12 Reasons to Outsource Website Development

Keeping development costs as low as possible is at core of any decision to outsource web development. One of the drivers keeping the costs as low as possible is the fact that a development team based in another part of the world will often have much lower labour costs than one working where you happen to be based. This doesn’t mean you run the risk of any drop in the quality of the work, just that you only have to pay for the time the development team spends working on your website, and at a highly competitive rate. Maintaining an in-house development team, on the other hand, means having to pay them through the year whether they are currently developing or not.

In addition to the labour costs attached to an in-house development team, it brings with it a range of other expenses. These could include the administration costs involved in the process of taking on staff, the purchase or leasing of the equipment they will need to do their job, the cost of maintaining the office space they require and the back office costs linked to any employee. One of the many excellent reasons to outsource website development is that these associated costs all become someone else’s problem.

As well as saving time and money, making use of specialist development services offers a fantastic degree of flexibility. If, for example, you only need a minimum viable product building in order to test the feasibility of your plans then you’ll only need to hire a small development team. As your business grows, your app development and website design needs will shift and become more complex, at which point you can pay for the expertise of specialists but only for as long as you need them. For more complex requirements and builds, the use of outsourced web development teams will see the experts in question becoming an integrated part of your team to all intents and purposes.

An external web development team will have a vested interest in ensuring that they are always working with the most up to date technology and are aware of developments within the web design industry. While you may find it impossible to stay up with all the latest new technologies and developments in the world of web and mobile applications, an outsourcing team will view this kind of information as their bread and butter, and their expertise will be put to work on your behalf. Further, helping your clients stay abreast of new opportunities provided by new technologies becomes a shared endeavour. In turn, your clients will benefit from added value insight, thinking and services.

If you have an in-house development team then, once a website has been developed, you’ll have people who work for you spending time and diverting resources on tasks such as maintaining websites or online services. An external team, on the other hand, can be expanded to cover the job of development and then reduced in scale to manage on-going support. This flexibility could even go as far as expanding the team responsible for your website again for short periods in the future, to deal with downtime or handle the extra demand.

With many agency clients requiring increasingly complex digital services, it becomes more likely that many of these may not be your core expertise. One of the best reasons to outsource website development is that, during the period when the site is being developed, rather than having to oversee the process you’ll be free to concentrate on your core business. As long as the details of exactly what you expect from your outsourced team, and what they agree to provide for you, have been established firmly, you’ll be free to run your business and make money while your ambitions to offer end-end digital services become a reality.

The reputation and business success of a development company depends upon the level of expertise they are able to offer. This means that they have a vested interest in finding and hiring the very best developers and those developers will then be working on your behalf. The alternative to this would involve you using valuable time, money and other resources tracking down the specific expertise you need to work on your website.

Further, the best outsourced software development businesses will invest in training their people, ensuring they are consistently at the top of their game. Its also no secret that when you have a mix of great people teamed up and working together then everyone learns from each other. Needless to say, when these teams are all dedicated developers, which is the case in most outsourced development providers, this learning occurs more effectively, in a way that can be harder to replicate in smaller internal teams.

Getting the best talent to deliver digital services and website development won’t offer a complete solution, of course, unless they have the equipment and resources, they need to get the job done. Once again, outsourcing web development means you don’t have to invest in those resources yourself and find yourself buying or leasing equipment, which, once the website is up and running, you simply won’t have any need for. You’ll also find, when choosing the best outsourced developers, that they will have access to a range of software and licenses that are simply the tools of their trade. When building your own team many of these tools might prove to be outside of your reach or budget simply as a function of scale.

The process of taking on an in-house website development team naturally involves a huge amount of paperwork. From the employment contracts for each member of the team to the bills which start to come in for the hardware and software they need to use. Outsourcing your website means that dealing with all this paperwork becomes the responsibility of the partners you’ve chosen. Once the contract is signed and the project starts you can relax in the knowledge that they have the systems and processes in place to keep the kind of records that you’ll need to refer to later.

There’s no getting away from the fact that it’s become easier than ever to design and launch a website using prebuilt templates. You may be tempted to go down that path in order to save money, but there’s every chance the result will let your client’s down. A large part of any modern business is branding, and a website which has been put together with no expertise in the field will lack the kind of slick and professional result you’ll be able to rely on when working with the right professional web designers.

Of all the reasons to outsource website development, this is perhaps the most important. Professional developers will know about every aspect of design, from which font to use to the balance of colours and images and how to construct pages so that they download quickly and smoothly. As well as the technical skills and experience needed, they will have a grasp of design and customer expectation which will lead to fantastic user experience for anyone visiting the sites you build. Going with templated websites may seem to be a good solution at the outset, but the fact is that websites are often the first thing any prospective customer of your clients sees, and you’ll know as well as anyone that a professional first impression is vital.

When you choose a team of developers to work with, you’ll doubtless be given a sample of their portfolio. As well as showcasing the quality of the work they can deliver, this will highlight the experience they’ve built up. By delivering a range of websites across a number of sectors, an established development company will have gained experience in every aspect of web development, and any problems or issues which arise during the project will likely be ones which they have already dealt with in the past. By using time-served experts of this kind you’ll be hiring experience to streamline the process and get the job done alongside talented development resource.

In the early stages of a project, you may need little more than a working prototype to test the ideas you want to work with. This will require a relatively small team of developers, but that could quickly change once the working prototype has been approved for full development. At this point, the team of developers will grow, and working in-house would mean having to take on extra staff for a temporary period or permanently employing a large enough team to handle these changes of scale and focus. Neither of these is as time nor resource effective as working with an outsourced team that has been put together with just this kind of shift in mind.

If you hire the right development company, you’ll be tapping into their experience in product development. The many thousands of hours which they’ve spent developing solutions for clients from a huge range of sectors will mean that they have built up a wealth of knowledge on the kind of ideas which work and those which don’t. By working on the basis of your business goals as well as your online requirements, you’ll be creating a genuine partnership tailor-made to deliver the solutions you’re looking for, and, most importantly, the impact you want to see on the bottom line.

Outsourcing website development doesn’t mean you’re neglecting your clients in any way. In fact, it means the opposite. It enables you to make use of the very best website development talent out there, at the same time as protecting your own business in a way which enables you to concentrate on core delivery. The result, for your clients, is a balanced mix which combines the best in website development with your own commitment to marketing and creativity. The end result? An online presence that delivers, in every sense of the word, from the user experience to the bottom line.