| Looking for Cheap Web Design? Think Fast. |
By Jayme Ward When looking for cheap web design, many small business owners make their decision based on whomever offers the lowest hourly rate. This is how the outsourced web design companies in India attract so many clients. They offer $12 to $15 per hour rates that most companies in the United States, Canada and England can't compete with. At least, on paper, they can't compete with them on a per hour basis. But you need to do your homework before making your decision because what may appear to be the best deal may not always be the case.Here is the most common example of why the low hourly rate offered by the outsourcing firms does not always translate into a good deal on a cheap website. Let's say you are looking for a simple 5 page website with a CMS system so that you can update it yourself once it is built. The outsourcing company tells you that they will charge you $15 per hour to build this website for you. They will have the website ready for you in 3-4 weeks. (This is a common turn around time when outsourcing this size of website.) The local company will charge you $95 per hour to build the exact same website but they can get it done within 1 week. You look at the $95 per hour rate, hyperventilate, and go with the outsourcing firm because it's cheaper. The most common mistake business owners make is forgetting to ask how long it will take to build the thing. When you get into production the outsourcing firm tells you that website will take them 60 hours to build and since you don't know anything about web design you figure that is reasonable. You end up paying $900 for your website. But if you asked the local company how long it would take they would have built it in 8 hours for a total cost of $760. Plus, your website would have been ready in 1 week. This is a very common marketing ploy with companies that offer cheap web design. Offer a low, eye catching hourly rate and then make up for it by taking 10 times longer to build it. I'm not suggesting that they are billing you for hours that they aren't actually using. The point is, they aren't exactly in a hurry to get the job done fast. At one time my company tested the waters of outsourcing to see if it would save us any money on production. The hourly rate looked great but the issue was always speed and turn around time. Where my in house designers could build a website in 5 hours the outsourcing firm would take 30. Even though I was paying a lot more per hour to my in house designers the end result always cost me more to outsource. Remember when collecting bids that the hourly rate you pay is not as important as how long it takes to build the website. That is where you'll save your money. Jayme Ward is the owner of Digi Donkey, an Internet Marketing company located in Historic Cocoa Village, Florida. He has been involved in Internet marketing for over 16 years. |
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