FAQ about website design, web programming, offshore labor outsourcing etc
For any issues not covered below, please don't hesitate to contact us.
- How are you different from other offshore website design companies?
- How are you different from a U.S. company operation?
- Is the website offshore?
- I don't know much about websites and the internet. What capability do I need to have a website?
- Some places on the internet offer free websites! Why don't you?
- Who are your staff?
- How long have you been using offshore labor?
- Isn't offshore labor going to put a lot of Americans and Europeans out of work?
- What's the next great internet application?
- What is your long-term purpose and plan?
- I want to provide an offshore service. What do I do?
1. How are you different from other offshore website design companies?
Unlike most other offshore website design companies, we have American staff located at the overseas office to mentor and direct fulltime indigenous staff. This is how the most established offshore high tech operations have learned to work, based on experience.
You will find that most of our copycat competition simply outsource the work to offshore people sight-unseen, taking a huge cut as profit. The lower the offshore bid, the better. Purely indigenous offshore operations, usually -- no Westerners offshore. You can see the result in the end product.
It is easy to provide beautiful samples of websites, then claim to offer the service. In fact, what usually happens is that you don't get the same personnel on your website as who created those samples. Indeed, those loose business associations sometimes become person A in the U.S. outsourcing to person B posing as an offshore manager, who secretly outsources to person C after taking a cut themself, and it goes to whoever is available at the moment for a lower price and without much real institutional structure.
When someone offers website samples, look at the bottom of the home page for the credit to the original website design company. Are they all the same? Is there even a credit, or were those samples taken because there was no credit?
2. How are you different from a U.S. company operation?
Our offshore operation is run just like a U.S. office, except that we run a shifted schedule due to the time zone difference.
In about half of our business, our offshore office deals directly with clients. Due to the time zone difference, we operate two shifts, ending at 3:00am US EST, or 12:00 noon US Pacific time. We communicate by telephone (using Internet phone on our end), email and fax if necessary.
In approximately the other half of our business, we depend upon U.S. based marketing representatives who are normally experienced in business, the communications arts or internet technical services. These people meet with clients and work out much of the website conceptual design on the U.S. end, and then work with us. This arrangement lets the client deal with a local professional. In turn, our U.S. agent gets to enjoy the higher level conceptual design without needing to grind out all the technical work of multiple websites. (If you wish to be a U.S. based agent, just click on our Employment button.)
Our main difference compared to U.S. based website design operations is quality per unit price. (People also remark that we get work out on time -- excellent work -- especially compared to local freelancers, probably because the latter have unsmooth schedules and don't have multiple talents.)
We use our American and other Western managers for conceptual design and English written content, and carefully chosen offshore artists and programmers under the direction of Western management. Founder Mark Prado has considerable experience in the "quality" management field, as noted in the company section.
Quality alone, not just price, is a good reason to use us. We are led by experienced, internationalist business people and academics. We aren't just local yokels. We have great minds to rent, and have chosen the best talent around the world.
3. Is the website offshore?
No, only designers are offshore. For reasons of speed, the computer server with the website on it should be located in the U.S., where the internet backbone is, and where most international links go.
The only exceptions are when the website is targeting people in Europe, Japan or another particular country, in which case arrangements are made for maximum speed to the targeted visitors, by finding a good quality server in the targeted country or region.
4. I don't know much about websites and the internet. What capability do I need to have a website?
We can take care of everything for you, if you wish. You don't need to know anything more. You just give us information on your company and a copy of your logo. The material can be a paper copy mailed by the postal service. We can do the rest. You don't even need a computer.
We can do as much or as little as companies or individuals want. This includes handling your e-mail, faxes (yes, by internet and fax modem), orders and communicating with your shipping operation in your own country. All using offshore labor, 24 hours/day if you wish. We can also educate you if you wish, and are here to answer any questions.
5. Some places on the internet offer free websites! Why don't you?
What you see is what you get. When a customer sees a cheap looking business website, they can assume the poor quality viewed on their screen will also reflect the quality of the goods and services they will receive. Most people who might otherwise buy from you won't. On the other hand, a well-done website will pay for itself in new business, many times over in a short amount of time.
You need to fully acknowledge that free website companies make money from advertisements, not from you, obviously, and they're not just being nice guys for the huge amounts of money and long workdays required just to offer the masses of nice people in the world a free website. You don't get anything substantive for free. Consider:
- Everyone who visits your "free" site will be bombarded with advertisements from businesses you don't even know which detracts from your message. Most irritating are those websites which keep launching new browser windows with advertisements which not only slows things down, but must be chased down and closed. Many surfers and potential customers refuse to go to any website which uses such intrusive and annoying tactics.
- The generic templates which you must fit your website into are very limited by the very nature of that kind of thing. Try fitting in your artwork (whatever you may already have), additional pages of text, custom ways to navigate your site, etc., etc. Just try it. It just doesn't work. Forget about making any adjustments to the template to accommodate you. You'll have to live with a lot of ugliness and limitations. It's free, so complaints will just fall on cheap ears.
If you want to put up a few of your latest vacation photos or write about yourself in a simple diary, that's fine and will work with the free websites. But not for business.
When it comes to a business website, you'll see that the idea is a gross oversimplification that simply doesn't work. That's why you don't see many businesses try this kind of thing. If a "free" website is the kind of business presence you want to have on the internet, you won't go far, and it may be much more harm than good to your image.
If your business could benefit from a website, then it's worth making a professional website.
It's amazing that we get so many questions of this kind, but we suspect it's because people want to try to drive our prices down even further by comparing us to free websites. It's a ridiculous comparison.
A similar response our staff sometimes gets when marketing is that the prospective customer doesn't need our services because they have a relative or know someone's kid who's a genius at computers and knows EVERYTHING... Business image is something a mature and experienced person must do, especially artwork and text content. Even technically, computers and internet are as large a field as law and medicine, and any individual competent computer professional would not claim to know everything. It takes a team. In fact, lone wolf IT guys usually outsource for many tasks, and that is one of our sources of work. Website tasks given to us get done. Websites by relatives and kids practically never do. Ask again next year and it's the same story, little or no progress, just excuses.
The only worthwhile way to cut costs is to hire professionals from other economies where the wages are much lower and the U.S. dollar is worth a lot more. Offshore, that is.
6. Who are your staff?
As a follow-on to the previous question, all of our staff are mature people who have worked in The Real World, most have university degrees in their home country, and all were hired by competant specialists. They come in three categories:
- artists
- programmers
- content researchers/writers
Most are ambitious, and were typically working at a company which offered few future prospects, low pay and often little reward or recognition. There are a lot of places in the world like that, for various reasons, and the internet offers a life raft to those with initiative and skill.
What many arrogant American computer people often consider to be a low level and transient job, such as website programming and artwork, is considered a very honorable job in many less developed countries, and may involve someone with a master's degree from a local Third World university who works proudly, diligently and faithfully on the website for an American client. Also, what's considered low pay to an American is high pay to many high level Thais, Indians and Russians.
Please see the section on our company for further details.
7. How long have you been using offshore labor?
Frustrated by local programmers who overbilled for often careless work, founder Mark Prado started using programmers in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in 1989 to provide custom programming services to New Generation Computers (NGC) in Washington, D.C. This happened before the World Wide Web existed.
It was soon found better quality of work was also produced by immigrants from these same regions, who proved to be reliable and honorable. From there, going offshore seemed a natural and logical progression. Interestingly, before 1994 founder Mark Prado had always used offshore services without having travelled offshore himself.
One main drawback of using offshore people was recruiting enough of them from afar. Secondly, using overseas companies instead of individuals led to problems with the purely foreign nature of the company and its staff, especially the senior staff's top-heavy control.
It was clear that the operation would work more "efficiently" if a Western ex-pat could "be there".
Physically relocating offshore to start an overseas office with hand-picked, quality-minded staff and a fresh corporate culture provides clear advantages over using established, bureaucratic "old dinosaur" operations in the West. Constant monitoring of day-to-day offshore operations and continuous mentoring of indigenous staff by experienced Western managers mean higher productivity, faster turnaround, lower cost and better quality for the client.
Mr. Prado travelled offshore in 1994, gained a lot of experience as a hired consultant himself to a variety of overseas business operations in several countries, and then started ramping up his own offshore business again in 1997. We are now well experienced in the various operational issues involved in offshore services.
8. Isn't offshore labor going to put a lot of Americans and Europeans out of work?
Yes and no.
We strongly believe that most people who provide a high quality service in their own country, and who do their homework to stay up to date in their field, will not be negatively affected. The most affected will be those who produce mediocre quality, and we have little sympathy for the latter because we've received a lot of careless service from their ilk. Competition will help consumers and businesses.
Offshore labor will reduce immigration to the U.S., as people can improve their families' lives by staying in their own country and familiar culture, working by Internet, and not wasting money or taking risks with travel.
Importing services is just like importing products. Do you buy less expensive consumer goods made overseas?
Adaptable artists and programmers can capitalize on offshore labor by moving into higher management roles.
We also have little doubt that if our positions were reversed -- if those complaining about offshore labor were over here doing it, their rantings would be the opposite.
All that is different about us is that we went to the effort to go overseas and develop offshore labor. We not only saw the inevitable trend, we walked the walk. It is not easy. In fact, to say it requires effort is an understatement. It takes years of hard work and patience before it really pays off. Few people will do this.
Most who try will not be successful. Many people have gone broke ... or worse, stranded in a low wage country ... trying. The world overseas is a rough place if you don't completely understand how foreign cultures, systems and places tick.
We do not believe in discriminating against people due to race, nationality, religion or genetic physical appearance. If you do, that's your loss. If someone's willing to do high quality work, has developed their skills and is disciplined in morals and reasoning then we want them in our team, regardless of whether they're American, Arab, Russian, Asian, African or whatever. Good people are good people.
If you want to benefit from offshore labor, then why don't you help us market it and then help us manage projects for your clientele, and take your cut? There's no reason you can't make money, too, by outsourcing to us and letting us manage the offshore end of the production.
9. What's the next great internet application?
This is answered in the previous question - in short, offshore outsourcing.
10. What is your long-term purpose and plan?
To get mankind and other species of life off of Earth and into self-sufficient space colonies within 20 to 30 years, before a biotechnology "accident" or weapon makes humans extinct or nanotechnology destroys humans and much more. For more information, see our PERMANENT website.
If you think September 11 or anthrax are big issues, then you ain't seen nothing yet. (And consider international security for a change. Dogmatic superpatriots or "true believers" are not welcome here.) Nothing will realistically stop private research and development into modifying viruses and other genetic R&D. A day will come in the future of most of us alive now on Earth that will make anthrax mail bombs look like just a trivial early warning.
There are two ways to dramatically reduce the cost of space development:
- Private enterprise, not government which is inefficient, costly, bureaucratic and political
- Using offshore engineers instead of Americans
This also assures that it's not just a US project. It should be a multinational, by and for all mankind, with representation by many cultures and genetic races.
We have a business plan to support it -- building large space products to sell to Earth economies. Before that, we will use much of our profit and the free time of our best offshore engineers to do research and development of the supporting equipment. Before that, we will develop the best artists and websites to promote the plan and bring in the best talent around the world, and perhaps some major philanthropic investors.
11. I want to provide an offshore service. What do I do?
E-mail us at or go to our contact page for further questions. Enquiries from potential employees around the world, marketing people, outsourcing companies and strategic partners are welcome.
We hope you have found this FAQ outlining our offshore website design operations, discussing the advantages of offshore programmers or outsourcing programming overseas etc helpful. For more information about offshore labor in general or specific outsourcing services we can also provide through our parent company Export Quality Services Co., Ltd., see our company section.
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