Pitfalls of Outsourcing

Many web design companies outsource most or all of their design and development work overseas, and offer to build websites at costs that may appear very attractive.  Lets face it, overseas labor in third world countries is much cheaper than labor costs here in the U.S.A.

But, that labor comes with a catch or two!  Have you ever called Microsoft customer service or support, AT&T, Yahoo, or any of a number of other companies that now outsource their customer service and support services to India or other third world countries?  If so, how many times were those calls a pleasant experience and were they able to completely resolve your issue?

In the past, we at Dallas Website Design have tried working with several overseas companies and developers as well, BUT, the quality of work, level of pride and work ethics were not up to par, and the websites these companies produced were not up to the high quality standards that we at Dallas Website Design demand for our clients, and we ended up having to rebuild those websites using developers right here in the good old U.S.A..

In addition to the problems with the quality of websites delivered, there were problems in communicating development and design requirements and our clients specific needs.  For example, we had a medical facility that wished to develop an online appointment scheduling application for their website for their patients to make appointments online and cut down on the clinics front office labor costs.  We tried giving the project to a company in India to keep development costs reasonable and provide our client with the application at the lowest possible cost.  After working with the company for over 4 months and paying them 3 1/2 times the price they originally quoted, we were nowhere near having the application we specified and we ended up firing the company and writing off the money we paid out, then had our in-house American programmer completely rework the application to fit the clients needs.

On the few other projects we tried outsourcing overseas, none were anywhere near acceptable, and it ended up costing more to repair the websites and correct shoddy programming than it would have cost to develop the project in-house.

Another common problem is that in many countries copyright and trademark laws are either ignored or not enforced, and the custom designed website that you thought you were getting and that was promised to you may very well be a knock off of someone else's website, with just the text and images changed out.

Finally, overseas companies either do not seem to understand the need for securing websites, or just don't care. Websites that are built overseas tend to be far more vulnerable to hacking and exploiting security vulnerabilities.

Can you get your website built cheaper by hiring a company that will outsource your project overseas?  Most definitely!  However, as the saying goes "You get what you pay for," and you may very well end up with a website that doesn't work properly, took far longer to build than was promised, or even find yourself being sued for copyright infringement and/or forced to take down the website at some point in the future.

One of the most important questions you can ask of any web design company you are considering hiring, is whether they have local designers and programmers, or if your website project will be outsourced overseas.

We learned our lesson the hard way!  While outsourcing projects overseas is very attractive on the surface and can allow web design companies to cut their pricing and overhead costs, in the end the only one that comes out a winner is the overseas company.   The web design firm ends up with a tarnished reputation, and the client ends up with a shoddy website.

Your website is a gateway to the world and reflects how potential customers/clients will view your business.  The better the image you project, the more likely you are to build your business.  And the bottom line is that's why you're looking to have a website built, or have your current website updated.