Is the Web Design Profession Saturated?
I am writing this out of a bit of frustration. Not at anyone in particular, but maybe at myself for not realizing the situation facing the industry earlier.
Freelancers
If you do a little research, you find that there is no shortage of freelancers out there. So, is the freelance web design profession saturated?
Short answer; it is only saturated by those with basic skills that offer their services without any real value.
With the popularity of WordPress and WYSIWYG editors, anyone with a little technical savvy can produce a website. They are teaching design in junior high and high school and many graduates already know the basics before entering college. While little Jimmy (no offence if you are a Jimmy) is sitting in his bedroom creating a website for Uncle Bob’s (no offence if you are an Uncle Bob) plumbing service, it brings down the value of the service.
This was my way of thinking about ten years ago.
Jump forward to today
I don’t think Jimmy is the issue anymore. It’s the likes of Web.com and Wix that offer free websites without any real value. It is essentially Jimmy but Jimmy got bigger and advertises on TV to vulnerable business.
The websites that are designed using their “site builders” are of uniformly poor quality. Small businesses are sucked into this type of thing with a “free” offer that amounts to nothing more than a stagnant brochure on the web.
Now, you can say that this sort of thing may in-turn help us. Some of their customers eventually are fed up with poor service and being nickel and dimed to death for every little add-on.
Ok, I’ll buy that.
They realize they are paying for something that is offering no return on investment. When they do “wake up,” they try to find a designer to save their site.
Most are un-savable.
Built on proprietary software that is near impossible to access - the site needs to be completely rebuilt.
The problem
They expect the rebuild to cost the same as the other site was offering.
The solution
The trick is convincing the customer that you are bringing more than a product. You are bringing value to their company.
The value that a designer brings to the table should go far beyond the product.
A positive side effect
The free sites may in fact weed out clients you would not want to work with anyway. They never intended to pour the time and funding into a site they will get a return. They just want a site for the sake of having a site.
On a side note
Here are a few statistics from Indeed that show hiring trends in three different areas of expertise. The third graph shows a huge spike in the need for integrated marketing such as Social Media and Email.
| Web Design Job Trends | Web Design jobs |
| Graphic Design Job Trends | Graphic Design jobs |
| Social Media Job Trends | Social Media jobs |
Do these companies devalue the web design services offered by professionals? Or are they actually helping our cause?
Flickr Creative Commons image by: JD Hancock