When developing a website there are a few things that are important to keep in mind:

1. Plan well
2. Use well-suited software / CMS
3. Don’t bloat site with unnecessary plugins or code
4. Responsivity
5. Accessibility -Semantic code - Website speed - Optimised Images
6. Security
7. Monitoring

This involves planning out:
 - overall structure of webpages
 - which domains you would like to use
 - which software would be best suited to build this certain type of website
 - wireframes for content structure and layouts
 - which software will be used to keep your website secure and loading quickly - how you would like to host the website

A simple example of this could be: don’t build a portfolio website with shopify. I use Wordpress and due to its versatility, I find it can be used in almost any use-case but you still have to decide which plugins and theme you would like to use to best acomplish our goal. When writing custom code, you also have to decide what is necessary and what might be unneeded fluff.

People often bloat websites by installing plugins (software add-ons) or copy and pasting long sections of code. Here is how to avoid that. Only use secure, well-known plugins that have been well developed. If you’re looking at installing a plugin for a single stylistic reason then I would suggest coding it yourself - you will avoid a lot of unnecessary bloating due to large amounts of code that are dedicated to other things that you aren’t taking advantage of.

Making a website responsive is the process of developing it to be well-optimised for smaller devices such as laptops, tablets and mobile phones. Around 57% of global internet traffic comes from mobile devices so it is a good idea to make sure your website is usable for these sizes if you want to have a professional online presence that reaches the most amount of people.

Make your website is as accessible as possible so that you are not excluding anyone from using your website.
This will involve using semantic code. Semantic code is HTML that carries meaning and describes the purpose of each element that is being used. To do this use tags, descriptions, attributes and values so that assistive technology like screen readers can easily understand your website and read through it well making it usable for all.
Doing this will also make it a lot easier for search engines like Google to find and understand your content. This will only have beneficial effects for your SEO (search engine optimisation) and boost your online rankings, making your website even more accessible to all.
A website that loads quickly will improve your website’s engagement rates and keep people from  clicking off. This, of course, makes your website more accessible as people will actually be able to see your content. A website that never loads / loads poorly won’t perform well on search engines as they will recognise this as bad practice. One example when it comes to optimising for speed can be to make sure your images are well compressed and in the right size and format.

You don’t want your website to get hacked or carry a virus so installing and configuring appropriate and reliable software to deal with this should be a top priority otherwise all of your hard work will be pointless.

Just because it’s online doesn’t meant mean you can ignore your website and let it run itself.
You have to make sure everything is up-to-date, backed up and secure, search engine optimised and performing well otherwise people just won’t go on your website and have a good experience.