Last Updated on February 10, 2023
07 min read
Web development is one of the fundamental IT services that are most frequently outsourced. Today, the majority of firms, including Fortune 500 organizations like Apple, American Express, and General Electric, outsource white-label web development services. Outsourcing web development offers a number of remarkable advantages, including cost savings, locating the appropriate expertise, meeting tight deadlines, and improving focus on more crucial business operations.
However, as we look at outsourcing from its dark side, we can see some drawbacks, like security concerns, reliability issues, and difficulties with outsourcing quality control. Unless we want to lose out in the fiercely competitive corporate environment, we cannot disregard these shortcomings. Therefore, we shall go into detail about the main web development outsourcing issues and their fixes.
Business competition is increasing, which forces enterprises to launch their goods and services more quickly. At the same time, the web developers must work under strict timelines. And naturally, they create web solutions that are only adequate for a particular period of time and are not resilient to change.
Web solutions that are not scalable or adaptable frequently fall short when a firm expands, the number of users increases, and more storage or customization is required.
An attractive website is absolutely necessary, but it also needs to be fully functioning. Businesses that outsource web development have little influence over the project, which frequently results in a messy backend. Whereas managing a website through the backend can be challenging for the end user.
In the United States in 2019, 63% of Google visits came from mobile devices. With this, 80% of all users globally in 2019 used mobile devices to explore the internet.
Along with cross-browser compatibility, developers must assess a website’s responsiveness and compatibility from the design process onward. Make sure this is taken into account by your web development outsourcing company.
A slow website can cause you to lose potential customers in a matter of milliseconds. In fact, if a website takes more than three seconds to load, 53% of visitors are likely to abandon it. Companies often overlook the importance of efficient bandwidth utilization when outsourcing web development, but it is crucial for ensuring a fast and smooth user experience.
To resolve this issue, developers should consider outsourcing image hosting to a third-party server for serving thousands of users simultaneously. They can also speed up page load times using server-side HTTP optimization. However, many independent contractors neglect these important factors, leading to slow websites as a common outsourcing problem.
According to experts, on-page SEO starts as soon as a website is developed, which is why many websites take longer to rank. When web development is outsourced, developers are likely to give the SEO aspect of the website limited consideration.
To ensure a website is SEO-friendly, its structure, lazy loading feature, and speed optimization are all important factors to consider. Websites should have proper alt tags, header tag structure, and meta tags to improve their search engine visibility and attract more organic traffic.
When a company outsources web development, the responsibility for the project is transferred to the outsourcing provider. As a result, the company has limited control over the development process when using project-based outsourcing. The outsourcing firm may not follow the quality standards set by the company because it has its own set of procedures, team structures, and development standards.
To overcome this issue, companies can build a separate development team that can be managed according to their business goals and processes. This can help to ensure that the web project is completed to their desired standards and quality.
A major factor in the slow progress of the development process is the slow approval process on the client side. Outsourcing web development to companies that allow less openness can result in delays in decision-making.
A solution for the company is to keep the decision-making process simple and align stakeholders on a specific project scope.
Before outsourcing, it is important to evaluate your needs and the budget you are willing to spend. Many businesses mistake a web consultant for a web developer or vice versa, but these are two distinct roles with different responsibilities. Web developers are more focused on executing specific coding tasks, while web consultants tend to focus on strategizing and planning web solutions.
For startups and small businesses looking to create and implement a web development plan, a web consultant may be a better fit. For organizations and agencies looking to implement their digital strategy and create effective websites, a web developer may be more appropriate. Confusing the two roles can lead to several outsourcing issues.
The issue may not be with the outsourcing web development company, but with the web developers working on your project. Businesses that choose outsourcing or offshoring may end up paying more for resources with intermediate skills because they are unaware of who will be working on their project.
To address this issue, many companies opt to hire dedicated development teams, as they have more transparency and control over the resources in these situations.
As a business owner, you may be surprised by how much influence you have over your project. However, being a project manager is not as easy as it may seem. Many business owners underestimate the value of a project manager and try to manage the web development team themselves. This is not always a wise decision, as tasks such as project management, stakeholder alignment, client approval sprinting, and resolving project scope problems require a lot of expertise and effort.
It is advisable to hire a professional project manager to oversee the outsourced web development projects. This will help address some of the common issues with remote offshore team management outsourcing.
In an effort to cut costs, firms frequently divide up their online projects among several outsourcing companies. However, this frequently results in a bloated website with sporadic design components and shoddy coding. Since “consistency is the key to exceptional user experience,” it is preferable to stick with a trustworthy web development outsourcing partner or establish a long-term committed development team.
There are several drawbacks to outsourcing web development; instead, you can construct your own offshore web development team.
A business owner can transfer the same set of quality requirements to both his in-house and dedicated web development team, as a dedicated team performs similar duties as an in-house team.
It’s important to consider if a project manager is needed before taking on that role. Managing a team, allocating work, setting priorities, and building processes requires competence. Inadequate management can negatively impact the entire project cycle and cause new outsourcing issues.
The web development industry has evolved, from single-page web apps to AMP for mobile to AI-powered chatbots, and users demand high-quality work. This differentiation between good sourcing and outsourcing has made it easier and more advantageous for businesses to create specialized offshore development teams for their web projects.
