Using an offshore developer

Where projects actually fail

Not usually on skill. There are good developers everywhere, and the ones at a lower rate are not worse as a rule than the ones at a higher one.

They fail on the brief. Ask for a modern website for a plumbing business and you will get something, and then a long argument neither side priced for.

And they fail on handover. A finished site sent as one file, with the accounts in somebody else's name and nothing written down, is a site you cannot look after.

Rates also vary hugely inside any market. A very low quote usually means a junior developer or a template, and both are fine if that is what you agreed to buy rather than what you found out later.

Specify what is actually wanted

List the pages, what goes on each one, and what happens when somebody sends a form. That level of detail is what keeps a project from drifting.

Include the standards an answer engine and a screen reader both rely on. Heading order, alt text, how fast pages must load, and whether it has to pass an access check. Those get skipped unless you write them down.

Our page on site planning covers producing that document. It is the same plan whoever builds the site, and it is the cheapest hour in the whole project.

Say what the site must not do as well. No pop-up on arrival, no stock photographs of other people's work, no claims about results. Those are easier to ban up front than to remove later.

Insist on owning everything

The domain in your own account, the code in your own store, the hosting in your name, and every other account set up under your business rather than theirs.

This is not distrust. It is what you would want from any provider, and it is the thing most often skipped when the work is remote and casual.

Our page on one business, one domain covers why the address matters most. A project you cannot take elsewhere is a project you cannot finish elsewhere either.

How to structure the engagement

The list below is what keeps a remote project on track. None of it is specific to any country, and all of it applies to any developer you cannot walk over to.

• A written specification listing every page and behavior
• Payment in stages against working deliverables
• Code in a repository you own from the first commit
• A weekly call with something visible to look at
• Agreed working hours that overlap with yours
• A defined test process before each payment
• A documented handover as the final deliverable

Communication and time zones

The real cost of distance is the round trip. A question asked at five is answered by the next morning, which turns a two-minute check into a lost day.

Agree an hour that suits you both and use it for anything unclear. A written brief cuts how often this matters. It does not remove it.

Be plain rather than polite about what is wrong. Hints sent across a language and a time zone produce the wrong fix twice.

Content is still yours

No developer anywhere can write about your trade without you. The usual let-down in these jobs is bland copy, and the cause is that nobody gave them better.

Supply real material. Our page on describing your business covers what to provide, and it applies identically to a human developer.

Set aside your own time for this. A job that assumes the developer will write the words will produce filler.

What happens afterward

Agree upkeep before launch, including how fast they reply and what is covered. A job that ends at delivery leaves you with a site and nobody to call.

Check that you can build and publish the site without them. If nobody in your business can, you have bought a tie rather than a website.

And check the site yourself against the specification. Our site check reports the structural half in one pass, which is a fairer basis for a conversation than an opinion.