is the uk web design market turning?

its a rapid industry and i want to know if you think its about to change

[chipper]

Hi, I was looking to learn people’s ideas and viewpoints as to where they see/view the uk web design industry is going. I realise that there will always be a market/demand for quality design – I think that I am more questioning the commercial viability of running ‘traditional web design’ studio against a ‘web services/software – with a bolt on/contracted out design function’ type of studio. It’s clear to see that the events over the last 2-3 years have seen the initial fury of the net pass only to be replaced by a huge increase in the acceptance and take-up by UK business.

Looking at this from a commercial viewpoint we started out as 4 four people running a small web design studio for sme clients. Overtime we have found that we are now buying in high end templates, adding our own content, information structure and then contracting out the coding to overseas suppliers – in effect making us client focused and ‘creative project managers’, and focusing on business needs. Over recent months we are starting to notice that the emphasis is moving away from graphic/creative design to the more fundamental web enabling of business functions - such as collaboration, activity/order processing and CRM functions.

I guess the reason for this post is to see if any of you guys feel that the tide is about to turn and the ‘web services’ dimension of the commercial internet is almost upon us. If this is the case should we be looking at a more focused skill set and return to the classic systems analytical requirements of software design, and is this a time for right sizing – if the project management skills are in house and the technical are out house is this a new era/way of doing business

Any thoughts?

[Ibrahim]

From what i have noticed, to reduce costs, a lot of firms are outsourcing work to notably Asian countries.

But the web design industry will be strong atleast for some more time, but yes it is true, the designing might go in the backseat when e-enabling businesses comes in more dominance. A lot of firms are looking into online collaboration from the supplier chain down to the retail outlets.

But from what i think, for designers, there will always be some site which requires re-designing/updating so the biz will be running for quite some time.

And in the mean time, we should endeavor & go aheadin the new technologies which are coming up for online collaboration.