| LED Digest 1535: Selling to a Global Market |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest ................................................. March 11, 2003 Issue #1535 ................................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Outsourcing and Globalization ==-- ~ Janet Attard "...anyone who knows what they are doing can still get decent rates..." ~ Mark Laing "...specialization and skill upgrading are great strategies to pursue." --== In-House Web Design ==-- ~ Mark Roberts "Paying someone on staff...is considerably cheaper..." ~ Bill Davison ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Fraud Protection ==-- ~ James Kalassery ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Janet Attard Subject: Global Outsourcing > Programming... is NO LONGER the 'elite' skill that > it once was - and the global market is speedy and > merciless in levelling prices. - Marty Milette, LED 1534 It's certainly true that jobs that used to pay well in the US are going overseas. But often there's a big downside to outsourcing overseas: the results of doing so can lower the quality of the product - at least for the US market. As one example, we outsourced development of one project for BusinessKnowHow.com to a company in India. The hourly rate and expected project price was about half of what I would have paid to have someone do the work in the US. The first problem, was the time difference. Email exchanges, even with their staff answering promptly, took a day for each question or piece of information needed. But that was minor. The big problem was that every page and every piece of instruction for users had to be checked carefullly for spelling and grammar, and usually rewritten for readability / understandability by the US market. In addition, certain usage standards were different. For instance, in the US, people normally associate a * or colored text on a form with fields that must be completed. The product they first delivered to us used the * and colored text for items on a form that were not required. Explaining what we wanted done often took multiple emails (and some never did get set up the way we really wanted), because of both the language differences and the fact you couldn't easily pick up a phone to discuss anything. And as a result of all of those things, I've never really been satisfied with the way that particular function works. We'll probably rebuild it at some point. Another very good example is the trend for the computer companies to outsource help line function overseas or to hire very inexperienced people to answer the helpline. The result, time and again, is that the callers needing help can barely understand the accent of the people trying to deliver the help. How many people do you think will recommend their computer manufacturer to their friends after they've had to try to understand someone with a thick accent telling them how to take apart their computer (that h appened to a friend of mine) or telling them they have to reformat their hard drive and reinstall all the original programming to fix a minor problem (that happened to me - fortunately I knew enough about the problem to know that wasn't true, and finally got put through to a supervisor who did know how to solve the problem.) So, while programming and web development, and other tech jobs, may no longer be "elite" and may no longer command as high rates as in the past, anyone who knows what they are doing can still get decent rates if they target customers who still think quality is important. Janet Attard Business Know-How http://www.businessknowhow.net/posters ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Mark Laing Subject: Outsourcing & Globalization Like Marty in LED 1534, I too have found the globalization thread extremely interesting. I suspect most readers have, because it really cuts to the core of what Internet marketing (or at least most Internet marketing) is about ... selling our products and services in the global marketplace. It also brings home an important fact - even if you are not selling your wares online, your business is competing with companies across the globe who are. I wonder how many businesses out there who decided to skip the digital revolution are scratching their heads, wondering where their sales are going. As the owner of a design and copywriting firm based in a high wage country (Canada), I can whine all I want about how the Internet allows low wage firms to take away business from us, but it's important that I keep things in perspective. Before the Internet became the tool that it is today, I was restricted geographically to a small area ... now we count firms across North America as clients. For every job we might have lost to a low priced competitor, I've picked up two or more from customers who would have never know we existed without the Internet. Sometimes you have to take the bad with the good, and work at making the good outweigh the bad. As Marty indicates, there are ways for those of us in developed nations to stay ahead of the game when it comes to competing with low-wage suppliers. As he observed, specialization and skill upgrading are great strategies to pursue. Niche marketing (which has been touched upon by other posters) is another. Find an area of expertise that is too narrow for the big guys to target and too specialized for the low wage folks to aim for, and you will see a pay off. As well, we have found it useful to take the spotlight off per-hour rates and put it on total pricing and turnkey services. I'll use a printed newsletter as an example. If I quote a per-hour rate on a single element of a job (graphic design or copywriting), my rates are good, but they can't stand up to the rates of a creative firm in Eastern Europe or India. Instead, I usually quote a per project rate. That's because we've been doing print project management for long enough (and we're competent enough at it) to have a very steamlined work flow set up. That translates into less time spent per job (offsetting higher rates), without sacrificing quality. As well, we get trade rates on film and offset printing, and we batch film jobs when possible (resulting in added discounts for volume). All this is passed on to the customer, which means our price is competitive without us providing a shoddy product. Add good customer service to the mix, and you have all the ingredients needed to remain competitive in the 'dog eat dog' world of global commerce. Mark Laing Graphicsandwords ------- new post - new topic -------- From: Mark Roberts Subject: In-house design > Why is it that the most visually appealing sites I've > come across are created in-house and NOT by > dedicated web development firms? - Ivan Jimenez, LED 1532 And the answer is... $$$ Unless you are exceptionally talented in PhotoShop or similiar graphic design packages, you have no idea how long it can take (in time and $$$) to create some of the graphics that you see on the web. Unless you are exceptionally talented in application development, you have no idea how long it can take to develop a web site... making it compatible to various browsers and navigationally smooth. Paying someone on staff an hourly wage is considerably cheaper than contracting it out. Unless..... If you are very active on the web and have constant work for these designers and developers to do, it may be beneficial to hire full time staff to do this. Otherwise, it may be cheaper in the long run to contract out the jobs, avoiding having to put these people on the payroll, benefits, etc. Mark Roberts Roberts Computing Systems http://www.robertscomputing.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Bill Davison Subject: In-house design > As a general rule of thumb, we would charge around > $8,000 for a 10-page, SE-optimized, non-ecommerce, > b2b web site... http://www.asbindustries.com is one > of the most basic examples of our work - Beth Earle, LED 1534 Wow! I'm an American web designer and my price for a site such as www.asbindustries.com would be $500.00 and... I wouldn't use a "wizard" to design it. Bill Davison bizwebpage.com ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: James Kalassery Subject: Fraud protection Hello LEDers, The discussion on fraud-protection is interesting. Even though checking IP addresses may be one of the few methods now available for screening, that is not the best one. Credit Cards are supposed to be "global"; at least that is what the card companies say. If it is truly "global", then we should be able to use it from anywhere in the world. But that is not the case now. Every 10 or 15 days I travel from one country to another on my work. I have a card issued in one of these countries where I have a residence permit. Once, when I was in another country, I wanted to purchase a software online and used this card. The transaction went through as normal. But, after a little while, I got an email from the card processing company saying that they are not able to conclude the transaction. They did not give any reason for this (they first said that they cannot, for security reasons). I started corresponding with them relentlessly and in one of my mails I mentioned about my travel, etc. Then they said they could not have the address verified and the IP address did not seem to be matching. I am sure this is not an isolated case. There must be hundreds of other genuine cases. If the card is really global, what steps have these card companies taken to ensure that it is really global ? None. These days, when almost everybody is offering online access to their customers' accounts, why can't the card companies devise something similar to protect their customers' (card holders and merchants) interests? Surely, this can be done. This may be slightly inconvenient to customers, but, the fraudsters cannot play around as easily as they do now. (Right now anyone can play havoc with a copy of somebody else's credit card statement.) The card companies are deliberately leaving the loopholes unplugged. If a fraudulent transaction goes through un-noticed, the cardholder pays for it. The card companies get their interest on the drawings. On the other hand, if it is detected, the merchant pays for it along with an additional charge-back fee. The card companies and the fraudsters don't pay for it in either case. So, in whose interest are these loopholes left unplugged? We have to assume that with so much of fraudulent activity going on on the internet, the charge-back fees the card companies collect must be really substantial. Is it believable that these card companies do not have the resources or the technology to plug these loopholes? Fraud prevention would mean less revenue for the card companies. Then why should they? The only group who can certainly prevent fraud are the card companies. No individual merchant or customer can have access to such massive databases to check the card every time a transaction takes place. Nor it is safe perhaps. AVS is also an obsolete method. Not practical in many regions. The hassles of reversing an entry from a credit card account is very cumbersome and time consuming. In one of the earlier posts, the author said it is high time these card companies do something about this. The card companies have been negligent all these years, and they continue to be negligent. All in their interests alone. When will they actually stop riding us?? Regards, James Kalassery http://businessdigests.com ------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1995-2003 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world." - Manly Palmer Hall |
