Best of British

Best of British “Call Centres” - on average how many times do you find yourself speaking to a foreign country to someone who has absolutely no idea what you’re talking about? Would you want your web designer to act the same?

If everything could be local it would be ideal. If you’re in the UK, wouldn’t it be great to speak to someone who is English? The same applies for the US and all countries - this is all about keeping it local.

The industry is not likely to get nervous about jobs being farmed off to, say, India, in huge quantities but there are sites appearing offering ‘cheap’ web services for western clients. Yes we buy Chinese products because they’re cheap, yes we outsource all kinds of work to foreign countries and yes, I am passionate about the cheap labour problems here in the UK but… do we really want everything to be outsourced and imported?

One Response to “Best of British”

Mike
said on May 29th, 2008 at 7:33 am

Assuming you’re talking mainly about the web industry (although this does hold true for other areas too)… you really do get what you pay for.

For someone who just cares about what the end product looks like, cheap services can be ideal - get something that ticks all the boxes and forget about how difficult it is for people to use. The site you mentioned is a perfect example: it looks nice enough, but it’s all table-based. I’d hate to view that thing in a screenreader.

I’ve had the misfortune of trying to shoehorn workable content into a site built by cheap foreign labour: not a thought to cross-browser compatibility, usability or accessibility. Web apps and ‘rich’ sites (database/login-driven, interactive ‘user experiences’) from cheap companies tend to be even worse: code full of security holes, cobbled together largely from open-source solutions.

While there’s relatively few people who really do care about web standards, I’d argue that it’s equivalent to an architect not knowing the properties of the materials he’s planning to build a house with: do things wrong and as soon as you try and build on what you’ve got - like adding a loft conversion or conservatory (read ‘login system’ or ’shopping cart) the whole thing falls down.

There’s two sides to every story though; for the cash-strapped small businessman who doesn’t know a damn thing about the web and doesn’t care about being able to update the site at all, these kind of companies are a godsend - cheap, cheerful, and fairly nice-looking. Just don’t agree to manage one for him, otherwise your life will become a living hell.