A business website has become the primary point of contact for customers today, especially for businesses with a Customer Experience Portal. It’s your main sales force, your storefront, and even your go-to customer support area – even if you have a convenient physical location. In fact, McKinsey & Company claims a pronounced 200% to 300% increased preference in Online Service. Given all of this, Website Security has become paramount in ensuring a successful relationship to your customers.
While you could consider bringing your web development completely in-house, that presents a large hiring investment. Many think outsourcing or freelancers are an economic decision that will yield satisfactory results – but you get what you pay for in terms of security, time to marketing and quality of service. So, before you invest your time and money into hiring an overseas web developer, you should consider finding a reputable company like CommonPlaces with whom you can build a long-term relationship.
With this said, I want to share with you the truth on why it’s a much better decision to keep your web development project in the US rather than outsource to an overseas company.
Here are six reasons to keep your web development with a trusted US-Based company:
1. Data Security from the Start
The United States has strict cybersecurity and accessibility laws that make a lot of sense. Outsourced development, more often than not, lacks knowledge of how to conform to these laws. We find that 75% of outsourced or freelancer developed websites have severe security, quality and ADA issues. If your website handles personal data or sensitive information, then outsourcing your development project can mean significant risks to data security and customer privacy. So ask yourself: Is it worth putting your business at risk of litigation as a result of this?
CommonPlaces follows strict security protocols when it comes to preventing data vulnerabilities, so you can offer a safe experience when customers sign up for your newsletter, enter sensitive payment information, or fill out a contact form.
2. Actual Cost v. Implied Cost: “Cheaper” is Rarely Actually Cheaper.
The main reason businesses choose to go with an overseas developer is the perceived ‘cheaper costs’ versus hiring a professional organization. BUT – Quality matters just as much as the costs involved. Overseas developers typically have less of a quality standard because they want to offer quick turnaround so they can get paid and move on to the next customer, knowing that you don’t have many options for payment recourse if something is to go wrong. It has been our experience that fixing a poorly built website can be much more costly than initially investing a little extra money to get the job done right through a reputable local developer that provides reliable support.
Did you know that outsourced projects are often just copied with some small branding changes and can be sold to your competitors? As a result, you may even run into problems with licensing and copyright that are tough to resolve when your designer or developer resides in a country with totally different laws.
Think about ransomware too! The price to remove ransomware that may have been inadvertently (or on purpose, if you happen to have run into a scammer) placed on your site by an overseas developer, can cost tens of thousands of dollars to remove, recover files, and correct the issue – thus inviting some risky business.
3. Time Management and Service Hours
Cheaper costs often bring wasted time trying to solve issues – and communicating requirements can be a daunting task, especially in wildly different time zones. Time management goes awry, mainly because overseas developers are not experienced enough in their field, and do not have the cultural business experience to understand the U.S. market. This lack of experience can cause micromanagement and excessive calls to stay on track with the project. Additionally, because overseas developers know they can charge for every minute of their time spent on your website, it is very possible they will overlook initial issues that could be prevented with clean code, and circle back to “fix” the issues later.
The fact is, a significant amount of time is wasted managing an overseas development project. We have seen that instead of your website being developed in months, it could take a year or more. The perceived cost savings must be compared against the time spent overseeing the development of a project on the other side of the world.
4. Expect High Levels of Quality Control with a Local Developer.
If you are looking for a cheap web developer or designer, you have to quickly accept the lower standards of the work presented. A cheap website built by developers who don’t adhere to quality control standards can have negative repercussions. Messy code has no structural integrity, can hinder your site’s speed, is likely to crash with the smallest of updates, and may result in a loss or breach of data and put a major interruption in your daily business. Clean code is very important.
Web development work done overseas may not live up U.S. standards of quality and privacy. This can even result in financial loss because your competitor may have invested a little extra in a quality build, potentially resulting in them taking a portion of your business because of your downtime. So, while overseas developers can usually get the job done cheaply, the quality just will NOT be there. Think of buying cheap offshore products that break and don’t operate properly. In the end you have to replace them with higher quality, safe products.
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5. We TRULY Care. Let’s Talk Customer Service.
Customer Service is one of the major problem areas with outsourcing web development overseas. Getting in touch with an overseas developer once they’ve received payment for the project is often near-impossible. We have seen it happen to a few of our “fix-it” clients who had no recourse on their website-gone-wrong. Countries that offer outsourced development typically aren’t concerned with business communication and work integrity, and they have no incentive to build websites with clean code, tight security, and great follow-up like reputable USA-based firms are required to provide.
6. Ongoing Support and Security Upgrades
If you run into problems with your website or just want to make a small change, the hassle of trying to communicate with the original developers can be daunting. Support is virtually non-existent after you have paid an overseas developer. At CommonPlaces, we go above and beyond to offer the level of support you will need based on the scope of your website. Not only will you get tight security from the get-go, but when you choose to work with CommonPlaces, you can also rest assured you will be constantly made aware of new regulations as well as the security updates which prevent attacks before they show up.
Make the best decision for your best ROI.
Enter the old adage, “You get what you pay for.” That is precisely true in the web development industry. If your time and money are valuable to you, you should never even consider risking your web development project to “low-cost” overseas developers. While US-Based professional developers will inevitably cost a bit more up front, placing your trust in a reliable local developer like CommonPlaces will actually save you time and money in the long run. Ready to get started?
