4 Must-Have Skills to Become a Web Developer

Introduction

In order to become successful in any industry in the world, a person should, above all else, invest a lot of effort in both personal and professional skill set development. The technical knowledge required to do the job goes without saying, but it can develop over time through practice and experience. When it comes to industries like web development, whether we’re talking about back end or front end developer skills, personal traits play a significant role, almost as much as technical knowledge or the ability to advertise yourself. As the public interest for web development increases, due to the prospect of large salary, flexible work hours, and ability to scale from freelance developer to CEO in a short time frame, we decided to create an article that will let you in on what it takes to become a web developer that actually works and makes more than just a living out of it.

Communication skills

The internet allows us to communicate and work with people from all over the globe, which brings more chances for work, expands our market, and facilitates information traffic. However, not all clients are able to communicate well in languages other than their native tongue, therefore, it’s necessary to put a lot of work in developing communication skills for numerous reasons.

You should always be able to articulate your thoughts in a manner that the other side will understand clearly. If you try to communicate using technical expressions with a person that doesn’t even understand the difference between JavaScript and HTML you won’t get too far in explaining yourself to the client. Furthermore, if you aren’t able to understand your client’s requirements, you might get into a situation where you spend a lot of hours working on a project that’s far from what was actually expected.

 

Time management

To be honest, any job skills list should include time management as one of the most important assets. When it comes to web development, the ability to prioritize and create a schedule that would provide enough time to complete all of your projects before the deadline comes knocking and leave you with enough space to have a life is of paramount importance.

It doesn’t take a lot of thinking to understand the value of time in an industry that basically creates online business space. As opposed to college where if you weren’t able to produce an essay in time – you could always buy essay on time, if you don’t make the deadline as a web developer it’s not only your business that’s in trouble but also your client’s as well as any other business that depends on your clients ability to launch their web service as planned.

It’s not unusual to encounter issues that will put your progress to a halt for a time, which is another good reason why you need to be good at organizing your days, weeks, and even months in some occasions. If your schedule is too tight, even a minor setback could mean breaching the deadline, thus losing your rating and potentially a client. There’s an old saying that “Time is money”, and with back end and front end technologies, this statement is true to a fault.

 

Deep understanding of UX

For web developers, one of the most useful skills to learn is certainly the ability to create the vision of how users want to use a piece of software and what that piece of software should look like. When you design a web application, you do more than just placing together pieces of code in order to create a coherent working product. You create an extension of your user that allows seamless and intuitive utilization of your product. User experience is the key aspect that determines how successful your product will be in the future, however, to be able to design user-oriented apps you have to educate yourself on various aspects of UX design like creating user personas, conducting analysis and surveys, design patterns and styles – it’s not easy but it’s worth it.

 

Ability to adopt new industry trends

Over time, web developers manage to come up with their own style and way of doing things to get the job done. Although authenticity is an important aspect of any business, more so when it comes to creative fields like the one we are discussing, it’s important to keep up with the trends. Remember how Nokia failed to understand that Android is the key to survival in smartphone manufacturing? The Finnish mobile phone producer was the ultimate brand in its day, but when the industry moved forward they’ve decided to stay and that’s why everyone carries Samsung and other brands that couldn’t touch Nokia before.

 

Conclusion

There are many other useful skills that you can adopt or enhance in order to become successful in web development; however, we decided to go with the most essential ones. After all, it’s important to build the foundation of your success, the rest will follow. Stay creative, stay true to yourself, work on self-improvement, and always keep an eye open for new trends and techniques.