However, the catch is finding the right website designer who understands your vision and can bring it to life. That’s a tough task. Why else would there be a huge surge in searches for quality web designers for hire?

We have compiled a list of 10 effective tips to help you hire dedicated web designers with superb skills. Whether you’re starting from scratch or redesigning an existing website, these tips will guide you in making an informed decision.

1. Define Your Goals and Budget

Before you go ahead and hire a website designer, it is important to prepare a list of goals that you want him to accomplish and also, assign a realistic budget. Determining what you want to achieve with your website will help you find a designer who specializes in the specific features and functionalities that you require.

For example, if you want to generate leads, you may need a designer who has experience in creating effective lead capture forms or landing pages. On the other hand, if your goal is to sell products online, it is better that you go for a designer who has expertise in eCommerce design.

Setting a budget is equally important as it will ensure that you focus on designers who offer services within your price range. This is one major reason why firms hire creative web designers from India; they are some of the greats in global business.

2. Look for a Diverse Portfolio

A reputable website designer should (must, to be precise) have a diverse portfolio that showcases their expertise and versatility. Take the time to review their previous work and evaluate if their design style aligns with your brand and aesthetic preferences.

A designer with a diverse portfolio indicates that they can adapt to different industries and target audiences. It also demonstrates their ability to bring fresh ideas and creativity to your project.

Pay attention to the range of websites they have designed and assess if they can handle various design requirements such as responsive design (mobile-friendly), eCommerce websites, or content management systems (CMS) like WordPress.

3. Consider Experience and Expertise

Experience is one of the biggest assets to be considered when it comes to choosing a website designer. Look for designers who have been in the industry for a considerable amount of time and have a track record of successful projects. An experienced designer will have a deep understanding of creating the perfect design that is in sync with the desired user experience and the latest trends.

Additionally, consider their expertise in specific areas of your line of business and your unique goals. For instance, if you want to build an eCommerce website that runs seamlessly across different devices and screen sizes, all you need to do to garner best results is hire responsive web designers.

4. Seek Recommendations and Read Reviews

Word-of-mouth recommendations and online reviews can provide superb insights into the reputation and reliability of website designers. Reach out to your professional network, colleagues, or friends who have had positive experiences with website designers.

Their firsthand experiences can help you narrow down your options and find designers who have a track record of delivering quality work and excellent customer service. Additionally, check online review platforms and social media channels to gather feedback from previous clients.

5. Communication and Collaboration

Effective communication and collaboration are the two pillars on which you lay the foundation of a successful website design. Therefore, you should look for a designer who is responsive, attentive, and takes time to understand your specific needs.

During the interview, assess if your chosen designer is actively listening to your ideas. You can also ask relevant questions, and provide thoughtful feedback. A good designer will always be open to your suggestions and willing to incorporate your feedback. He will also involve you in the decision-making process and keep you updated on the progress of the project.

6. Try and Understand the Basic Design Process

Before finalizing a website designer, it’s important to understand their design process. Inquire about their workflow, from the initial consultation and wire-framing to the design phase and website launch.

A transparent and well-defined process ensures that you have a clear understanding of what to expect at each stage and minimizes potential misunderstandings or delays.

Ask the designer about their approach to gathering requirements, creating design mock-ups or wire-frames, and obtaining client feedback. Multiple independent surveys and think-tank analyses have shown that when you hire web designers from India, this collaboration experience becomes a lot smoother. India is, after all, the talent capital of the world.

7. Leaf through Testimonials and Case Studies

Testimonials and case studies offer further evidence of a website designer’s capabilities and client satisfaction. Request references from the designer and reach out to their previous clients to gather firsthand experiences.

Testimonials provide valuable insights into the designer’s professionalism, timeliness, and ability to deliver results. They can help you gauge the designer’s expertise, communication skills, and overall client satisfaction.

Case studies are another powerful tool to evaluate a designer’s problem-solving skills and the impact of their design solutions. They showcase the designer’s ability to understand clients’ challenges and provide effective design solutions to address them.

8. Compatibility and Cultural Fit – Underrated but Crucial

Many web designers for hire will not understand your brand and the image you are trying to cultivate. During the selection process, assess if the designer’s values, communication style, and working approach resonate with your own. A compatible designer will have a better understanding of your brand identity, target audience, and industry-specific requirements.

Consider their ability to capture your brand’s personality and translate it into a visually appealing website. Look for examples in their portfolio where they have successfully incorporated a brand’s unique identity and storytelling.

9. Support and Maintenance

A well-designed website needs both support and maintenance in real time to ensure optimal performance. Jot down notes and questions to ask about the post-launch services offered by the designer, such as bug fixes, security updates, and content updates.

A reliable designer should provide options for website maintenance and be available for future enhancements or upgrades as your business grows. This is where you can get ahead of the competition and hire web designer India.

Discuss their approach to handling technical issues, how quickly they respond to support requests, and the availability of service-level agreements (SLAs) if needed.

Conclusion

Finding the best website designer for your project is a significant decision that can impact the success of your online presence. By sticking with these tips, you’ll be equipped with the knowledge and confidence to identify a website designer locally- or go ahead with web designers for hire.

Learn to trust your instincts when selecting a website designer. Vet thoroughly, think it through, and everything will fall into place!

The post 9 Seriously Great Tips for Finding the Best Website Designer appeared first on SiteProNews.

Effect on UI & UX

When we talk about Web and Design development, the primary goal is to deliver a great and uncomplicated UI (User Interface) for a great UX (User Experience). So far, designers and developers have been trying to second guess customer preferences, with the help of user data and by looking at the success or failure of their potential competitors. However, this has been a rather imperfect game. While some did manage to hit the jackpot, many failed to make a mark. 

With the introduction of AI, data can be analyzed much faster and real time feedback can be assimilated into the design and development of websites. For users, this will be incredibly useful, since more and more websites and apps will be able to implement friendlier user interfaces, making users’ lives easier. AI can track data and phase out designs and interfaces that have proved unpopular and correct design flaws before they have a serious impact on a website’s or app’s performance. 

What’s more, and in what is already proving to be a massive positive both in terms of money and customer satisfaction, AI driven chat bots are able to provide basic customer care on websites and apps. This is helping with customer retention since theses bots are able to handle simpler, basic queries and issues that customers face, and do so instantaneously. There are no waiting queues to frustrate the customer. The hope is that with due improvement in their capabilities, these chat bots can handle more serious customer queries and issues. Scale is never going to be a problem anyways. 

Site maintenance & Security

User Security is not a onetime thing. User perceptions about websites and apps can change over time due to poor or untimely maintenance and oversight. AI, can help with site maintenance by identifying and even fixing errors. Since it is also learning all the time, it can even devise ways to prevent an error from happening again, thus preserving the UX. 

In E-Commerce sites, or sites where payment gateways are involved, security is of paramount importance. Big organizations are also continuously fighting against phishing, hacking and a host of other cyber issues. Often, this entails employing experts and ethical hackers at a very high price to preempt weaknesses and plug them. With AI involvement, this can happen much more effectively and at no added cost. AI can be programmed to prevent, identify and eliminate threats. Many government agencies around the globe are already using AI in their fight against cyber threats. 

Effect on collecting and analyzing user data

For many websites, especially search engines and multiband e-Commerce sites, AI based algorithms have allowed them to 

1. Understand and serve individual users better
2. Use their understanding of individual users to open up highly targeted possibilities in marketing different associated products and services. 

It has been a colossal win-win, with both customers and businesses getting exactly what they want. Moreover, as mentioned before, real time feedback is gleaned for user behavior which sites and apps can use to improve their user interface. 

Effect on Website Building & Code Monkeys

AI has enabled us to the extent that now we do not have to start from scratch while building websites. A lot of the basic stuff is already sorted by AI and developers can simply build on and upwards from that. This, essentially should mean the end of less skilled developers, who are often alluded to as code monkeys. As a result, companies will experience significant savings. Similarly, the development game is set to go into a higher gear with the removal of the “also ran’s”. 

Effect on Design and Development Companies

AI is going to be an absolute game changer when it comes to Design and Development Companies, especially the ones abroad who target Western clients through their cost effectiveness as the major value proposition. AI is going to level the playing field somewhat regarding costs for firms in the West who are vying for the same customers as the offshore firms. Firms whose billing was primarily based on a model which multiplied a number of resources with the number of hours are going to take a hit and we might see newer business models come in. 

There will also be another significant impact when it comes to Design and Development companies. Because AI gets a lot of the basic coding done in a jiffy, time taken for a wide range of basic tasks will be reduced. Accordingly, clients will also start expecting faster work and shorter timelines and companies will start targeting the very best in the business, who can take on the more complicated tasks and get them done in increasingly tighter timeframes. Hence, the lot of the most talented and experienced developers can expect their stock to rise further, while the less skilled ones slink away into oblivion. 

Rise of Free Website Designing Websites

As has inevitably happened across many industries and domains, what starts out as premium services with limited access, becomes easily accessible and free. Recent trends in the evolution of data streaming sites like Prime Video and Netflix are a good example. A lot of websites offering free content have also cropped up alongside, challenging the paid sites’ hitherto unperturbed existence. This is bound to happen in the case of Website Designing sites as well. Right now we have mostly paid sites offering full services and the free ones are not really anything to write home about. However, with the advent of AI design and development of apps and websites, expect such websites to crop up by the dozen.

The post How Artificial Intelligence Can Effect Web Development and Design appeared first on SiteProNews.

A variety of SEO audit tools are now available so auditors do not have to spend much time performing manual checks on every single webpage. However, an audit tool only gives a statistical figure of the website’s overall performance and traffic. A professional auditor or an auditing team is required to analyze the data and identify the exact problem in the system. Nevertheless, an audit tool simplifies the entire task for an auditor and shoots a figure that is system generated, as opposed to incorrect details accumulated with manual labor. That being said, here’s a list of some of the top SEO audit tools that are used by auditors worldwide…

Google Webmaster

Google Webmaster is Google’s top SEO auditing tool that is entirely free to use. With Google Search Console or Google Webmaster, you can also identify the website’s position, number of clicks it attains on Google SERPs, and the number of impressions. Although it fails to deep dive into specific issues, it gives you an overview of various webpages. Google Webmaster, thus, is a great tool to conduct an initial analysis of a website. Additionally, when your site is on the web, the essential components considered important by Google Webmaster Tools Guide include, search queries, links to your website, keywords, internal links, crawl errors, and crawl stats.

SEO Site Checkup 

SEO site checkup is yet another free auditing tool that analyses the website on six major categories viz., SEO issues, mobile friendliness, security, semantic web, social media, and server related issues. This easy-to-understand tool critically monitors websites and lets the auditor know of any technical shortcomings that is hurting the website’s search engine rankings. The tool also takes into account the latest SEO trends and ranking factors in order to furnish a full-fledged SEO audit report.

Screaming Frog 

Screaming Frog is the perfect auditing tool if you require informative data from the entire website in one go. The tool crawls specified webpages or the website and examines the URLs thoroughly to highlight any SEO related issues. The tool simplifies the entire process of crawling to process data at a much faster pace, making it apt for larger websites. Screaming Frog is a recommended tool by SEO experts worldwide. 

SEMrush 

SEMrush is a tool that not only analyses an entire website, but also conducts an extensive audit of specific webpages to create an elaborate list of page performance, backlinks, and keyword research. It also tracks the keyword strategy used by your competitors, runs an SEO audit of your blog, looks for back linking opportunities, offers report templates (monthly SEO reporting, basic SEO audits, etc.), and also has the ability to customize these reports. SEMrush also evaluates a website’s domain history, organic traffic, keyword ranking, thus allowing not just an in-depth site audit, but a comparison on the progress of the site’s performance overtime. 

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the most advanced SEO audit tools, and the second largest crawler after Google. It not only collects data on various metrics, but also produces ranking profiles, keywords, and links that help you make better decisions relating to website content. The three main tools used by Ahrefs are: site, content, and keyword explorer, and it produces a ‘keyword parent topic’ that provides a wider opportunity to create content keeping in mind the key SEO elements.

Woorank 

Woorank is yet another popular SEO tool that runs free website reviews. In addition, it also creates an advanced review that tracks and optimizes the website to create an in-depth site analysis. It takes into account social media, usability, SEO initiatives, marketing checklist, and much more to provide personalized information on how to improve site visibility and its overall ranking.

Serpstat

Serpstat is a site audit tool that contains five essential tools viz., keywords search, backlinks, rank tracking, site audit, and competitive analysis. These tools analyze the website to find issues related to loading speed, headings, indexation, meta tags, loading speed, and many other parameters. Highlighting the mistakes made on the website, appropriate recommendations are made by the tool to resolve key issues.

Netpeak Spider 

If you’re looking for a comprehensive audit report that delivers data quickly, Netpeak Spider is the apt tool. Over 50 keywords on a single page can be audited at once and it can easily display over 60 issues pertaining to external and broken links. This tool is perfect for day-to-day SEO audits as it can calculate internal page ranks to improve the linking structure of the website. The tool has a 14-day free trial before gaining a complete paid access to the tool.

Found’s SEO Audit Tool

Found’s is a powerful SEO audit tool that finds and resolves major SEO errors. By merely entering the URL of the website or the webpage, an instant report is generated that displays external link issues, technical issues, and content related issues. It is an extremely easy-to-use tool for marketers where the major problems of a website can be analyzed in a short span of time.

UpCity’s SEO Report Card

SEO report card is yet another audit tool that performs a quick analysis of a website. The main feature of this tool is to determine how a website performs in comparison to its competitors. The report drafted by this tool includes: rank analysis, link building, on-site analysis, website accessibility, trust metrics, and current indexing. The tool is not just swift in its workings, but also quite visual in its presentation, thus making it easier to analyze the report.

Ready to make your pick?

There are several SEO audit tools that are available in the market today. The key is to add a combination of tools to get a more comprehensive report. When you hire SEO Experts to conduct audits on your website, ensure that the SEO team is well-versed with a few of these popular tools so you can take the right step towards the candidate, and essentially, towards your online business.

The post Top SEO Audit Tools for Better Website Analysis in 2019 appeared first on SiteProNews.

1. Minimalism: The popularity of minimalistic, simplistic designs in the last few years has meant that this period can justifiably called the “age of minimalism” in design. The popularity for minimalistic designs in an era when technology has made even the most complex and difficult designs accessible to most designers, can be mainly attributed to the rise of mobile applications. A simple, clean UI is seen as essential to a good UX. Hence, designers have tried to do more with less. A classic example is the Uber logo. Minimalistic designs also have great recall value, and most evergreen brands like Nike, Adidas, Coke etc. have traditionally kept design elements simple and minimalistic.

2. Negative Space: Negative Space has long been in vogue amongst modernist painters and impressionists. The overall clean look and inherent symbology draws designers to use negative space in their designs. Case in point, the FedEx logo, which has a hidden arrow between the letters E and X. Or for that matter take the logo of Hope for African Children Initiative which is basically a child looking up to an adult. However the negative space or free space is the general outline of the African continent, which adds depth to the logo. In a way it uses reverse symbology when compared to Rubin’s Vase. Another good example of using negative space effectively is the Google homepage. Although there is no hidden symbology there, the clean look of the page helps the user focus on the main item, which is the search tab itself. 

3. De-familiarized layouts: This has been slowly catching on in the last couple of years. While website designs have generally tended to go from the clutter and cramp of earlier years to cleaner and bolder looks, they always followed a basic structure, if for no other reason than ease of navigation, which is critical to keep visitors on site. De-Familiarized layouts, however, with their zigzag patterns and innovative and eye catching color schemes offer website designers the best of both worlds – a clean, uncluttered look while maintaining an abstract and avant garde design feel. It has also allowed designers to plan the page better, with more freedom. 

4. 3D: The current generation swears by 3D. 3D elements in design have been popular right through 2018 and the trend will continue in 2019. One will see not just 3D logos, but 3D motifs being increasingly used on website templates. 

5. Minimal Navigation: With a majority of users now viewing online content via handheld devices, the old method employed by websites for page navigation has been rendered obsolete. These days designers look for a way to have one single and simple navigational method, which is not only mobile friendly but can also be used to retain uniformity across all platforms. Hence the number of websites with over-simplified and minimal navigation will only increase in 2019.

6. Photo Overlays: Photo Overlays or Text Overlaying Photos or collages have been extremely common for the last few years. In fact, a majority of the quick, run of mill work, that you can expect when you hire a graphic designer online, or outsource to a graphic design company in India will include these elements. Most of these professional designers know from experience that such overlays are mostly liked by clients since they look simple and nice as a design element. This perhaps explains why they are so popular. 

7. Gradients: One other trend that was extremely popular in 2018, especially in website template designs, was the use of color gradients. This trend will become even more popular in 2019. Using different shades of a darker color allows designs to be attractive and neat, without being dull. To avoid a dull monochromatic page, gradients can be used extremely effectively. There is also a subtlety about gradients which elevates the design to look extremely posh and classy, which is perfect for websites with niche products or services catering to a select audience. 

8. Custom Illustrations: Custom Illustrations have quickly replaced bold, in your face designs. 2018 saw intricate and delicate customized designs and motifs becoming the norm. More and more companies are using custom illustrations on packaging, stationary etc. to establish brand identity and make the brand more attractive to audiences. 

9. Bold Duotones: Having disappeared from the scene for a couple of years, bold duotones made a comeback in some designs in 2018. They were  extremely popular back in the rock and roll, psychedelic music influenced 70’s, but disappeared, then reappeared, making a strong comeback in the earlier part of the decade. Duotones became popular enough to get used as one of the themes in the True Detective series. It is difficult to say why their use cooled off after that, given that bold duotones look fantastic on high quality displays, but they have now made a strong comeback and will be very much in vogue in 2019. 

10. GIFs and Cinematographs: I love the concept of GIF’s and Cinematographs as backgrounds. They immediately spruce up a website and make it look unique. The trend was pretty huge in 2018 and it doesn’t look like it will let up anytime soon. If anything, the trend might become more popular. Hence 2019 might see more and more websites adopt GIF’s and Cinematographs as backgrounds. 

The catch, however, is that websites take more time to load and might not display properly on hand held devices like cell phones. 

So, those were 10 graphic trends that I think will hold sway in 2019. Of course, there might be others, but these have a high chance of finishing as the most popular in 2019. What do you think?

The post Top 10 Graphic Design Trends to Watch For In 2019 appeared first on SiteProNews.

Outsourcing is a practice through which the execution of a particular service or the actual manufacturing or assembly of a certain product is entrusted to third party entities like contractual vendors and agencies. One can choose to outsource part of or the entire business to third party vendors. Generally, businesses keep a tight core team while outsourcing all or most of the other functions to third party vendors.  

Why do businesses outsource? 

Businesses are driven by several motivations and compulsions towards outsourcing. I have listed some of them below. 

Compulsions: 

1. Absence of in-house resources- Businesses often outsource projects due to the lack of proper talent in-house. For instance, an automobile manufacturing company wants a new website for its new range of products. It might so happen that the company might not have the requisite talent on its payroll to carry out the task, nor does it have the requisite confidence to hire the in-house talent required, due to the current team’s lack of knowledge of the specific domain. Hence, it is safer and easier to simply outsource the task to an expert. Advertising agencies are one of the earlier examples of outsourcing. 

2. Limited scope of work or tenure- This is to date the most common form of outsourcing. Often a company needs a certain project to be executed, for which hiring someone or a team fulltime in-house cannot be justified. In such a scenario, the company can look to outsource to either freelancers of vendors. For example, if the same automobile company we talked about is bringing out a limited edition car to celebrate its 25^th anniversary, then would it create a whole new assembly line for those cars and hire workers to operate it? Of course not! That’s just a criminal waste of resources. So the company can seek out a vendor who will take on the project and deliver the order as per schedule. 

3. Absence of a good talent pool locally– Sometimes, your geographical location can be a hindrance to hiring good talent. This is especially true for smaller businesses located in the hinterlands, away from major population centers. At that point, the choice is between hiring someone who is less qualified or outsourcing it to an expert. It’s really a no-brainer. Of course not all jobs or functions can be outsourced. But those which can be are. 

Motivations: 

1. Cost reduction- Rapid globalization has allowed the world to work together more closely. Businesses have accordingly sought to profit from this and sought vendors from developing economies to bring down costs significantly. A prime example of this has been the proliferation of manufacturing freelancers in China who produce everything from cars to mobile phones to pen drives. 

2. Scaling up operations rapidly– This is true mostly for services. Businesses which offer different services as their primary product need to be versatile and flexible, since they cater to a wide array of clients. For companies in this sector, it is almost impossible to maintain a steady workforce. Sudden demand of increase in resources cannot be met in developed economies since the talent market is largely saturated and good talent comes at a premium. In such a scenario, businesses look towards business outsourcing in India to quickly scale up their operations. Like China, India has made a name for itself, albeit in outsourcing services. Several vendors exist in India who already have highly qualified professionals on payroll who can immediately step in to execute the client’s project. Rapid and immediate hiring is also much easier in India since there is a bigger talent pool and lesser number of available current jobs. 

3. Employee lawsuits- Employee lawsuits are a major issue in certain developed economies. While employment laws are in place to safeguard the rights of workers, lawsuits are also misused quite frequently. Companies also like to have the option to scale down in answer to market realities in order to survive. Since outsourcing is more like a pay as you go service, with term contracts and safeguards in place to protect the clients, many businesses look to outsource to save them unnecessary legal hassles. 

Outsourcing and Offshoring- Meaning and Differences

Outsourcing is often used interchangeably with offshoring. Broad realities support the usage. However, there are a few crucial differences. 

1. Outsourcing is the broad, all-encompassing term for contracting out manufacturing and services to third party vendors. This also includes outsourcing to offshore entities (offshore outsourcing) in places like China and India. Offshoring on the other hand does not mean offshore outsourcing only. Many companies have setup wholly owned subsidiaries in foreign countries and shifted part or a majority of their operations to these centers. This isn’t outsourcing, since no third party vendors are involved. It is simply the concerned business opening up an alternative center. A good example of this can be seen in Detroit itself, which famously lost a lot of jobs to offshoring. Japanese car manufacturers shifted their assembly plants from Japan to the US in the late 70’s and early 80’s due to restrictions on importing Japanese goods to the US. This practice is simply offshoring. Offshore outsourcing on the other hand is what many mobile manufacturers indulge in, contracting the work to Chinese third party manufacturers. 

2. Another basic difference between offshore outsourcing and simply offshoring is the presence of the concerned business in the local economy. Most offshore entities of western businesses base their centers abroad to tap into and serve those local markets as well. In a way, the business is expanding globally and offshoring is a way of getting a new market interested by bringing the product to the proverbial doorstep of potential consumers. Offshore outsourcing on the other hand is primarily concerned with reducing costs and catering to the existing talent pool. A lot of products and services that are outsourced to offshore entities are not even available in those countries. 

3. Last but not the least, offshoring generally means a transfer of technology, knowledge and work methodologies. Most offshore centers of American or Japanese companies are almost exact replicas of their parent centers. Employees in these offshore centers are likely to be trained by the company on its product and work culture and new technology, hitherto unavailable at the location, introduced to get the centre up and running. Offshore outsourcing has little to no transfer of technology from the client’s side. If anything, the opposite might be true, especially in terms of the knowledge flow. Again, the difference comes in the ultimate goal that a business is trying to achieve. Offshoring is an investment- long term with a business trying to provide a solution or product that did not exist in the market, while also benefiting from cheaper labor. Offshore outsourcing is more need based. The business is seeking what it does not have. That’s it. So it makes sense that whatever transfer of knowledge has to happen, will probably be in the reverse direction, especially in services. A lot of outsourcing services to India for instance are helping small and medium companies grow in several domains in markets where locally such resources are simply not available, even at a premium. 

The Pitfalls: 

There obviously will be a few pitfalls to everything. Outsourcing is no exception. This is a topic which is raised in pretty much every political debate centering on jobs. Hence I won’t go into it much and point out three crucial pitfalls which one should guard against as a businessman or woman. 

1. Less control over project or product. 
2. Possibility of subcontracting and hence inferior quality
3. Loss of support for a product amongst the local audiences who might be against the idea of offshore outsourcing. 

To sum it up: 

Outsourcing is a great tool and a great leveler in business. It allows smaller fish to thrive in the same waters as the big sharks. However, it is great as long as it is being used adroitly. It is strictly a means to an end. The moment the means become the end, you are in trouble. 

The post The Nitty-Gritties of Outsourcing appeared first on SiteProNews.

The cost of doing business

A physical office does not come cheap. It’s important, yes, but not necessary for all businesses. Many new age entrepreneurs prefer to work out of their home and their entire company is on the cloud! They can easily outsource specific jobs to vendors or freelancers. This brings down the cost of doing business drastically, since there is basically no overhead! No office space to rent, maintain and secure. Unless rents come down drastically, I see this trend continuing. 

Who is today’s entrepreneur?

The new age entrepreneur is from a generation which has grown up taking the internet and all things associated for granted. Many of them were teenagers when the dot com revolution happened. They are the first generation which started to think of ways to use the internet as an integral part of their business model and not just as a useful tool. There are also more entrepreneurs per capita today than ever before. Hence, the competition for funding is intense. Venture capitalists and financial institutions today look for not just a great idea but also a good and viable business model. A business model which is able to save up to 70 percent on potential costs through offshoring will obviously be more attractive. 

The advent of shared and temporary workspaces 

The concept of shared workspaces is nothing new, neither are temporary workspaces. Businessmen often rented hotel suites or conference rooms in hotels to conduct meetings, seminars etc. Today, this practice has given birth to an entirely new businesses – that of shared spaces and temporary meeting rooms, often in downtown areas of the city, at locations which is looked upon as both posh and convenient. 

Offices, while often redundant for the modern entrepreneur as a work space, become important, especially when needed to conduct meetings, entertain investors or clients and or required for a central headquarters for your business, even if briefly for a crucial project. Temporary workspaces and meeting rooms, often built alongside cafes cater to this segment, thus further reducing the need for a permanent office space. It’s a growing trend and if things keep on the same track, we might see the demise of traditional offices, with only the biggest of firms keeping permanent central offices. For small businesses, offices might disappear altogether. 

Automation and AI

Google was one of the first employers to design the workplace for the future – a place which looks less like a corporate office and more like a club or party zone where one would go to chill out. While their business model was acquiring extremely creative talent, talent which came with its own quirks and which, the company quickly realized, might be ill suited to a strictly corporate environment, in a small cubicle. While Google started it, others too have followed suit, especially the large corporations to varying degrees. In fact, having a cool workplace is considered a major value proposition to consider while joining an organization within a generation which is essentially post millennial. 

The advent of AI and automation has also reduced the number of jobs in areas like data entry, customer service, management etc. Jobs such as this, essentially clerical in nature and not requiring a high degree of creativity but rather precision have traditionally taken up the majority of the workspace in offices. With these gone, and creativity and innovation becoming the name of the game, the nature of offices was bound to change, as would the average employee in most organizations. While large corporations like Google and Facebook can afford multi-billion dollar real estate to sustain sprawling campuses across the globe, small and medium business owners or startups can hardly afford such luxuries. Top notch talent in the industry across all domains, however, now demands a stress free and state of the art workspace. So companies will either continue to outsource to elite freelancers who work from their own setups, often from the comfort of their homes; or they will look to outsource to offshore companies, who while able to afford all necessary amenities for its employees, will still be a lot cheaper than local resources. 

A continuing trend

The proliferation of the remote employee will continue, especially the offshore component. The world is genuinely shrinking, and any project today, especially one dealing with technology and innovation, has to be a collaborative affair between the proverbial west and east. The balance of global business rests on the fluidity of such a collaboration, where ideas hatched in Oregon or Kansas can be worked upon and made possible in a Bangalore or Mumbai or Manila. And while we might chose to celebrate this as the ultimate achievement of globalization, this has been going on for centuries, albeit not always perfectly, or willingly. Hark back to the days when spices were a rare commodity. It was the trade between Europe and Asia which proved to be crucial in establishing strong cultural links, ultimately bringing people closer together and creating the current world order. It wasn’t always perfect…far from it in fact, and politics always had a fair share in it. But it was critical nevertheless. Today, the situation is again similar, where political rhetoric is firmly against outsourcing, but the trend of the remote worker has only increased, since political rhetoric and economic realities don’t often mesh.

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