Taking your business online has become a fundamental part of doing business at this age. If tech savviness is not one of your main strengths, even if you have a lot of ideas for your business website a lot of question still remains unanswered.
Should you hire an in-house team or should you outsource the web development project to some other company? Tough dilemma right? In this post, we’ll discuss what are the benefits of outsourcing web development, and how you can outsource web development services successfully. To give a rest to your dilemma you need to figure out why other companies are outsourcing web development? So,
Why do companies outsource web development services?
The areas of expertise might be one of the main reasons, to begin with, other than that there are 3 primary benefits of web development services and reasons why companies like to outsource and they are
- To cut costs: According to Deloitte research by outsourcing web development and design tasks companies were able to cut costs up to 59%
- Focus on what matters: Yes, while web design and development is one of those important tasks for a company but overall it is a long-term process, and companies especially small and mid-sized ones can’t really afford to spend that amount of time developing the perfect website from scratch while also maintaining the core functions of the business. According to Deloitte research, by outsourcing companies were able to increase focus on the core competencies up to 57%
- Capacity Issues: For small and mid-sized companies even if they can potentially afford to hire an in-house team to solve their web development problems, they still chose to outsource because lack of managerial capacity, and according to Deloitte research almost 47% of companies outsource these tasks for this very reason.
So if you’re an entrepreneur you definitely understand these pain points. While the benefits of outsourcing business functions are almost the same, the process of outsourcing specific business such as web development services functions is not.
Outsourcing vs In-house team vs Outstaffing
There are various work models when comes to developing web-based digital products. In this segment, we’ll discuss the following 3
- In-house team: As an entrepreneur, the first thing that’ll come into your mind is probably hiring an in-house. In this model, the project owners work with the team as a part of the team, under the same roof as a portion of the company.
- Outstaffing: While dealing with complex projects sometimes the in-house team is not enough because of the lack of subject matter experts in the team and to fix that owners hire remote IT professionals to help the team with particular projects. This practice is called Outstaffing.
- Outsourcing: Lastly when the project owner completely gives and entrusts the project to an outside team is called outsourcing.
All of these work models have their own pros and cons. Like to establish an in-house team you need investment, you need to find the right talents and lastly, you need to get involved as well, and sometimes you may also have to out staff, and in case of outstaffing you need to give effort in additional management efforts and there are also communication issues. On the other hand in the case of outsourcing, you have less control, there are communication issues, and your confidential business information may be at risk in both cases of outstaffing and outsourcing.
But all of these models work best for different business goals and in terms of which one to choose it totally depends on how you want your project to play out. The followings are the what each work models work best for
In-house: For long-term projects, an in-house team is an ideal model You’re also getting high security, smooth communication, and superior control over the project.
Outstaffing: In the case of extending your team outstaffing works best because you can cut costs, and hire niche-based talents with less hassle and investment.
Outsourcing: The ideal model for developing a project from scratch because you get access to world-class savvy experts you can cut the hassle of hiring and start quickly. It also works best for short-term projects.
Now that you know how each of these work models functions, it’ll help you define your goals better and chose the right function that can fit your criteria.
How can you outsource your web development project? Step-by-step
At this stage you’ve already figured out that you need an outsourcing model to start your project. Knowing the pros and cons of all the working models to overcome the negative aspects of outsourcing you need to combine the actions and work through the following steps.
Set Goals For Your Projects
Setting goals for your project is the first step you wanna work on and you need to be as detailed as possible which will help you to stay organized throughout the project and keep the project organized. Note down every little detail like what are trying to achieve, who are the target audience, etc. This will help you to figure out your desired outcomes from the project & determine how much time and money you wanna spend on it.
Set a timeframe, do market research, and come up with a budget
After getting your achievable goals defined you wanna do market research to figure out how much time and money you need to spend to finish the project. Setting a timeframe is important, it keeps you and the people who are working on your project on track but you don’t wanna settle on the specific timeline because various reasons it may need to be extended, the purpose here is to set the mindset and give a direction to the team and the next thing you wanna do is setting the budget. The budget you set will highly influence the timeframe, the quality of your associates, and the outcome of the project. We’ll get into details further on in this article about web development charges.
Clarify and establish your requirement & policy
Before you start working on finding the perfect partner to implement the idea define who your ideal partner is. Define their characteristics, this can be based on previous experience or industry standards. This may include hourly rate or working hours, support, reputation, etc.
And you wanna also wanna defiance a partnership policy based on your requirements and industry standards especially to avoid all the cons of having an outsourced partner implement your idea.
Select a reliable web development outsourcing company
Keeping your requirements and policy in mind you wanna make a short list of web development companies and reach out to them and see if they’re compatible enough to work with you and agree to go with your policies and finalize your decision.
Sign up the Contract and NDA
Finally at this point you sign up with them. Typically trustworthy and authoritative web development and design companies will suggest making the cooperation official but it doesn’t hurt to be a little proactive, the contract typically covers the terms of your website, development process, warranty, and rights of both parties, etc. Other than the contract you’re signing an NDA(non-disclosure agreement) should also be at the top of your concerns. By this documented agreement the outsourced web development agency or company that you’ll work with promises that they won’t disclose the business information that’ll be sharing with them.
Agree upon the control procedure of the development process
At the final stage before you start collaborating you wanna specify the term of communication and channels. You also agree upon
- Remote meeting and time-zone adjustment (In case your team is offshore)
- Monitoring channel
- The budget for strategic items etc.
How can you choose the best agency for your project
Since you have established the outsourcing procedure and you know how you want the project to run, now you need to know how you can choose the best agency for your projects.
Verify Reputation
It’s very rare to find companies who actually share a few of their failures as well as their success. Only a few actually do that and the reviews on the agency’s website are not enough. You wanna check the outside sources too like clutch, Upwork, Good firms, etc to check the actual reviews and you can also potentially reach their previous client and get genuine feedback.
Assess Relevancy
By assessing relevance means that you wanna as niche as possible in terms of hiring for your project and to get the best agency for the specific project you wanna check out the relevant that they’ve successfully completed in the past. For instance, if you’re trying to develop a shopping-related website to sell or promote your product, an agency with previous experience with eCommerce will understand and meet your requirement better.
Build Solid Communication
Build solid communicative relationships right off the bat. When the communication is solid you can be on the same page and being on the same page builds effective partnership and both parties, especially you’ll be comfortable throughout all the stages of negotiation.
How much does it cost to outsource website development?
Let’s get into details about the price of web development service providers. It’s kinda difficult to actually get a firm range of web development services because the pricing depends on various aspects the following
- The number of experts involved in the project
- The scale of the project
- The convolution of the project
- The geographical position
- The hourly rate of geographical location
- The hourly rate of the particular company you’re working with
Let’s take a look at the hourly rate of the 3 most popular outsourcing destination
North America: $150 – $250/Hour
Eastern Europe: $50-$99/hour
Asia: $18-$80/Hour
The End Note
Finding the right agency to outsource your web design and development project can be difficult.
However this article was meant to reduce some of your pain points, so that can avoid the risks and the problems that come alongside outsourcing for your projects. If you’ve found value in this, feel free to share it with your friends, colleagues, and stakeholders who may be facing similar problems.
