Type in any one of these keywords into Google; UI/UX, web-dev, CSS, WordPress development, and you’ll come across an array of resources to help you on your web-based project. However, you’ll also encounter a ton of information that might confuse you, from how to choose a developer to what format to deliver your files in.
As I neared my website’s design completion and started looking for a developer, I realised that I didn’t even really know what I was looking for. Did I need a front-end developer? Did asking for a quote mean I’d now committed to that service? And what did ‘Full Stack’ mean anyway? Before landing with the developer that I did, I scouted the internet meeting with around seven different agencies. I didn’t think my website idea was a particularly complicated concept to implement, but of course, being a graphic designer with CSS knowledge of a foot, I quickly realised how much finding a developer would be pretty tricky, especially one who listened to my ideas.
Many of these services I contacted acted as middlemen, so I could never straightforwardly relay my design concepts. One experience, in particular, left me with such a sour taste in my mouth that I came close to postponing the development of this website. I was finishing a call with a US-based web development agency when the person seemingly out of nowhere attempted “warn” me off Indian developers. This person explained that, though the service would be cheaper in India, the quality would be lacking and that I “should know better”. Ironically, later that day, I would be speaking with a web developer based in Pune, India, that had been long preplanned!
This is not necessarily to bemoan and begrudge a service that didn’t work out, but it made me think more about the contexts of design and what it means to work with a developer with certain stigmas attached to their professional and cultural background. Neither myself nor Ram Shengale, the founder of Fantastech who I ended up working with, can and should represent such significant cultural contexts that inform the aforementioned agency’s negative biases, yet still, I thought it interesting to discuss some of these themes with Ram—and of course his overall practice.
Sherida Kuffour: Last time we spoke, you were in the middle of moving offices, how has it been going?
Ram Shengale: So we have already moved our stuff to the new office, and everything is set up, but my whole team is not here yet. We were planning to launch on the fifth [of April 2021], but then Pune, the city where I live, announced a mini lockdown. Private offices, restaurants, malls and places of business can’t be open during day time and there’s strict lockdown from 6 pm onwards. So the new office is set up; I’m just waiting for everything to get back to normal so that all the team members can come back and start working from the office premises.
SK: Looking back on our working together, I came to you with a relatively complete design of what I wanted, but I had no idea whether the ideas I had were feasible. What are some things your clients should keep in mind when working with a developer, and how can the client best prepare for a successful project?
RS: I think your project was unique, as usually people don’t design their sites this way, everything we did for you felt fresh and modern. As we primarily work on projects that involve conversion of website UI designs to WordPress sites, we get to work with a lot of designers and agencies and most of the websites we end up doing are the standard grid/column based web designs. So we enjoy working on new web concepts that are a bit different whenever we get them, because that pushes our boundaries and pushes us to think outside the box about how to build it. Your website was a good learning experience because the homepage projects accordion thing and the blog page that you have are not like anything we usually do.
Talking about things that clients should keep in mind when designing website UIs and getting them built by a developer, generally if you follow the general web design standards, use web fonts, divide your screens into grid structures and the stuff, I think most of the time the project would go well. But if there is something out of the box that you are planning to implement, you should definitely discuss about that with your developer. Every developer is different and so are their skill levels. Your developer may or may not be able to build what you’re envisioning, or heck it might even be technically impossible to build if it’s something too fancy. So you should definitely talk to your developer about that. We’ve had clients in the past who came from print design background and they designed websites like brochures and magazines which made it quite a task to build for the web.
If you’re interested we have a free eBook called 7–Point Checklist for Outsourcing Design to Code Projects Profitably & Painlessly that tells you how to prepare your website designs for development and how to manage the whole process so that you can get the website built profitably and painlessly by your outsourced development partners.
SK: You’ve grown your agency a lot since you started as an SEO Executive; what made you switch to coding and create your own company?
RS: So I’m a coder or a geek, you can say. When I had just graduated from college, I interviewed for this company that asked me a bunch of questions relating to SEO. By that time, I was trying to build and grow my blog and I was exploring PHP, coding and SEO at that time. I was able to answer all their questions very well and I cracked the interview and got the job. Gradually, I helped that company grow their website traffic by around 400%.
Eventually, even though I was getting good at it, I felt that SEO was not for me. I was doing freelance web development work on the side during that time, so I decided to leave the job to go freelance full-time. I started taking WordPress development projects and gradually setup a company and started hiring. Earlier we were into all kinds of WordPress development like custom plugins, theme development, web apps and so on. But eventually, we niched down and started working exclusively on design to WordPress conversion projects where the clients would come to us with UI designs, like you did, and we would help them convert those into WordPress websites.
I liked doing these kind of projects because somehow the process of converting a design concept into an actual working website really connected with me. Seeing a drawing or a design getting converted into lines of code and then into an actual webpage is a really fantastic feeling — it is somewhat of a magical process for me. And as the [digital] landscape is evolving, there are many tools that are coming into the market now, like XD, Figma and Sketch. These are all tools we didn’t have earlier, but now that we have them that makes our processes even more enjoyable and satisfying.
SK: Earlier, I discussed the experience I had with one particular agency who was quite critical about the quality you could get from Indian web developers, I want to touch on that. Are you aware of these topics surrounding your practice? And what is the general development landscape like in India?
RS: Yes, I am well aware of these things. There are multiple things to this, and I should say that there is a small element of truth about what this person said.
The first thing is when you’re discussing a web project with a Western agency with a higher price range, a more price-conscious client will try to find better options from someone off-shore from countries like India who can do the same thing for cheaper. When you compare the pricing of most agencies in India with our counterparts in UK or US, you’ll find that our prices are much lower because of the varying cost of living. Because of this, if a Western agency knows that they may lose a potential client because of price, they may try to scare you off by saying such things that this person said to you. It’s pretty weird to do this, but people do such things sometimes.
The second thing is that a lot of companies are selling WordPress development services in the market right now. It’s not very difficult to learn WordPress, and people who can put together a theme and a bunch of plugins start calling themselves WordPress experts. This creates an industry of poor developers who aren’t that skilled in custom code for WordPress. So when these people get projects, they deliver poor quality sites and give a bad name to the rest of the industry. That’s the case not just with India but pretty much everywhere else. I feel this is a part of the reason why there’s a perception that all Indian developers would produce poor results.
But that’s obviously not the case with all companies and developers. Many companies are doing world-class work in the WordPress space and delivering excellent quality code. I know of companies in my city who work with large enterprises for WordPress development work and companies that have globally popular WordPress products. These companies hire talented developers and tend to pay them higher salaries, so their pricing is also usually at a higher range compared to other companies, so the quality of code you get is extremely good.
The other thing is, if you work with a company that’s charging too low, you can safely assume that they must be paying their developers too low. They’ll only get lower quality developers at lower costs, so the results you should expect should also not be high. So my suggestion would be not to be afraid of hiring developers in India. Look for companies with a good track record and past work that you can go through and not base your decisions on the lowest price alone.
SK: How has it been hiring and establishing your agency under these conditions?
RS: Hiring has been a challenge for us. And that’s mainly because of what I just told you earlier. I’m continuously looking for WordPress developers. If I interview 100 WordPress developers, 95 of them will be knowledgeable about WordPress on the surface level. But they will not fundamentally know WordPress on the coding level, like actually writing function using actions and filters, create custom short-codes and stuff. That’s not only the case with India; that’s pretty much the case throughout the world. Pick any random WordPress developer, and they might claim to be a WordPress developer, but they might not know the actual development that goes into WordPress.
Like I said before, the reason for this is because WordPress is fundamentally easy. People can buy a theme where they can install five plugins and have a full-blown e-commerce site. But if I want to create something custom, like something that we made for you, ninety-five per cent of people won’t be able to do that because it involves custom coding.
The challenge that I face is finding those five per cent of people who actually know how to code. Usually, what ends up happening is, we’re not able to find a WordPress developer directly. So we then have to find good PHP developers who have experience with core PHP and frameworks like Laravel, CodeIgniter. We hire these guys and then train them thoroughly with WordPress and turn them into those five per cent that I’m talking about. The process takes time but is almost always fruitful
SK: Do you have a creative philosophy?
RS: I love the kind of work we do. Even if I had no team members today, I would still work on the projects that we do because I love giving life to pixels designed by a designer through my code. That’s what we try to impart to all our developers as well and try to hire people who’re inline with this. I feel I have good attention to detail, so that suits me very well for design conversion projects and also helps me find team members who are more like me.
The service we offer is where design and code meet and something beautiful is created. For me it’s where the feminine and the masculine, the Yin and Yang, the left and the right side of the brain meets and something extraordinary and beautiful is created. For your project as well, when you came to us with your design, you were that creative half, and with my company, we were the other analytical and technical half. Together we created something wonderful that I’m very proud of.