I’m writing this as more of a caution to business owners who are considering having their website done, than a rant. Although it may come off as a rant.  When making the decision to build a website for your business, or redevelop/redesign your current one it’s always a question of cost, especially in this economy. Often in searching for the best deal a business owner will come across a freelancer that has exceptional pricing.  Sometimes “too good to be true” pricing.  What i want to do with this article is plead a case for the non-freelance design studio’s and why we may be a better fit, even with the additional cost.

The one thing that bothers me more than anything about freelancers who provide web services is the production quality. Don’t get me wrong, i remember being a freelancer and enjoying it.  But i also remember it being difficult to manage a project and deliver a top quality product when the time i had to work and interact with the customer, was after my full time job. The problem’s with using a freelancer are many and the advantages are few, below is a bit of a breakdown:

Problems
1. Time is always a factor, even if the freelancer does strictly their freelance business and doesn’t have a “day job”.  Issues can arise if they take on multiple projects spreading themselves too thin.  This can cuase the cretive to take a nose dive as well as full testing of the site before it launches.  We see it all the time.  Freelancers skimp on testing the application in relevant browsers and things are broken.  Creative and testing phase are two area’s you can cut corners. In the end the quality of the product suffers.

2. Freelancers don’t have anyone to really act as a creative partner to bounce ideas off of and find the best design or development solution. It’s nice to be your own boss, but in the end it’s better to have other people to work with and get feedback from.  Some freelancers do have a network of friends they use for this type of thing, but some don’t.

3.The “Get It Done” mentality.  As a freelancer a lot of times you want to get paid, and with that kind of mind set it’s easy to cut corners, either on the design or development side.  The design suddenly winds up very basic.  You do it with the easiest path to completion possible. And in doing so the customer winds up with uninspired junk.

So there’s a few potential problems with working with a freelancer to do your web project and going the less expensive route.

Now to cap this little article/rant off I’ll dispel some of the feedback we’ll invariably get from Freelancers.  First up, this article doesn’t pertain to all freelancers, just a fairly broad base of them.  Some do have the resources to overcome the problems i eluded to above and for them, awesome.  But for the rest, the much broader group who fall into the ”cousin who does websites”, we know who you are and this Buds for you.  We could provide side by side examples of the difference in work quality between a dedicated team who does web work and a freelancer, but it wouldn’t really change anything.  In the end, cost will always be a deciding factor for some customers.

Finally i’d just like to say this, remember that websites are usually the first impression that a customer gets of your business, so you want to put your absolute best out there.  Balance the cost with quality and make the best decision you can, a passable or “ok” website just won’t cut it.