Outsourcing your web site design

Web site design customers in the UK tend to frown upon outsourcing and this is understandable. Almost every large utility company today outsource their back office and customer services are generally handled by non-UK staff abroad. A lack of personal touch, poor communication skills and accents means that these services are not welcomed by customers at large.

We do not want to speak to somebody sitting thousands of miles away for services and products. How about your web site design? Would you outsource your web site design work to another country? Although you might be reluctant at first, there might be circumstances under which it could be interesting and even advisable to have your web site design done abroad or outsourced. A local project manager who communicates well, good value for money and excellent web site design support are just some of the key factors that you might consider before outsourcing your web site design.

Although communications technology has greatly improved over the past few years with cheap and quality technology and telecommunications services, you cannot beat talking to a local project manager in the UK when discussing and ordering your web site design. No matter where your web site is developed, you need to be able to pick up the phone and talk to a sales or project manager who, not only understand your language, but also who is familiar with your needs and the local web site design market. Someone looking for a web site is also looking for a friendly service and web site design advice from a professional who is available at local times and who is sensitive to your needs.

This is not always easy to achieve when dealing with remote staff sitting in a foreign country with foreign customs and markets, no matter how much training they have received and no matter how good their accents. If you are dealing with a local professional with whom you can talk to and develop a professional relationship, there is no reason why the actual web site design work cannot be outsourced abroad in the back end. As far as you are concerned, it does not matter where the web site is being developed. Your local web site design project manager will make sure that your web site is designed as per your request and amended to suit your needs.

Once you develop this confidence, outsourcing your web site design work can prove to be very rewarding both in terms of value for money and the quality of the web site design. Indeed, one of the main reasons for outsourcing web site design, or any other services for that matter, is the cost factor. You could get a lot more done for your money through competitive web site design prices. Like it or not, a lot of the web site design skills is actually sitting abroad where, for various reasons, the cost of labour is still reasonable low. If you are concerned about using cheap labour, rest assured that web designers and highly skilled personnel abroad are not underpaid. Typically, a web site designer abroad working for an outsourcing company will earn at least double the average pay rate of his/her country.

Another key factor is the service level. Web site developers abroad are hungry for work and will generally work odd hours, fast and efficiently to secure jobs and build confidence in their services. They have more to prove than their counterparts in the UK and therefore will generally work much harder on your web site design project. More than likely, you will require changes to your web site design while it is being developed and even after the commissioning of the web site.

The chances are you will have more flexibility on this issue with your web site designers abroad than with local web designers. So, outsourcing is not a no go area, certainly not in back office web site design. In fact it can be a blessing provided you have an excellent project manager based locally who communicates well with you and his or her back office web site design team.


Ralph Ramah is the webmaster of Discount Web Design, one of the leading web design company in the UK offering quality web site design and SEO services.