Nigeria’s reputation for all sorts of things; some earned, some contrived has conspired with a number of challenges to hobble the web design business in the country, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can report.
Web design or web development is the process of planning and creating a website and is considered a very lucrative business which powers over 25 per cent developed countries economy.
In Nigeria however, the bad after taste of cybercrime and the seemingly un-seriousness of the country’s to address the monster has continued to haunt the country both economically and social-politically as local businesses outsource their web design to companies abroad.
Major beneficiaries are companies in India, UK and USA while local firms groan under Nigeria’s notoriously unreliable power supply and reluctance of clients to pay for good designs.
Mr. Tobi Asehinde, chief executive officer, Vibe Web Solutions Limited, told Nigeria CommunicationsWeek that the difficulty in getting clients to pay for their services, has led some web designers to compromise quality.
“ A company may approach you that they want to design an e-commerce website, all they know is that they will make money from the site. They do not understand other metrics that will spur the success; when they start and along the line it fails, they come back to you thinking that you deceived them. Web developers in Nigeria have very bad reputation. The bad reputation is as a result of the client not having basic knowledge of what they want” he added
Nodding in agreement, Stephen Akintayo, chief executive officer, GileadBalm Group, said that the problems are of three folds -technology, developers and the clients.
“The internet in your office can go off for days or hours and most a times, you have to start afresh. So, you may not be able to execute at the agreed time. Government needs to improve on the infrastructure on ground. Remember, no body thinkers on giving the web developers assistant in terms of soft loan or equipment support.
On his part, Mr. Kanu Iroegbu, digital marketing consultant, Net Media Reach, admonished the clients to always ask questions before adopting patterns or giving out contracts for web building.
“If you’re planning on launching or redeveloping your website in the near future, don’t be fooled. There is a lot more to consider than simply the layout and price. It is important to know that a website is not a product, it is a service. The woes of Web development stem from this … and the fact that it is a fairly new industry with very little standards does not help either.