It’s a little weird to talk about websites and oil in the same sentence but one, the price of one is, these days, being influenced by the cost of the other and it is affecting the quality you get in your web design services.
At the time of writing this the price of crude hit the $140 per barrel and it is expected to rise. Bad news for taxi drivers, hauliers and anyone who has to drive. What has this go to do with the cost of your website or the fact that you have based your business model on the lower-cost of outsourced services? Plenty.
In the past transportation costs were a matter of dull accounting which hardly needed to be factored in when outsourcing production of anything. What has changed is that the universal inflationary pressure applied by the increasing price of oil across the globe is now making it difficult for any market to be as competitive as it used to be.
Goods manufactured in China for pennies and sold in the western world are beginning to cost more as the inflationary pressures in their home markets and the cost of transportation is making them lose the competitiveness in price that used to make them so attractive. Rapidly increasing inflation in outsource markets is also affecting the cost of traditionally low-cost outsource services such as website design and graphics.
There is a paradox here. You ask, why should a universally felt inflationary pressure affect outsource markets more than it affects domestic ones? Why should web design bought from India or Pakistan suddenly cost more than the same service bought from the UK when the price of crude is the same for both countries?
The answer really lies in the complexity of the economy. Outsource markets are cheap because their economies are not in a very advanced state of development (this is a euphemism designed to raise a smile), western markets are complex and complicated and, as a result, have a number of regulating mechanisms in place designed to help the markets self-correct and stabilise each time they face inflationary pressure.
These correcting mechanisms do have limits and should the price of oil continue to rise they will, at some point, reach that limit but at the moment they are holding fast and efforts are being made to bolster these defences. This is obviously at odds with what is happening in less developed economies and it is affecting their competitiveness.
In a very narrow viewpoint this is good news for domestic web design studios like webdirectstudio.com which offer high quality over low price but beyond this narrow and somewhat selfish point of view lies the fact that if you have a business model that relies on outsourced services or goods to help you remain competitive you now face a real issue.
It is this kind of awareness of the global market that makes our web design and web development services so sought after. We don’t just deliver a website or create a brochure or put together a search engine optimisation campaign. Everything we do is designed to seamlessly integrate into the rest of your business reinforcing brand identity, enhancing brand value and helping you win in a competitive world.
Our first-hand knowledge of market conditions in different countries allows us to offer competitive consulting guidance that allows you to steal a march on your competitors and avoid making costly mistakes.
Are you ready to take a project to the market? Let us help you do it right.
