Over the last few years, India has emerged as one of the most popular destinations for software and web application development projects. These projects include design and development of customised software applications, web applications and, of late, mobile applications. Most of these are outsourced projects that land here for the low manpower cost and expertise advantage that India offers.
“Despite all this, it is almost impossible to get a good website made!”, observed a close friend recently. “Whom do you go to! There are hardly any good comprehensive web-designing companies”, she fretted. “I need my website to integrate with my current offline applications, I need an excellent website design – something that is user-friendly and at the same time speaks my brand’s language, I need interesting and engaging content which is SEO-friendly too – whatever that means… But why is it so difficult to find a web development company that can do this simple job!”
I realised she was right. There are few companies that can deliver a smart website on a turnkey basis. A look at how the web development companies have evolved in India explains why.
About two decades ago, India started emerging as a centre for outsourcing of lower end services such medical and legal transcription. In years to come, Indian coders became the chosen ones for software companies across Europe and USA. Meanwhile, the D2K was to be sorted out and Indian programmers made hay on this opportunity. By now, Indian software companies ― big, medium and even small ― were working on software projects for clients across the globe. They had certainly moved up the value chain from writing codes to designing software, developing & testing it, and even implementation & training. And then the world wide web came of age. As a natural extension of services these companies started developing web-based applications too. But these essentially remained software companies… analysts, programmers, managers and testers.
Interestingly, the first generation of serious website design in India was done by graphic designers who used to design print collaterals for their clients. And these websites were usually nothing more than online brochures. The online ambitions of organizations started growing very rapidly. Too rapidly for the designers to handle. It called for a lot of technology. The software companies happily assumed the role of web development companies in India writing all the software that was needed for e-commerce, database integration, et al.
Most of these websites had very little design intervention, and it showed. But at least the website was up there and working. A typical web development company in India would have extremely low design capabilities, both UI and surprisingly even UX. The reason: why would a designer join a web development company (read software company)? A designer doesn’t see a career in a web development company. As a result a typical web development company would make anything from ordinary to ghastly looking websites. Even the country’s premier ICT organisation of Government of India, the NIC makes intolerable GUIs with reasonably sound software. NIC’s own website is a case in point.
Meanwhile, the graphic design companies also tried to move with the times and started extensively designing websites. But they found it difficult to handle web development beyond html and flash. The reason was again simple… why would a software professional join a web designing company. So, a really good web designing company in India would struggle with technology unless it has developed a strong collaboration with a technology company.
So here we are! Any mid-size web development company in India is struggling for design capabilities. And any web design company in India is struggling for technology. And clients like my friend wonder whom to go to for a website that looks good and works well.
“Despite all this, it is almost impossible to get a good website made!”, observed a close friend recently. “Whom do you go to! There are hardly any good comprehensive web-designing companies”, she fretted. “I need my website to integrate with my current offline applications, I need an excellent website design – something that is user-friendly and at the same time speaks my brand’s language, I need interesting and engaging content which is SEO-friendly too – whatever that means… But why is it so difficult to find a web development company that can do this simple job!”
I realised she was right. There are few companies that can deliver a smart website on a turnkey basis. A look at how the web development companies have evolved in India explains why.
About two decades ago, India started emerging as a centre for outsourcing of lower end services such medical and legal transcription. In years to come, Indian coders became the chosen ones for software companies across Europe and USA. Meanwhile, the D2K was to be sorted out and Indian programmers made hay on this opportunity. By now, Indian software companies ― big, medium and even small ― were working on software projects for clients across the globe. They had certainly moved up the value chain from writing codes to designing software, developing & testing it, and even implementation & training. And then the world wide web came of age. As a natural extension of services these companies started developing web-based applications too. But these essentially remained software companies… analysts, programmers, managers and testers.
Interestingly, the first generation of serious website design in India was done by graphic designers who used to design print collaterals for their clients. And these websites were usually nothing more than online brochures. The online ambitions of organizations started growing very rapidly. Too rapidly for the designers to handle. It called for a lot of technology. The software companies happily assumed the role of web development companies in India writing all the software that was needed for e-commerce, database integration, et al.
Most of these websites had very little design intervention, and it showed. But at least the website was up there and working. A typical web development company in India would have extremely low design capabilities, both UI and surprisingly even UX. The reason: why would a designer join a web development company (read software company)? A designer doesn’t see a career in a web development company. As a result a typical web development company would make anything from ordinary to ghastly looking websites. Even the country’s premier ICT organisation of Government of India, the NIC makes intolerable GUIs with reasonably sound software. NIC’s own website is a case in point.
Meanwhile, the graphic design companies also tried to move with the times and started extensively designing websites. But they found it difficult to handle web development beyond html and flash. The reason was again simple… why would a software professional join a web designing company. So, a really good web designing company in India would struggle with technology unless it has developed a strong collaboration with a technology company.
So here we are! Any mid-size web development company in India is struggling for design capabilities. And any web design company in India is struggling for technology. And clients like my friend wonder whom to go to for a website that looks good and works well.
