Why companies are not using SharePoint to develop public facing websites?
Despite offering benefits like centralised administration, customisation, site consolidation and content management, only a small percentage of enterprises prefer using SharePoint for public-facing or corporate website. In fact, the use of share point system for other purposes like intranet, data storage or as a platform for web application able to save good money to invest in other technologies and open source options. So what are the reasons that are stopping firms to develop SharePoint websites in Dubai?
Initially, this platform was used for data storage, collaboration and document management in the highly demanding corporate environments. After observing the tremendous benefits such as efficient collaboration, scalable data storage, easy access and sharing of files from multiple devices, developers started using it for web-based apps. However, these exciting features failed to convince them to use it for website development due to few misconceptions.
Below I am debunking few common myths with the help of actual facts to show the benefits of using SharePoint for website development.
Myth-1: Websites made in SharePoint don’t look good
This concept of the bad looking website has come from the limited design capabilities of initial versions of this development platform in 2007 or may be due to the bad intranets experiences that failed to pay attention to interface design. This is why people mistakenly assume that websites made in SharePoint can’t look good. However, the reality is entirely different. It can create great looking beautiful and easy to navigate sites.
Myth-2: SharePoint websites are not favourite choice of design agencies
The primary reason to dislike this website development platform is lack of skills and capabilities to use this platform to design and develop websites. General agencies often lack technical resources with design and UI skills for site designing. As they don’t want to lose a project, they discourage prospective clients to choose this platform for web development. Those who know to use this platform can explain the sophistication of websites developed using SharePoint. However, these skills can be learned and implemented to create apps and websites.
Myth3-Search Engine Optimization of SharePoint websites is not possible
Inability to optimise for the search engine is another misconception, which is prohibiting enterprises to avoid choosing this technology for corporate website development. This fallacy has emerged due to the complex code and substantial content in older versions of this platform. In contrast, to that upgraded versions have resolved this issue. They have improved not only the code but also simplified on-page optimisation work like Meta tag management. To obtain a good ranking on Google, enterprise owners have to pay attention to other things like the addition of quality content and offsite SEO.
Myth4-No reasons to choose SharePoint for website development
This is mainly because of historical experiences and inefficiencies to create an attractive looking company website. The situation is entirely different now. After observing user interest to use SharePoint for web apps and software, Microsoft has upgraded this development platform to create functional websites. Now, it can be used to develop feature-rich and attractively designed public-facing websites.
Endnote: SharePoint is highly capable website management platform, which is widely used to create SharePoint websites in Dubai to deliver maximum functionality and usability with better control.