You might have tried to create a website for your business and decided that you’d be better off hiring a freelance web designer or contacting an agency in Singapore, while you focus running your business.
Many businesses build their website around WordPress. As one of the Content Management System (CMS) powerhouses in the world, there are many people with focused expertise who may help you in a more efficient and effective manner.
Here’s some statistics from BuiltWith to put WordPress’s market dominance into perspective, as of 11/10/2019:
- Over 27,000,000 active installs
- Of the top 1 million websites in the world, 35.67% are built on WordPress.
- Of the top 10k websites in the world, 38.32% are built on WordPress.
- 22,775 websites in Singapore use WordPress.
Websites are critical to your business and you need to get someone reliable, but the question lies in whether you hire a freelance WordPress designer in Singapore, or turn to other options like engaging an agency or in-house website designer.
There are benefits & demerits of hiring a freelancer. Read on to make sure you can take an informed decision before hiring one.
The Upsides
Affordable Rates
The main pull factor for hiring freelancers is the cost-effectiveness. Especially while on a project-based rate, freelancers tend to be more time-effective as they try to be productive when they try to clinch more projects in a given period of time. You can definitely find a cheap freelancer WordPress designer in Singapore.
Direct Communication
Working with only the freelancer, you are able to layout all your project guidelines quite directly, without communication errors that usually happen in big teams. This allows the freelancer to contact you whenever they have confusions, and you can work on your required change in real time. Just remember to keep tickets of the conversations to keep track of work requests and their status.
Proven Work Record
You should hire a freelance WordPress designer in Singapore if you know you know that your freelancer has proven results through real work experience, a good understanding of website design concepts and is accountable and accessible. You should know the amount of experience they have in the web design industry. There are many freelancer platforms that rate them on their competencies through factors like ratings, amount of work completed and reviews.
The Downsides
Credibility
Yes, freelancers can be cheap, but.. are they credible? There are many freelance WordPress designers who may quote ridiculously low prices just so they can secure projects to add to their portfolio. To overcome credibility issues, sieve out freelancers who have more than 3 years’ worth of experience, as they have most likely fully completed a project to know the answers to the general pitfalls of your project.
Availability
Working with a freelancer means that your project is reliant on him or her alone. Manage your expectations to understand that freelancers are humans, too. They will need some time off, may fall sick and may even put a permanent stop to their services for personal matters. This gets problematic in the long run. Working with an agency gives you assurance that the project manager will always be there, as there have legal contracts binding and a support team providing you assistance post-completion.
Lack of Value-Add Services
While working with a freelancer, there are going to be limitations in terms of the added scope of work he can provide, on top of his main services. For example, a freelance WordPress designer may not be able to set up your website from scratch, and take into account other factors that are essential for websites such as SEO, graphics design and content writing. You might have to gather a list of a few freelancers to take on certain parts of the projects, and that might get complicated.
While hiring a freelance WordPress designer in Singapore can be a great cost-cutting measure for your business, you should be mindful of the downsides and know what you might get yourself into. Sometimes, to ensure quality, you’ll have to invest greater in your website, to make it pay for you in the long run.
We’d recommend engaging a long-term web design agency, or even hiring a team of in-house executives if you’re planning to build a fairly complex website. Just recently, freelancer platform Fiverr launched Studios, where they allow freelancers to form agency-like groups to take on bigger and more complex projects. Buyers will get the same experience, except that they would have a “single point of contact, a single brief and a single fixed price for an entire agency-like team”. Even these freelancer platforms are seeing the need to move from silo to team work, minimising communication and collaboration pain points from hiring individual freelancers for each function.
With Gwacamol, we provide WordPress web design services among other services, that might be suited for you. Contact us if you are looking for a full suite of website creation work, from design to maintenance and even marketing. We are based in Singapore and aims to design, manage and promote your website for success.
