Top 7 Things To Consider When Choosing A Drupal Development Company

“Your website is the window of your business. Keep it fresh, keep it exciting.” - Jay Conrad Levinson

A website allows customers to peek inside your business. Just like a shopping window to a store. You want your customers to see through this ‘window’ into your business to explore your products & services. That’s why you need to choose the best platform available to build an engaging interface, one that helps you to create an exceptional digital experience. Your website should drive your customers to find their answers in your solution! Hence Drupal. With this powerful open-source CMS, you reap the benefits of tremendous community support, security, flexibility, customization, and scalability.

But unlocking these benefits will be a challenge if you don’t have a trusted Drupal development partner. Your Drupal development partner should understand your business needs and be equipped to create your solution. That's why it is of paramount importance to wisely choose a Drupal development company. In this blog, we talk about the aspects that you should consider to choose a reliable and trustworthy development partner:

1. Identify Your Drupal Needs

Before hunting down the best drupal partnership for your business, align your internal teams to identify your Drupal needs. As core specialization varies from company to company, you need to find out what type of Drupal development you want from your partner. Right from migration, support and maintenance, third-party integrations, performance optimization, and custom module development, to project-specific developments, here are certain factors to consider before meeting prospective Drupal development companies:

• Define your Drupal development needs and size
• What kind of governance would your website require?

2. Explore The Depth Of Experience And Expertise

Every Drupal development company claims that they offer the best Drupal development service and experience. You need to figure out if that service or expertise is relevant to your business. The ideal company should be able to show its skillset with proof of work in the domain you operate in. Take a look at the certifications your development partner has achieved, like their level of Acquia and Drupal Partnership. Acquia Certification is another premier professional certification program for Drupal and the Acquia Platform. You might want to look into which Drupal-Acquia product skill your development partner is certified in. Make sure to ask about the various projects they have been involved in, find out if they have delivered any project for an enterprise of your size, and request case studies that address challenges similar to yours to understand how they managed those challenges.

3. Pick an Agile Drupal Development Partner

During the length of the project, your Drupal development partner should be like an extension of your team. They should understand your business vision and treat your purpose as their own. That’s why when you’re choosing a Drupal development partner, understand if they follow agile methodologies to facilitate teamwork, self-organization, accountability, and timely project delivery.

4. Discussing the Scope of the Project

Asking for a Request for Proposal (RFP) that will cover the scope of the project is important. This is where you clearly communicate to your Drupal development partner exactly what you want and how you'd like to measure the success of this partnership. You need to effectively communicate about the NFRs that are easily missed out during the project and can affect the implementation of the project.

5. Prioritizing User Experience and Interface

UX is a basic prerequisite for any website. From the beginning of the project, your drupal development company should adopt the design thinking approach and prioritize the user experience (UX) of your website. A combination of exceptional user experience and content is what keeps your customers coming back for more.

Ask your Drupal development partner to share development demos of previous projects or case studies to get an idea of their work. When you discuss the project's scope, ask your potential partner to present their approach to design thinking to understand how they would create the best user experiences for your business.

6. Cross-checking the Marketplace positioning in Drupal Community

Drupal has a large active community working to make it better. Find out if your Drupal development partner is a listed company in the Drupal community. Your research to find the best potential Drupal partner should consider the facts like what is their ranking in the marketplace, how are they reviewed compared to other Drupal service providers, what services expertise they offer, and how many projects have they supported.

7. Post-Release Support & Maintenance Services

When looking for a Drupal development company, do check if your potential Drupal partner offers post-release Drupal support and maintenance.  Agendas like implementing timely updates to support evolving business needs can also be included when freezing the Service Level Agreement (SLA). As a first step, your ideal drupal development partner will assess your infrastructure, app, and code health to identify issues that could impact support and maintenance and customize their service offerings accordingly.

Explore Our Drupal Partnership

We understand that finding the right company that comprehends your business and shares your vision is a challenging task. Your search should lead you to a Drupal development partner who has your back. If your potential Drupal partner qualifies to support you through all the above aspects, rest assured that they will be working to make your business a success. Reduce your search load and try our Drupal partnership.

As Acquia preferred partners, we have gathered the team and the expertise required to deliver engaging digital experiences for our customers. Working with our strong force of 350+ Drupal developers, we bring on board the combined prowess of Acquia and Drupal. With 80+ Acquia-certified Drupal engineers, we are among the top 3 companies globally in the Drupal community. We have delivered about 200+ Drupal projects and are credited for delivering unhindered support for D7, D8, and D9 projects.

We can help you deliver your next best Drupal project. Let’s make great websites together!