Full Guide on Outsourcing Web Design
What is web design outsourcing?
Outsourcing (using external sources) is the business practice of transferring of non-core duties outside the company.
Web design outsourcing is a way of cooperation when a web design agency or a web designer is hired in a foreign country.
Services that are outsourced the most often are:
- recruitment of personnel;
- accounting;
- maintenance of machinery and equipment;
- operations related to taxation;
- IT;
- web design;
- software development;
- translations;
- security;
- advertisement creation;
- logistics;
- cleaning of premises
Advantages of outsourcing web design
Web design outsourcing is quite in demand today, regardless of the size of your business. Whether you are an entrepreneur or the manager of a huge corporation, or the owner of a holding company, the fundamental advantages of outsourcing do not change.
When deciding to outsource web design services, businesses can save considerable amounts of money and attract highly qualified personnel at the same time.
Deloitte’s research on outsourcing agencies made it clear that most companies experience the following changes in the process of outsourcing website design:
- 27% of respondents state to have achieved 10-20% cost reduction;
- speed of appearance of the product on the market increases by 20%;
- better flexibility is achieved by 40%.
Even corporate giants in the world of IT, such as Microsoft, Google, Alibaba, Slack, GitHub, and many more use outsourcing in their businesses.
Let’s check how your business can profit from web design outsourcing:
Cost reduction
If you are interested in saving the budget of the business (we are sure, you are :)), the right decision is to consider website design outsourcing. When you hire web designers in-house or a web design team, you pay taxes, rent premises for their location, provide working tools, furniture, equipment, and other buns at work. You cover their vacations, sick leaves, and Friday pizzas. By doing some simple math, you realize that this is not a cost-effective solution for your firm. The far better option would be to outsource it.
More time for business
Many responsibilities are hanging over the manager of a corporation, like, finding new connections and investors, developing the latest strategies to attract clients, and so on. Sometimes it’s not easy to allocate time to monitor the work process of full-time designers. Hiring a website design outsourcing company can deal with your direct functions without worrying about the web design process and its outcome.
Access to experts worldwide
Outsourcing web design to another country allows your company to reach talented people who do not live in the neighborhood. It is obvious that by sharing additional skills and international expertise, they can contribute to your project’s success. Having a distributed multinational team is very useful for your business as well as for your in-house staff.
Risks are reduced
When working with a remote team, there is no need to worry if they meet the deadlines, keep your data safe or update you regularly on the process. By mentioning these points in your contract, you can be sure that the outsourcing agency will fulfill its obligations. The company’s reputation depends on positive feedback from customers, which means that employees are interested in high-quality work without delay.
No odd documentation
By hiring an outsourcing company, you will get rid of unnecessary bureaucracy and nervousness. You do not have to manage administrative activities anymore. The only document you should carefully proofread is the contract with your agency.
New ideas
You get fresh ideas from your new employees. Sometimes a newbie can tell much more about the ongoing problem than your old good designer. So, if you are seeking new solutions or inspirations, outsourcing web design to external resources can be beneficial.
Outsourcing to a web design agency vs hiring a freelancer
When you are about to outsource web design services, you might ask a question: what is better: a freelancer or a web design agency?
A freelancer is an individual that normally works independently on a remote basis for some company or multiple customers. A freelancer works from home and gets paid per-job or per-task basis before or after the service has been provided. This is the best choice for a short-term job.
Outsourcing company is a third-party service provider that takes on responsibilities of another company and performs some of their business functions.
We have gathered all pros and cons in the table below.
We hope this tiny table will help you to make the right choice 🙂
Recommendations for hiring an outsourcing web design provider
Selecting an agency to outsource web design can be a challenging and daunting task. The number of outsourcing companies is steadily growing and it is easy to get lost. So, if you have decided to outsource some of your tasks, what should you pay attention to and what should you keep in mind when choosing a provider? Here you’ll find some useful recommendations on how to outsource web design to a proper agency.
First of all, study the following points:
Check their portfolio
Trustworthy design companies are often proud of their portfolio and eagerly showcase it. Normally it is publicly available in the section “our work”, “our case studies” or “portfolio”. We at Limeup provide evidence of our work and showcase our recently done designs too. Should you need a professional design for your healthcare app or for your betting app, you may check our projects page and order a similar custom-made design.
Before you get in contact with a design company, take your time and study their recent works. It will definitely help you to understand the areas of expertise and industries, their strong and weak places, company’s credibility and popularity.
Moreover, ask yourself the following questions:
- Are the websites from their portfolio mobile-friendly?
- Do their websites look up-to-date?
- Are they creative enough or do all websites look the same?
- Are there websites in their portfolio that belong to your niche?
Ask about technologies & tools they use
Before signing a contract, you need to know exactly what tools and technologies are going to use for your project. Ask your internal web designer or someone who has a clue about design to estimate those tools and practices.
Assess their level of English
Nowadays, communication between a client and an outsourcing provider is usually done in English, but basically, it can be done in any other language. Select an agency, whose staff is proficient in your preferred language. In this way, you will avoid miscommunication due to language barriers.
Do not underestimate soft skills
Having a distributed team requires efficient communication among its members, as they come from different cultures and have different mentalities. Some of them are compatible, and some of them are not. You need to assess the agency’s communication facilities to ensure that communication is flawless.
Check the average size of their customer
It is not critical but recommended to know before making a decision. Study their portfolio and independent reviews on the web about your potential partner and make a conclusion, what kind of customers they used to work with: were they large corporations or small startups? This will help to understand if they have worked at the scale you need and outsource web design in the right way. For example, if you are planning to expand your business, covering the global or national level, a local designer will unlikely bring you success.
Start with a test assignment
Handing over a complete website redesign or web design of 100+ pages from scratch to an agency you’ve never worked with, is a huge risk. Limeup recommends to start with a test assignment or with a small amount of work. You can check the results and then decide if you want to go ahead or look for another agency to outsource web design.
Start with a test assignment
Handing over a complete website redesign or web design of 100+ pages from scratch to an agency you’ve never worked with, is a huge risk. Limeup recommends to start with a test assignment or with a small amount of work. You can check the results and then decide if you want to go ahead or look for another agency to outsource web design.
Go through review portals (Clutch, Goodfirms)
Testimonials help you understand how the clients are satisfied with the final product and collaboration generally. They make it easier to decide, whether this agency can be of any help or they probably specialize in different things. As a rule, clients leave their real names and surnames on such platforms, so that you can easily find them on social networks and ask more detailed questions.
Track mentions on the web
Last but not the least method to find out how trustworthy and qualified the company is. Check them out on social. If there are bad reviews on forums or in comments somewhere on the web, it is better to bypass and choose another provider.
These were the main points you should pay attention to before hiring a certain website design outsourcing company. Here are some additional tips for you:
- Ask for samples of web design
- Do not hire the first company you’ve found
- Communicate transparently on budget
- Value the security of your business
- Start with some minor tasks, do not delegate the whole project at once
- Do not be fooled by the lowest price.
Check the contract you sign
Trustworthy design and development agencies always offer official legal cooperation with certain terms and conditions. A contract usually covers:
- the terms of web design
- the estimated budget for web design
- payment terms
- ownership of the product
- deliverables
- rights and obligations of all parties
- warranties
- deadlines
- dispute resolution
- exit strategy
It’s also necessary to secure confidentiality with a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). By this document, an outsourcing web design company promises to safeguard the information you share with the team.
How is a web design outsourcing process organized in Limeup?
So, you have made the choice and are about to hire an outsourcing web design agency. At this stage, it is important to understand the product design process and how the work is going to be organized. Here is how Limeup works. We define the following stages of cooperation with our customers:
- The customer contacts the outsourcing company and describes his needs in general.
- If both parties agree on working together, the outsourcing agency provides an NDA to sign.
- After signing the NDA, the outsourcing team provides its rough estimation of the project duration and cost.
- If a customer agrees to the conditions suggested by the outsourcing company, they sign a contract.
- After pre-pay, the web design team starts determining all details of a new project: customer goals, vision, and preferences. Often they ask to fill out the design brief or questionnaire.
- The web design team conducts profound market research, analyzes competitors, collects references, and eventually comes up with a moodboard for approval
- The agency approves with the customer the architecture of the website and wireframes. You can see the example of a properly built design system for a trading platform done by Limeup.
- Then they build a design system and work on branding for the website.
- Finally, web designers come to UI design itself. At this stage, they cooperate with the development team in sprints.
- After the UI is done and approved, it should be thoroughly tested. Designers collaborate closely with developers and the QA team, provide their recommendations and tips.
- At the support stage, missing features can be added and some minor improvements can be done. The web design team goes on analyzing the website and user’s behavior.
- In the end, the outsourcing team passes all materials and access to the customer.
However, we expect also some things to be done from your side in order to guarantee a smooth workflow and achieve high results:
- Provide the most detailed information about the product, design examples, and what is attractive to you, clearly explaining your vision.
- Set a clear timeline, the ability to divide the design process into specific stages, with the ability to monitor their implementation;
- Stay in touch with us, provide your feedback to accelerate the design process.
These factors will significantly increase the probability of obtaining a quality design that meets all the requirements.
How much does it cost to outsource web design?
When planning to outsource web design, it is not easy to calculate the exact cost of the overall project. The final amount is influenced by the following factors:
- the scale of the planned project
- the complexity of design
- the number of web designers involved
- the level of team
- website’s style, size, and functionality
- project’s turnaround
Additional factors which influence the price of your web design:
-
Custom icons or fonts
Custom graphics and icons are often underestimated. Good icons convey valuable messages to your user so that he does not read the content of your page. They serve as supportive elements of the page and underline the important points.
-
Designer’s location
The location of the web design outsourcing agency is also to be taken into account. Many representatives of global business prefer cooperation with top web design company in the UK, North America, Asia, and Europe. Accordingly, the hourly rates of these regions are taken into account.
Usually, there are two pricing models: pricing per hour and fixed price (or value-based pricing). If you choose the fixed pricing option, the price for web design of a small site ranges from $10,000 to $35,000 depending on the above-mentioned factors, whereas large websites, full of custom features and other tricky things can cost between $35,000 and $70,000.
Pricing per hour can vary from $50 to $150 per hour. It depends on the company’s location, size, and brand awareness.
Apart from hiring a design talent, a web design agency can offer you other related experts instead of a single employee, for example, content writer, SEO specialist, web developer, QA, project manager, etc. This will result in a more professional and successful product.
Where to find a reliable web design outsourcing company?
Choosing a reliable provider isn’t that easy. The process can be exhausting and you simply may get lost looking at the variety of options. In the table below Limeup offers you the most suitable variants where to find your dream team.
When you start hunting for an agency to outsource web design, you will see how challenging it is. But simply start. Start asking people from your network. Check the websites, whose designs you like very much: the section in the footer “design done by…” can help you find the design agency of your dream. Do not be shy, contact them or request a callback. Sooner or later, you will find the design studio you like, or it will find you.
What is the best country to outsource web design to?
When you start hunting for an agency to outsource web design, you will see how challenging it is. But simply start. Start asking people from your network. Check the websites, whose designs you like very much: the section in the footer “design done by…” can help you find the design agency of your dream. Do not be shy, contact them or request a callback. Sooner or later, you will find the design studio you like, or it will find you.
This is a frequently asked question. There are plenty of countries where you can outsource your web design to. Limeup offers you to have a look at some of the top countries for outsourcing web design according to different statistics and questionnaires online:
Each country from the list above has a lot of pros and cons which are to consider before hiring a web design agency from there. For example, some countries are located in a different timezone, so probably you will need to change the schedule for cooperating with them. On the other hand, it can also be an advantage: when your in-house worker leaves his working place, you still have a team behind your computer screen who are available and ready to support.
Looking for a reliable web design outsourcing provider?
If you want your business to grow, maximize your ROI, and make it recognizable, you need a really high-quality web design. This requires a certain budget and time. But a successful design done by a team of professionals, will bring you profit and compensate for all the expenses.
If you still feel confused and do not know what agency to hire for outsourcing website design, we can do this job for you. Here is why Limeup is the best choice to outsource your web design:
- 93% of our team members are middle or senior experts
- 7+ years we design and build visionary digital products for companies worldwide
- We sign an NDA and you may feel absolutely secure about your data
- We have professional, dedicated teams who will work for you 8 hours a day, 5 days a week as well as part-time employees for short-time jobs
To be convinced of our broad expertise, you can check out our portfolio or contact us.