In the 21^st century, it is essential for business success to have a successful web development. Unfortunately, it’s both expensive and time-intensive. As a result, in order to save some resources, it may make sense to partner with an offshore development company. This could be beneficial for both your website building and maintenance needs. Unfortunately, what makes sense on paper does not always perceive to be the same in reality. Web development is not a one-time task; rather, it requires continuous maintenance and updates. Additionally, consistent communication with your development partner is vital to create a successful website for your business, even during the initial build. If you can’t get a hold of your web developer, you may need to seek a different partner.

A Collaborative Approach to Web Development
Building a website is not as simple as just hiring a developer and letting them do the work. Throughout the development process, you will need to be in constant communication with your developer. You should come to an agreement on the website’s structure, goals, timeline, and more.
Whether the company you work with employs agile or waterfall development techniques, they will likely require feedback on questions that come up as the development process moves forward. You will also need to be involved in the testing process of the website to make sure that the final product turns out exactly as desired. In other words, collaboration is key. You may not need to be an expert in web development to get a beautiful website. However, you will need to have a consistent line of communication if you want your website to help accomplish your business and marketing goals.

Web Maintenance as a Continuous Partnership
That collaboration, of course, doesn’t end when the final website goes live. Throughout its life cycle, you will need to perform regular maintenance on the website itself as well as the server. Some of that maintenance will be routine updates to the software or code. Another part, of course, will be responding to issues.
Website down times can quickly become costly. These costs are both qualitative and quantitative. This can hurt your bottom line while also doing damage to your credibility among would-be visitors as well as your search engine optimization.
Of course, no website can be online without issue 100% of the time. One study, for example, found that almost 90% the world’s most popular websites had at least some downtime during one quarter in 2016.
Nevertheless, if you cannot achieve a 100% success rate, you need to at least make sure that when an outage occurs, you have someone ready to jump in and fix the issue at a moment’s notice. Unfortunately, when you can’t get hold of your web developer, a minor issue can turn into a major problem. Much of these problems are due to offshore web development.

Problems With Offshore Web Development
Let’s start with the obvious: offshore web development tends to be cheap. However, in most situations, that’s where its benefits end. In fact, working with an international web developer can result in a number of potential concerns:

1. Time Zone Differences. Simply put, it will be difficult to get a hold of your web developer if the time at which you try to reach them (your business hours) happens to be the middle of the night for them.
2. Language Barriers. Collaboration is difficult if your development partner doesn’t understand exactly what you need, and what your feedback to their process is.
3. Lack of Long-Term Commitments. As mentioned previously, it is important to maintain a relationship with your developer even after the website is built. If you don’t, you risk running into problems as soon as your website goes down or needs an update. Unfortunately, it’s easy for offshore developers to go dark as soon as you’ve paid for your project, leaving you without an expert who could take care of any problems that may arise.
4. Cultural Differences. Professionals in different countries tend to have very different expectations for business relationships. In a complex project like web development, these differences can be difficult to overcome. For example, the above-mentioned frequent communication may look very difficult for an American company that looks to get down to business quickly while working with an Indian developer, who is used to extensive small talk before talking shop.

Cheapest is not always best. If your website is down, you need to get a hold of your developer quickly. If you can’t, even the most beautiful website will be worthless. That’s why knowing your alternatives is crucial for your online presence to turn into a successful, long-term endeavor that helps grow your business and delight your visitors.

Finding a Solution for Your Web Development Needs
So how do you find the right balance? How can you make sure that your web development does not become too costly? How can you make sure that no matter where on the globe you’re located, you can find a local developer for whom the above problems do not exist?

That’s where Mpire enters the equation. We have developers stationed all over the world, and in every timezone. When your website needs help, or you are simply looking for a reliable developer, your choices will not be limited by geography. Instead, you can find a local expert willing and ready to help your business succeed.

Thanks to our unique business model, we consider ourselves a remote in-house development team rather than an external web development company. The result is closer collaboration, and a more successful business relationship. To learn more about our services, and how we can help you embark on a website project during which you always know that you can get hold of your developer, contact us.