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A beautiful, high-converting website is crucial for any business hoping to generate leads and sales online. But hiring a professional web design agency can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
To save on costs, many businesses decide to outsource their website design and development overseas. Countries like India, Philippines, and Eastern Europe offer web design and development at a fraction of the cost compared to the US, Canada, UK, and Australia.
While outsourcing web design can lead to short-term savings, it also comes with significant long-term risks that can actually end up costing you more in the long run.
Here are 7 major downsides to outsourcing web design and how it could ruin your business:
1. Communication Barriers Lead to Misalignment
Clear communication is key to a successful web design project. But when outsourcing overseas, communication barriers like language differences, cultural nuances, and time zone gaps can lead to misalignment.
Requirements get lost in translation. Changes take longer than expected. Frustration builds on both sides.
This communication gap means your website likely won’t match your vision and business goals. And fixing these issues after the site launches will require additional time and money.
2. Lack of Understanding of Your Target Audience
Your website needs to speak directly to your target audience and market. This is difficult for an overseas web design team unfamiliar with your business environment.
Subtle regional differences like using “elevator” vs “lift” can matter. Imagery, icons, and color schemes that resonate at home might not work for your actual audience.
Without an understanding of your local culture and target customer, your outsourced site won’t connect with visitors or convert leads effectively.
3. Lower Quality Design and Code
It’s a common myth that overseas web designers provide the same quality at a cheaper price. But in reality, you often get what you pay for.
Outsourced designers tend to have less experience, training, and design education compared to firms in developed countries. This leads to lower quality websites that look generic and dated.
Likewise, overseas developers often lack the coding skills and development best practices required for fast loading, secure, accessible websites. Spaghetti code and architectural shortcuts can create long-term technical debt.
4. Lack of SEO and Conversion Rate Optimization Knowledge
Most outsourcing firms focus on delivering the designed site, not optimizing it for organic search and conversions.
Without proper SEO and conversion rate optimization (CRO), your site won’t drive traffic from Google or convert that traffic into leads and sales. This defeats the entire purpose of having a website.
SEO and CRO require ongoing optimization over time. Outsourcing overseas makes this difficult due to communication barriers and time zone differences.
5. Scalability Issues Down the Road
Outsourced sites are often “fire and forget” projects. The overseas team launches the initial website then moves onto the next client.
But your website needs to grow as your business does. New features and pages need to be added. New integrations need to be built. Your site needs to handle more traffic over time.
Scalability and future growth is difficult with outsourced web design. You either need to pay the agency for ongoing enhancements, or hire someone new to maintain and expand the site.
6. Security and Intellectual Property Risks
Handing over your website design to an overseas third-party comes with potential security and IP risks.
Code can be copied from your site and reused on competitors’ sites. Design files and confidential business information can be leaked.
Likewise, overseas teams often lack rigorous security precautions like encrypted data, password management, and access controls that protect your website from hackers.
7. No Recourse if Problems Arise
Outsourcing halfway across the world means you have little legal or financial recourse if challenges arise.
If the agency doesn’t fulfill the agreed upon work, or a problem arises down the road, you have limited ways to enforce contracts across international borders.
Likewise if your outsourced site gets hacked, has compliance issues, or faces a lawsuit, the overseas agency has no liability or responsibility. You bear the burden.
How to Weigh the True Costs of Outsourcing Web Design
These downsides might make outsourcing web design seem like more trouble than it’s worth. But you need to weigh the risks versus the potential cost savings.
Here are some tips on determining the true costs of outsourcing your website overseas:
- Clearly outline all requirements upfront to prevent mismatched expectations. Hiring an intermediary project manager in the same time zone as the outsourcing firm can help bridge communication gaps.
- Vet portfolios closely to assess design quality and development capabilities. Ask for code samples and sites built for similar clients.
- Factor in costs for a local designer or developer to fix issues post-launch. Budget for ongoing local expertise for enhancements and optimizations.
- Include legal fees to draft strong outsourcing contracts. Build in penalties for delays, intellectual property breaches, and problems down the road.
- Calculate costs of a security audit, penetration testing, bug fixes, and potential downtime to shore up vulnerabilities.
- Consider lost revenue from lower conversions, less SEO traffic, and reputational damage if the site fails to meet expectations.
- Weigh benefits of higher upfront savings versus costs of moving your website back onshore later. It’s often more expensive to rebuild a site than building it right the first time.
Outsourcing your website to an overseas web design firm can initially seem like a savvy budget move. But without aligning on quality expectations and proactively managing risks, it can end up sinking your business instead of providing real cost savings.
Key Takeaways on the Downsides of Outsourcing Web Design:
- Communication barriers lead to misalignment with your goals, audience, and branding
- Lack of local market expertise reduces effectiveness and conversions
- Inferior design quality, code, SEO, and optimization hurt your ROI
- Security vulnerabilities and intellectual property theft expose you to risk
- No recourse for problems down the road burden you with all liability
- Rebuilding a failed outsourced site ultimately costs more long-term
Carefully weigh true costs and risks before jumping at rock-bottom outsourced website prices. An experienced local firm familiar with your market and goals, while more expensive upfront, can better ensure online success over the lifetime of your website.