Most businesses look at their website and think about an upgrade. Is it looking tired? Does it have the look and feel of today’s classy websites? And if you are going to have a makeover, will it be done in-house or will a design company be employed? There are all sorts of questions but who has the right answers?

Of course it depends on the size of your operation. A smaller or medium sized business may have just the one IT specialist whose job is to make changes to the site and see that it keeps humming along. Would this one individual be up to re-designing your entire site? In bigger companies there will be a team of web experts involved in all aspects of re-jigging and updating your site. What to do?

Beware of myths

  1. Let’s keep it in-house; we won’t have to pay. This is an obvious myth. As soon as you take staff off their regular tasks to work on web design, that’s costing you money.
  2. Let’s get the cheapest design team and save big bucks. If you pay peanuts you know what you get. A poorly designed website is a huge expense, an ongoing expense for your business.
  3. Let’s employ more than one design agency. More brains equals more ideas. In fact agencies are generally loathe to work with other agencies. This is a good way to get a confused web design.

The facts

Relevant surveys throw up some interesting facts.

  • More companies use outsourced web design teams than those who do it in-house.
  • Roughly speaking the cost of a new website created by an outsourced designer is twice the cost of one designed in-house.

In making your decision you need to consider a number of issues. Are you too close to the project to see its weaknesses or potential? Should you hire someone who does nothing other than design websites, a design company? If an outsourced website is approximately twice the cost of something your staff created, is the extra cost justified? Only you can answer these questions as every business is unique and every website has its own strengths and weaknesses.

Remember that web design can be divided roughly into three areas.

  • Market knowledge
  • Creative design
  • Technical skills

In making your choice about in-house versus outsourced, can the selected designer do the necessary technical things and be creative whilst also being market relevant at the same time? You see having someone who is a whizz at setting up all the widgets and gadgets and whatever is great. But do they have a vision about style and atmosphere? Are they able to project the right image for your business?

Communication breakdown

If you outsource your web development, how good are your communication skills? It doesn’t matter how good a designer may be, if they can’t understand your business and your goals, they’ll miss the boat with their design. Whoever gets the gig, they must be as good a listener as you are an explainer.

It’s your call. Why not list the pros and cons in making the choice of designer? Look at the facts in black and white. If you have the talent on staff, you could save a significant amount of money and have the designer on call for tweaks whenever required.