Can you get Cheap Web Site Design Offshore

in India, Russia & Asia?

 

You may have seen an increasing number of "cheap website design", "Outsourced Web Design", "Cheapest Website Designers" or "Offshore Web Design" adverts from companies based in the UK and the west who are using "cheap" website designers in offshore countries with a much lower cost of living than ours.

They will use this in their adverts, stressing that "overheads" are lower abroad but what they really mean is that these people earn much less than we in the West do.

As a result they will tell you that they can produce offshore website design packages at rates much cheaper than this can be done here in the UK. This claim does not really stand up to scrutiny. As well as the actual web design work, these offshore agencies must pay for their UK based marketing front, and as you will no doubt be aware, business advertising is not cheap.

They must also provide an expensive communication network to the affordable or "cheap website design" countries that they use.

As freelance web designers our overheads are very low. Apart from business cards, our only advertising outlay is this website, which obviously we created ourselves. We can easily compete with these "cheap web design companies" and we can prove this to you. In doing so we would actually recommend that you get a formal, SMALL BUSINESS WEBSITE DESIGN QUOTATION from one or more of these offshore design companies first.

If we cannot beat their quote by at least 10% we will advise you accordingly and you can then be assured that you really have got a good deal. In these circumstances we will also provide you with free advice on how to get the best from the company you choose at no charge. (We would gladly do this for you but we have never had to do it yet.)

Cheap Offshore Web Designers' Skills

Please note that there is no suggestion that offshore or cheap web designers from abroad are any less skilled than anyone else. You may however experience some language and communication difficulties with offshore designers. They may not understand the vernacular but some of them are capable of producing work at a standard equal to that you will get anywhere else. Getting them to properly understand your requirements is another story.

Advice - Offshore Web Designer's Use of Images

We are hearing more and more from people who have recruited offshore web designers to build their websites and who have later been invoiced by large imaging companies like Corbis and Getty for the use of images whose copyright thery have infringed.

Typically these invoices are from £1000 to £2000 and they can invoice you for several hundred pounds for the unauthorised use of a single small image on your website.

Unfortunately it is not uncommon for offshore designers, and it must be said some UK web designers, to use unauthorised images.

When this happens the owner of the website is responsible, not the web designer. So, if you are using a web designer, offshore or local, you should insist on a written guarantee that any images they supply are legally obtained.