With borders disappearing and global trade becoming a norm, Outsourcing is a logical extension of moving to a ‘One World’ scenario. Outsourcing can be defined as transferring work, that would usually be done by an in-house team to another team which is not under the same umbrella. When this team is based in another country it is usually referred to as ‘Offshoring’. Wonder what it is called for countries that are landlocked though!
Web Designing and Development as a professional service has been around for well over a decade now and outsourcing of the service is fairly new (say, not more than 4-5 years). There are several countries such as India, Brazil, Philippines, Russia and Romania which are increasingly being considered as the outsourcing hubs for the service. India, undoubtedly being the leader. The main reasons for concentration of service providers across India include a few of the following -
1. Easy availability of trained and experienced Creative and Technical resources.
2. Cheaper costs and overheads and thus reduced costs of services. Costs savings over up to 300% can be achieved in cases.
3. English being taught as a Primary Language right from age 3
4. Minimal cultural differences for being on the same understanding Platform.
These of course are some of the basic reasons of why outsourcing has taken front seat across a wide spectrum of services. As for a few specific reasons for offshoring web design, HTML/CSS or Search Engine Optimization the following are some points which is make outsourcing web solutions favorable -
1. The output of the work produced has zero shipping costs – anywhere in the world! Every piece of work is made to be hosted on the Internet and hence is easily deliverable over the internet by way of files or URL’s in most cases.
2. The inputs required to produce the work also easily deliverable and can be communicated via Emails or cheap VOIP calls. This does not cost money too!
3. Quality Standards for development of web pages are global and common across countries. The W3 Consortium being the central body defining and updating these on a regular basis. Hence a website developed in the USA or in India bear the same Quality mark.
4. Web 2.0 has hogged a lot of spotlight and caught everybody’s attention. India has been one of the pioneers in driving this movement since teams from India have mass produced hundreds and thousands of websites which qualify to be Web 2.0 compliant. The conceptualization is local but the development is outsourced.
5. Flexibility of work to be outsourced in a modular fashion. The process of putting together a website could involve up to 6-8 steps or stages from the initial creative brief to the beta testing and final uploading. Each or any of these steps can be conveniently shared with another team to be implemented. For e.g. if a company is very particular about designing the initial homepage and subpage layouts in-house which needs to be finalized after rounds of discussions with the decision makers – they can keep to this process to themselves and outsource only the next stages of the HTML/CSS development or only the building the site architecture. Or in cases only outsourcing the scripting or programming bits. Hence smaller pieces of work can easily be outsourced.
6. Search Engine Optimization, which tends to be a critical success factor of a website and requires a host of off page activities to be undertaken in addition to some of the standard On page optimization techniques. All these off page activities can be handled in bulk through a specialist agency at very attractive prices. Again since the delivery of this is through the internet, the process and its effectiveness is very transparent and easily analyzable.
Once you feel confident that you can outsource Web Design, Web Development or Search Engine Optimization projects the next step is to look for a suitable partner.
Vineet Bajpai is a leading entrepreneur and CEO of Magnon International, a Web Design India Company.
Author: Vineet Bajpai
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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