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Jeffery Waaland
94 PointsCommoditization of web design?
Hello, I'm new to web design, and I have been studying it for about a year. I'm coming to notice that in this day in age web technology is growing fast. Open source projects are being worked on all around the world by people on their laptops and people are fighting for the customers attention through easy to use website builders like wix or squarespace. I'm a little sketchy of weather webdesign has a future or not because of the technical skills it takes to perform it, over the build it yourself websites that customers can take control over. I'm told that web design is a great career path but at the same time I'm hearing the future of web design is dying out through the competition to make it easy to use for the customer. Does anybody have any opinions on this topic? Does that mean that freelance will die out and inhouse jobs at companies will be the only profitable rout in webdesign?
1 Answer
Kevin Korte
28,148 PointsIt's definitely changing the landscape, and so if you're wanting to go the ways of a freelance web designer, you'll have to rethink your strategy too. For small business, sites like Wix and Squaresapce are all they think they need. It's likely they're still leaving some business on the table from a cookie cutter website, but they don't understand that.
You also have competition from web designers all around the globe. It's one reason I don't freelance. Actually, at my job, I've hired some freelancers off of Upwork.com, and were getting some offers from designers for $7-$8 an hour, and their portfolio looked decent. No way I would even attempt to compete at that level. I'm not designing anything for anyone at that wage, I'm better of working at McDonalds's (I'd make more).
I think there is still room to freelance, but you have to bring a few things to the table. You have to be good, and you have to sell yourself, and why money spent on your, will return your client more money. You need to understand their clients, and how they can make changes to their work to have a higher conversion. And you need to go after the right clients.
Mama's little bakery probably isn't your client, but a company running 30-50 employee's might have enough budget, and enough demand, to warrant paying for your skillset you can bring to them.
Just remember, getting jobs as a freelancer is about how you can fix someone else's problem. You can charge them $10,000 for your work, if you're able to show them that paying you $10,000 will net them $100,000 more in profit this year. And of course, you have to follow through, as your reputation will be very valuable.