Hello, I’m here again to write about something that I’m very passionate about. Singapore has barely scratched the surface for supporting local musicians and artists, and I think we should supporting local web designers as a top priority too!
From my time in the industry, I’ve found out that a lot of companies outsource their work to cheaper labour in foreign countries. Most of these companies do not even have in-house designers or developers. It’s just 1 sales guy, who you meet up with, has barely any knowledge about design or coding and tells you he can deliver a website to you. He is merely just a middleman, so do you know who is actually working on your website?
Delays in replies
The main problem with working with a middleman, is he will need to relay all your questions, revisions and questions to the person actually building the website. Even simple questions like “Will I be able to provide a first sign-up discount for customers?” will take a few days to a week to get replied to, because a) the middleman doesn’t know the technicalities as he isn’t trained in web development, b) the foreign developer is on a different timezone and c) he also has a large number of projects from clients all over the world too. This results in projects that take a long time to complete!
Lost in translation
Most foreign developers from neighbouring countries do not have a good grasp of English, even though they may be very good at what they do. Certain things that may seem like common sense or common practice to you, has to be explained out step by step to the developer. Furthermore, most clients are not very well versed or knowledgeable in technical stuff, so you will have to rely on your middleman to know what you want and successfully relay that to the developer.
The design never looks like the final website
I’ve personally been engaged to just do the design portion of the website, and for some reason, the final coded website never looks exactly like my design. Whenever you have 1 person designing and another coding (especially someone who is not also a designer), such instances are bound to happen. Most of the time, there aren’t any quality checks done to ensure that the final product looks exactly like what the designer envisioned as there are some elements that are not best explained in a static mockup eg. mouse hovers, animated effects, slider effects, parallax effects etc. It is always best to have the site fully developed by the same person, so that the concept, ideas and creativity follows through from design all the way to development.
In conclusion, it is very important to know who exactly is working on your project and know the benefits you get from having a close working relationship with your web designer, compared to a sales middleman. Yes, I get it, labour costs in Singapore is way higher than it is in neighbouring countries like India and Vietnam, but working with local talents comes with its benefits as well!
