You would like to start an outbound marketing campaign by sending your customers a monthly newsletter. How do you add a newsletter signup form to your website? One of the pages on your website is down, how can you find the problem and get it fixed asap? You have had a great idea for a new app store - a brand new platform for your customers to interact with you and shop or book appointments. How much will it cost to build, and how long would it take? Lastly, you need to implement a new SEO strategy across your site, but what’s the best way to implement and use keywords to maximize organic visits? The answer to many common questions like these lies in coding.
Top Skills for Entrepreneurs
Coding is an incredibly useful skill to have in the digital age, in particular for entrepreneurs, and for a variety of reasons. It lets you perform and understand a range of tasks and will aid you in making faster decisions and perhaps tackling certain issues hands-on by yourself. Coding is a useful asset regardless of whether you run a software company, an e-commerce store, or a brick-and-mortar store. If your business has a website or any kind of online presence, it would be especially useful to learn how to code.
Coding Languages
Whether you need to understand how an interactive web page functions and is built, or wish to develop your own programs, apps, or video games, coding provides you with the knowledge and skills to do it. Simply knowing the major coding languages such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, Python, and Ruby - and their functions - will empower you to make decisions that will improve your business. Some businesses rely on coding more heavily than others. Apps, for example, are built entirely on code. But almost all businesses require some degree of coding whether for internal processes or public, external activities, and in particular when it comes to online marketing.
Building Relations With Your Team & Evaluating Resources
Outsourcing tasks such as building an app or developing a website can be very costly, so understanding how to do this yourself is an invaluable skill to have. It will not only let you perform such tasks independently, but it will also help you understand developers and tech teams and the struggles they may encounter. Plus, any entrepreneur that knows how to code will be able to provide better guidance to their employees. Understanding how coding works helps you to plan, set deadlines, and be aware of the steps in a given project. Additionally, learning how to code empowers entrepreneurs when it comes to sourcing new employees or freelancers to work with. Understanding their background, programming qualifications, and experience will ensure you are better equipped to find the right people for the task at hand, which will ultimately serve your business well.
Cost-Saving
Upskilling yourself can also help you save costs as you will be able to share some of the workloads yourself. Whether it is adjusting a feature in an app, uploading a new form to your website, or testing whether a piece of existing code is working correctly, you will be able to tackle large and small tasks independently and resolve issues that could otherwise take days or weeks to fix.
Coding skills are also beneficial in simply estimating the costs of a project, whether that’s building an online shop or ensuring that your website is optimized both for desktop and mobile, for example, and that it runs well across all browsers and devices. The cost of such tasks is easier to assess when you possess some coding skills and knowledge yourself.
Better Decision Making
All entrepreneurs have to make decisions daily. Many hold a CEO or other leadership position and have to regularly make calls and decide on various topics. Understanding the processes and steps involved in computer coding means entrepreneurs have greater insights into the technical side of any business - whether that’s working with particular software, building an app, updating the website, or branching into a new business area. For faster planning and more creative output, coding is a highly useful skill to have.
Boost Your Creativity and Critical Thinking
Although coding is straightforward and relatively quick to learn, putting it into practice does require a lot of focus, though, and planning, not to mention creativity. Challenges can arise during the coding process, no matter which programming language you are using, and can sometimes require you to think outside the box. Practicing these skills uses logical thinking alongside problem-solving skills, thus helping you stay sharp and on the ball.
Learn How to Code
With all the benefits it brings, coding is a relatively easy skill to acquire. Starting with the basics, you can quickly gain an understanding of the processes involved in programming and the various languages that are available. Each coding language has its own unique traits and functions, and the more you know, the more potential you will have to develop your business. Entrepreneurs with coding skills are generally more aware of the opportunities available to them, both in terms of running business day-to-day and in terms of innovative new avenues that could be capitalized on.
Coding Course
Once you understand the fundamentals, it is easy to build on that knowledge and add to your coding skillset as needed. As with any kind of training and development, it does take an investment - both time and financial. But, the benefits far outweigh the costs for anyone in entrepreneurship, and a leader with coding knowledge can greatly strengthen the potential behind any start-up or established business.
You can get started and learn how to code with our Web Development Bootcamp, which will help you get the ball rolling with the necessary knowledge and skills within three months.
