campaigns
• Custom incentives and offers

Continuously add clusters by identifying emerging behavioural patterns or creating new buyer personas over time.

Applying Personalisation Across Channels

Orchestrate unified experiences spanning web, email, mobile apps, and ads by sharing audience segment data across systems via tags and APIs.

Personalisation remains a potent yet underutilised tool for better resonating with customers. Prioritise capturing user signals and behaviours to differentiate experiences.

Optimising Ongoing Performance with Testing and Analytics

Don't treat the website launch as the final step. Continuously test and optimise experiences against critical metrics to propel ongoing gains.

Using A/B Testing to Compare Variations

A/B testing evaluates alternative versions of site elements to determine which performs best—split traffic randomly between a control and variable page or component to gauge impact.

When statistically significant metrics improvements result, roll out enhancements sitewide. Retest annually as behaviours evolve.

Expanding Scope with Multivariate Testing

Rather than varying single variables, multivariate testing optimises combinations of changes across multiple dimensions:

• Page layout
• Images
• Headlines
• Calls to action
• Content flow

This complexity warrants leveraging automated platforms from vendors like Optimizely.

Monitoring Trends with Site Analytics

Analyse usage patterns by tracking key performance indicators over time:

Uncover optimisation opportunities by spotting target areas trending poorly.

Surveying Visitors for Direct Qualitative Feedback

Supplement usage statistics by soliciting visitor opinions via:

• Post-session questionnaires
• Intercept pop-up surveys
• Targeted customer interviews

Feedback fuels design changes and prioritises desired new capabilities when planning development roadmaps.

Stay laser-focused on satisfying and delighting customers by continually improving experiences based on observed behaviours, testing results, and direct input. This culture of relentless optimisation drives enterprise website success.

Maintaining Momentum Post-Launch with Governance and Training

Don't treat the website launch as the finish line. Robust governance and user enablement sustain usefulness over the long haul.

Institutionalising Website Governance Procedures

Lacking defined website policies and assigned roles risks inconsistent user experiences and outdated content. Key framework elements:

Content Governance

• Content creation standards and templates
• Content lifecycle rules
• Content contributor training

Change Management

• The multi-phase code migration process
• Quality assurance testing gates
• Launch readiness approvals

Oversight Team

• Executive sponsor
• Business/experienced owners
• IT support reps

Publish processes codifying management philosophies, rhythms, tools and decision rights.

Building an Internal Content Creator Network

Dispense governance playbooks, style guides, contributor tutorials and best practices to aid non-technical users in posting business unit or group-specific content.

Schedule virtual training labs for hands-on walkthroughs of editing interfaces. Onboard new creators and offer refreshers as functionality evolves. Send tip emails highlighting advanced features.

Creating End User Support Resources

Enable external audiences to self-navigate sites via embedded chatbots, contextual help links, guided tutorials, FAQs, glossaries, and user forums.

Continually optimise assistance for pain points reflected in usage analytics and support ticket themes.

Equipping those creating material and consuming experiences sustains consistent usability and currency.

10 Website Development Best Practices for Enterprises

Below are fundamental guiding principles to drive enterprise website success:

• Begin with well-defined goals tied to business strategy
• Assemble skilled cross-functional team encompassing specialised roles
• Select future-ready CMS meeting diverse stakeholder needs
• Architect infrastructure resilience, security protections and scalability
• Optimise experiences for rising mobile usage patterns
• Prioritise personalisation through user data and machine learning
• Continuously test and optimise based on analytics insights
• Institutional continuous improvement through governance
• Enable broad content creator and end-user networks through training
• Embrace website evolution as an ongoing journey rather than a one-off project

Adhering to these ten best practices equips organisations to reap substantial rewards from their web presence for years.

Conclusion and Next Steps

Developing an enterprise-grade website requires careful planning and execution across strategy, design, content, technology and governance.

While complex, organisations that invest in skills, platforms, integrations and optimisation to support goals across essential functions are well-positioned for amplifying reach, revenue, efficiency and competitive differentiation.

Leaders seeking guidance on digital transformation initiatives can request a consultation to discuss approaches tailored to address unique objectives and constraints. Custom roadmaps help prioritise website and broader digital ecosystem enhancements over time to extract maximum business value.

Contact our team to start building a world-class website that fuels enduring growth.

Frequently Asked Questions