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WordPress developers already know CSS, HTML, PHP, Javascript, and other programming languages. They can create attractive and functional websites of different types because of the technical skills that they possess.
However, an awesome website is not enough to drive growth, increase sales, or manage a team of people behind the business.
Therefore, to ensure that WordPress developers have all they need to run a successful business website or e-commerce platform, here are 5 additional skills that every WordPress developer needs to learn.
A Growth Mindset
Many software developers and programmers build websites or applications for the sake of accomplishing a task, project, or job assigned to them.
Often, after creating a working website or system, they move on to another project and let others manage the previous work they did. This makes them stagnant in their career because they let themselves tied with just coding and building websites.
If you are a WordPress developer and you want to level up your career, be sure to learn and acquire a growth mindset. This involves developing strategies and creating plans that will help grow the business or project he is involved with.
Some of the questions a developer with a growth mindset thinks about and ponders on include:
- How can we continuously improve the website or the system we built?
- How do we convert traffic to leads and eventually to sales and profit?
- After we reach a certain goal, what’s next? How can we further grow the business?
A developer with a growth mindset constantly seeks opportunities to grow — whether for himself or for the company he is working for.
Solid Planning Skills
WordPress developers and designers are generally creative.
Being able to create awesome designs and build beautifully crafted websites from scratch is an impressive skill that isn’t available to just anyone.
However, creative minds usually lack a systematic approach and solid planning capabilities, simply because of the many artistic ideas wandering inside their brain.
It is, therefore, ideal for WordPress developers to learn how to be more systematic and organized, not just with their work, but with their career in general.
They should be able to develop solid planning skills that would help them look at the bigger picture, identify their goals, and strategize on how to achieve them.
Quality Assurance (QA) and Testing
In a typical project team setup, developers build the website or the system while the QA testers check the functionality of the product that the developers built.
For every bug or problem that testers find, they will throw it back to the developers so they can fix it and let the testers evaluate it again.
Imagine how much time is spent on throwing issues back and forth just because 2 teams are doing 2 different jobs.
Most developers have a mindset that says “I’m only here to code. I don’t test my own work.” The problem with this work attitude is you don’t get to improve your craft. Because you’re limiting yourself to just coding or programming, you don’t care enough to create an outstanding job.
On the other hand, if you can test your work, you will not depend on others to improve your product or website.
You will not stop until your work is flawless and 100% functional.
Basic Marketing
No matter how attractive, sophisticated, and functional your website is, if no visitor is coming to it, you can consider it useless. And no WordPress developer would want all his efforts to go to waste, would he?
Therefore, basic marketing is one of the skills every WordPress developer needs to learn.
At the very least, developers should be familiar with basic search engine optimization or SEO where you optimize each page of your website using relevant keywords for Google to index and rank it on search results.
Another nice marketing skill to learn is social media management where you integrate the content of your website to various social media websites, such that every new post on your WordPress site gets shared automatically to these platforms.
Email marketing is another ideal skill to be familiar with. Integrating an email subscription form on your WordPress website is a good way to start acquiring leads.
It is very rare to find IT experts who have good knowledge of marketing, but they do exist. And if you’re one of them, just imagine how fast you can grow your business and how much of an edge will you have against your competitors!
Ability to Delegate
While WordPress developers (and all other software developers for that matter) have superpowers of creating an awesome product out of nothing, they, too, have limits. Whether you admit it or not, you can only do so much for a given period.
Having said this, you have to learn and be willing to delegate.
When you pass on work to someone, it doesn’t mean you can’t do it. Rather, it means that you want things to get done sooner because business is growing — there’s more to accomplish!
Additionally, when you show your colleagues that you are comfortable delegating tasks to others, it proves courage and leadership. It means you trust them enough to do their job, and together, you believe you can accomplish more.
Conclusion
WordPress is a really powerful tool. Businesses start, grow, and turn into enterprises through the help of their WordPress websites.
WordPress developers, therefore, should not confine their skills to what they currently know.
Seeing that WordPress has the power to drive growth and success, developers should continuously improve their skills to be part of their business advancement.
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