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 In This Article
NEWSLETTERS | JULY, 2003 Limitations to Flash and HTMLFrom Keep Your Clients to Yourself! by Eric Holter
The problems associated with these four common approaches usually make agencies passive, at best, when it comes to the web. They offer limited web services, simple static HTML sites, or Flash only sites. This approach may have sufficed over the past few years, but it's not going to suffice much longer.
< 1 2 3 4 > After 9/11 the business climate allowed a passive approach to suffice The first few years of web development were chaos. Nobody knew what they were doing. The technology was fairly simple. Sites focused more on creative ideas and spinning logos than serious content and functionality. For a season after the dot com burst in 2000, and 9/11, many companies "back-burnered" their web projects. They had more important matters to concern themselves with, and advertising as a whole - never mind web development - did not rank high on their priority list. A casual, passive, or simplistic approach to the web was more than adequate since most companies were not requiring much of their sites anyway. But things have changed. Today's capabilities and expectations Today's websites are far more advanced than what most companies have experienced over the past few years. Sites are more commonly database driven. There are many content managements systems available making site management easier. Password protected areas such as partner or rep extranets are common. E-commerce is much more common than it used to be. Advanced tools like polls, bulletin boards, personalization, and online surveys are also common. Companies looking to redesign or upgrade their site now have much higher expectations for what they will be able to do. These capabilities are well beyond what Flash and DreamWeaver can produce. Maintainability is a real concern for new sites. Companies are tired of having to go through technical support staff, or pay a developer or agency to make changes to their sites. Most companies are now aware of these advances in web technology. Agencies that do not have an in-house technical team will not be able to meet these needs. Nevertheless, the agency and design firms' wisdom, experience, and insight should not be lost in the process as it has in the past.  |
  Subscribe To Our NewsletterFebruary 2010 How a Website is Built, Part 2  |
No longer will just large corporations be able to use outsourcing, now even freelance workers and small start-ups can use outsourcing, as this article says: http://rickdane.info/content/problems-with-outsourcing Its going to be different in the future so I don't think all of these concerns about outsourcing are justified.
wank
Joe Blogs
I'm a website designer living in Houston and outsourcing has never been a problem for me. I hear and read how our kind are being outsourced to India and the like, and web designers here in the states will suffer. But, I have yet to see any of this. I've always had more than enough business, and my friends who are website designers themselves, are all doing very well.
We tried outsourcing for the development work but the quality just wasn't there - too much of a language barrier to overcome to ensure the requirements were fully understood. However for testing it's been going fine.