The internet is awash with over a billion company websites in today’s hyper-connected global and digital world. Your business is no exception. But to stand out amongst all the others, your website must comprise an attractive design, interactive functions and a solid online presence. However, effectively raising awareness of your brand and driving traffic to your business through your company website requires the skills of an experienced web designer and developer. These are what the IT outsourcing companies best provide.
Moreover, detecting bad IT teams is also essential when starting your business. Working with a lousy team can result in poor work quality. You will also expect failed deadlines, wrong e-commerce solutions, wasted time, and costly project estimation. Therefore, you must indeed consider vital criteria to protect your business from potential mistakes.
The blog post includes the best tips and practices for choosing the right website design outsourcing company that you can apply for your business success in the online realm.
But first, feel free to learn more about the difference between web design and web development. Check what website design outsourcing is, how it can help your business, and how to go about it.
Let’s start!
Web Design vs. Web Development
Web design integrates two things: web design and web development.
The former is how the website or app looks. But getting it actually to work is the responsibility of web development teams.
Web Design
The process of conceptualizing, planning and arranging layout and content online is web design. Essentially, creating the look of a website is a graphic design task. Still, it needs a particular set of skills, for instance, the ability to use design software like Adobe XD or Sketch, and a clear understanding of what this type of design needs to achieve.
Likewise, designing a website goes beyond aesthetics to include the website’s overall functionality. Web design must consider its components, methods, and usage. It is also for web apps, mobile apps, user interface, and user experience design.
And a well-designed website or application must have an excellent approach to the following:
• User Interface (UI) – the look of the website or application.
• User Experience (UX) – making it clear how to utilise a website or an application.
Web Designer
An IT professional responsible for designing a website’s visual appearance, layout and usability or application is called a web designer.
A good web designer must have both creative graphic skills and technical skills. They need to be able to visualise how a website will look or its graphical design and how it will function or the conversion of a design into a working website.
Types of Web Designers
These are three common types of designers you’ll run into among the myriad designers that are popular in the field of web design.
• Visual Designer – This is a broad term for web designers and is also known as a User Interface Designer or UI designer. Their responsibilities include selecting and developing web page style guides to hand off to developers. They also ensure consistent design elements, creating iconography sets, making static design comps, developing responsive logos, and even doing a company’s brochure updates. Likewise, if these designers have been in the field long enough, they would typically have some print background that steered their fundamentals of web layout.
• User Experience (UX) designer – These designers create the skeleton of the web page. This includes content hierarchy, information architecture, wireframes, and prototypes. But more than that, a good UX designer understands the relevance of content hierarchy. It continually thinks and strategises what will make a successful end product.
UX Designers explore many different solutions for the same problem. And after innumerable hours of prototyping, user testing, and persona building, a meticulous and thorough decision will determine which avenue is the best solution. A user successfully clicking through their predetermined path and having a firm and conclusive experience with the product will be a big win for UX designers. Most considerably, allowing the user to easily and quickly access the information they need, whenever they need it.
• Interaction designer – The primary task of an interaction designer is to create engaging interfaces that are exceptionally thought-of on user behaviours. For instance, the objects on the page change state when hovering and clicking. Additionally, interaction designers also generate consistency throughout the product by intuitively interpreting the wireframes showcased by the UX designer. Initially, the two designers will work side by side throughout the project’s longevity.
Web Development
Web development is the task correlated with building, creating and maintaining websites and web applications that run online on a browser. However, it may compromise web design, programming, and database management.
Web development is closely akin to and aligns with designing features and functionality of websites and apps, also known as “web design”. However, the “web development” term usually goes deeper into constructing and programming sites and applications.
As such, the basic tools involved in web development are programming/coding languages like Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and JavaScript. In addition, you can also use several other programs to facilitate and manage the construction of websites, such as the content management systems (CMS), including Joomla!, WordPress, TYPO3, Adobe Experience Manager and Drupal, among others.
Types of Web Developers
Web developers often fall under three categories; namely front-end developers, back-end developers, and full-stack developers. However, some web developers also function as webmasters.
To further understand, let’s take a closer look at each of these roles.
- Front-end web developers perform on the website’s user interface or the visual part, which includes the pages visitors see and interact with. These particular developers design the physical layout of each page, integrate graphics, and use JavaScript and HTML to improve the site.
- Back-end web developers construct the website’s structure, write codes, and verify if the code works. Their role may also include overseeing the access points for others who need to manage a website’s content.
- Full-stack developers do the responsibilities of both the front-end and back-end developers. They have the expertise to create a complete website and may work for businesses that don’t have enough budget for a large website team.
- Webmasters are primarily website managers. Their main function is to keep the website updated by ensuring that each page’s applications, buttons and links work correctly.
What is web design outsourcing?
Web design outsourcing refers to a task that involves developing the look, feel and function of a website through hiring and collaborating with IT business process outsourcing companies to perform such tasks. These IT BPOs offer services like web design, web development, web content specialist, tech support, and many more. It can also be possible through onshore and offshore outsourcing.
Why outsource your web design?
Outsourcing does not indicate bad management or taking on more than you can handle. On the contrary, it’s a widespread practice even with giant corporations, which allows them to focus on branding and developing strategies. At the same time, they retain their brand’s full ownership without the “hassle” of simple production tasks.
Outsourcing web design work serves many purposes. And below are some of the reasons an external partner can prove beneficial for your business.
Connects You With Pros
When you outsource your website design work to an external team provider, it will expose you to many experts and creative designers. These web designers will clearly understand your business requirements, work under strict deadlines, and feel obligated to deliver their services efficiently.
Access to Cutting-Edge Design and High-Tech Resources
External web designers and companies no doubt invest in technology to serve their clients with nothing but the best in the business. From new methods in designing to new tools and high-tech resources, they have it all handy.
By outsourcing your web design, you can access all of the best techs in the niche and will have the opportunity to incorporate the latest, user-friendly and highly innovative web designs.
Keep in mind that if your website visitors really have fun navigating your website space, your business can acquire potential leads and even transform them into paying customers.
High-Quality Work
According to a Standard University study, 75% of users consider design as the credibility factor of a website. Hence, it is a good idea to hire an outsourcing company since most external partners work dedicatedly to deliver designs without any faults. As they know that even a single mistake can damage the work’s scope and their relationship with the client, enhancing their work’s quality is their top priority.
Save Time, Money, and Energy
Outsourcing your web design projects will help you save a great deal of time and money. Even your efforts will reduce, too, since, first and foremost, you are a business owner and not a web designer.
Let You Focus and Avoid Stress
Since the work is in the hands of an outsourcing company or third service provider, it leaves you sufficient time to concentrate on your core business operations and avoids stress and burden. You can leverage this time to strategise, grow your business, and get more clients instead.
Access to Global Opportunities
Irrespective of your company’s location, finding an outsourcing company that delivers premium web design work within your budget is possible. With digitalisation and digitisation, you can explore endless opportunities around the globe.
The Most Affordable Regions to Outsource Web Design
If you want to cut expenses while getting top-quality service, offshore outsourcing to these regions may be your best bet.
South And Southeast Asia
Countries like the Philippines and India supply some of the best web design talents in the world while being one of the most cost-effective regions for outsourcing web design services. However, smaller US-based firms may face difficulties caused by cultural diversity too big to overcome.
Eastern Europe
Website design specialists in Romania, Poland and Ukraine, can provide highly competent services to businesses of all profiles and sizes at lower costs. In addition, companies in Western Europe and the US often outsource their projects and operations to Eastern Europe because of a big talent pool, affordable pricing for first-rate professionals, cultural proximity and proficiency in English.
South America
Although this continent is relatively new as an outsourcing destination, the experts here can provide good website services at a reasonable cost. South American countries are still in the process of training professionals and developing business procedures that could match those in Eastern Europe and Asia.
Tips for Choosing the Right Website Design Outsourcing Company
Define Your Expectations
The first step in choosing the right outsourced web design partner is identifying your exact web project requirements. It includes establishing your goals, requirements and current roadblocks, as inaccurate expectations will lead to lost time and resources.
Consider asking yourself the following questions to objectively analyse your current situation and define the requirements you will need to communicate with your service provider:
- What is the ultimate goal of your project?
- What is the scope of your project? How much is your budget?
- What are the requirements of your website in terms of aesthetics and functionality?
- What are the pain points that you need to solve?
Select Your Outsourcing Model
In choosing the right web design company for your business, you must also establish the outsourcing model you require, which can either be onshore, nearshore, or offshore.
Pick Your Outsourced Company
Once deciding a type of outsourcing model, you can start looking for a specific website design outsourcing company.
Here are some vital aspects you should evaluate:
- Portfolio: Check their expertise that should match your requirements too. Look at the projects they have worked on before and examine their quality objectively. Also, check if their website is responsive, has any broken links and how many websites have served their purpose so far. Going over their portfolio will give you an advantage in shortlisting candidates.
- Experience: Ask each potential outsourcing company whether they have created web projects in an industry, field, or niche similar to or same to yours.
- Technology: Discover the tools and tech stack your potential service provider uses and their proficiency.
- Team: Review their team members’ tech knowledge, skills and experience.
- Customer feedback: Look for independent reviews of their services by previous customers and clients and find out what they say about the outcome of their collaboration.
Meet With the Potential Candidates
- Shortlist candidates: Shortlist 8-10 companies as your potential candidates to outsource your website design work.
- Conduct test: Have the candidate write a few lines of the code or make him write a paragraph explaining your website.
- The interview process: Prepare all essential questions, like putting forward a situation and asking them about their process for handling it. It will measure their expertise and agility. Also, note their tone, professionalism, working attitude, how well they take criticism and thoughts on deadlines.
Set Your KPIs
Lastly, to make your journey in finding the right website design outsourcing company a success, establish realistic and measurable key performance indicators (KPIs).
When deciding on your website project’s KPIs, you should consider the following into account:
- Your KPIs should have an objective measure in numerical terms (quantity, volume, time, percentage, etc.)
- They should also be on par with your short-term and long-term website goals, like boosting organic traffic, reducing bounce rates, getting more leads, increasing conversion rates, etc.
For other tips for choosing the right website design outsourcing for your business, click here.
Conclusion
In this day and age, it is indeed true that one of the most efficient ways to create visibility and get the word out there for your business is through a website. But making your business stand out online is easier said than done. Thankfully, a professional web design outsourcing company can help you build a strong online presence for your brand identity, drive traffic to your website, generate leads, and increase your sales funnel. But remember that you must also be very careful when choosing. So follow the tips above to select the right and most suitable web design outsourcing company for your business. Thank you for reading!
Looking for a reliable team to design a top-notch and premium quality website or web application for your business that will bring value to your customers? The Lead Enquiry is here to serve! We are an excellent marketplace that can connect you to skilled web designers, developers, and webmasters alike. Contact us today.
