I'm considering outsourcing my web design work to another company. I personally provide computer consulting and technical support locally, and most of my work involves small businesses.

While I enjoy doing the technical and hardware work for them, I really am not a big fan of web design. Unfortunately, it's one of the things I'm most asked about. While I do accept some webdesign projects I'd really like to be able to accept more, simply because there is A LOT of work available, and could lead to other jobs with businesses. I'd outsource the grunt work, but sit down with my clients and get a detailed idea of what they want, and relay that to the outsourcer (is that a word?). I'm proficient in webdesign myself, so I could always tweak the final product before and when I'm handing it over to the client.

So I'm wondering if anyone here at WHT has any experience in outsourcing their web design work to another firm? I've been looking on places like elance, and there seems to be plenty of companies making quality sites for reasonable rates.

Most of my clients are small businesses who are just looking for simple sites, essentially something to put on their biz cards and look nice.

Also kind of struggling with the morality of outsourcing the work. Should I be upfront with the fact that I'm going to be outsourcing their work? I'm not sure how my clients would react to me telling them I'm not actually going to be doing the majority of their design work.

Get a reliable small software house and stick with them. Outsourcing is not immoral as long as you deliver what you promise, AND do the management that is required for doing so - ie you gotta handle all issues related to projects on your end. not just throw it on the outsourcing company and just forward the communications like you are doing it.

Just like dell getting components of their pcs from china or other countries.

It's okay to say that you work with freelance designers.

yeah freelancer designers would be the best bet I think

Get a reliable small software house and stick with them.

I agree. The problem with places like elance and rentacoder is that there is a lot of overhead effort involved in lodging the project details, reviewing bids and so on, and the reliability of providers varies. If you have ongoing requirements then it is better to find a good outsourcing company and maintain a relationship with them so that you can be sure you will be able to deliver projects to your clients in a reliable manner.

A good way would be to put up a small project on the Design Requests forum and check out some of the portfolios design/dev teams respond with. This gives you a chance to commission the team you like and see how well they perform and probably build a great working relationship..


Cheers..

when you use places like rentacoder, you are kinda your own project manager. there is the coder, you tell him what to do, what not to do, s/he does it. with software houses/dev teams, there is generally one project manager or someone lifting the burdens of project manager. so you just speak what you want, and project manager ensures things are done.

admittedly, nowadays i am learning that project management is also a heapload of work in itself. i never would have believed it. so it can be a bit tiring at places like rentacoder i think.

I would personally consider hiring them from forums since I've bad experience in hiring them from freelancer sites.

I would personally consider hiring them from forums since I've bad experience in hiring them from freelancer sites.

Well, I don't think anyone can reply through the forums as it'll be considered as self-promoting. But, as someone suggested you perhaps should post a small project and see what replies / quotes you get on here in the advertisements sections. :)

We get a lot of Indian companys asking us if we want to outsource when personally I think we have enough time to outsource for others. Choose your outsource company carefully.