By Jim Clanin
You know you need a new website, however, like all business owners you have a budget and want to get the best value and product for your money. Often a website is the first impression of a business, so investing in the right web designer can be paramount for any business and its interaction with clients or customers.
If you’ve never hired a web development company, or if you have hired a designer in the past but need a new website design, you have the option to hire a US based designer, or designer based overseas. If your business is US based, getting bids from foreign contractors can be tempting because the expense is often lower. Before seeking bids from foreign website companies, consider these four benefits of hiring a US based website designer.
1. No Language Barriers: When working with a US website designer, you don’t need to worry about language barriers or having website design ideas and logistics getting lost in translation. One of the most common frustrations noted from companies that contract website design outside the U.S. is the difficulty in understanding and communicating with the designer. The designer may be perfectly capable and skilled to design websites. 
However, the language barrier can be difficult on both sides, for the designer and client, leading to change orders and longer project duration, increasing the cost.
2. US Legal Protection: When working with a US based web designer or web design firm, there are federal and state laws that protect you as well as a designer if a project goes awry. If you hire a designer based in a different country, the countries laws don’t offer you and your business the same protection and can take a long time to go through their court system. If the job you have contracted to a foreign worker takes longer than expected, the work is bad, or worse you don’t have consistent communication, you have to take into account your time, including potential travel time, to dispute it in their country’s court system. Working with a US based web designer or web design firm provides more reliable and consistent legal protection for the work you are hiring for.
3. Ease of Communication: When working with a US based web designer, you can work with a local company and regularly meet face to face. Or if hiring a firm or designer on the other side of the country or in a different time zone, it’s convenient to work and schedule phone calls or video chat within a 3-hour time difference. Also, you can expect emails and phone calls to be returned during normal business hours. It can be more difficult to communicate with a foreign designer or firm because depending on their location, they can be working while you’re sleeping, making regular phone calls or video chats difficult to schedule for you and your team members.
4. U.S. Design Standards: How often have you traveled to a different country to find the fashion styles are different? Fashion isn’t the only trend that differs across countries; web design and programming differ as well. If your target client is US Based, you want to work with a website designer and programmer that understand the current website design trends and up to date programming technology. Working with a foreign designer that is not familiar with US website trends, can result in an ‘old school’ website design that may or may not speak to the style and design interests of your current customers.
DoubleDome has received calls and inquiries from companies who have hired foreign website designers, but due to these and other reasons, they stopped using the designer and were looking for a US Based website design company to redo their website or start over from scratch. While some foreign web designers can design great websites, US businesses with US clients and customers should consider the benefits of working with a US based designer like DoubleDome Web Technologies before going out to bid on a website design project.
