The Malaysia Now

For website designers isn’t the same as what it might’ve been 5-10 years ago when the Internet boom was still on. This post is a follow up to an already great article that has been posted by my buddy; Muid, over HERE. It was a concise explaination of the designers industry in Malaysia through his experience working and freelancing. A very respected website designer with very strong connections to his designs.

Our quotations and invoices seem to be rejected every time we send to them. What was the reason behind all this? They acclaimed that RM1,500 for a website is too much, leaving us completely berserk.

Following up the quote he made, I’d just like to say that that is now somewhat a dream price every freelancer wants for each project. I am dead serious that the prices requested by clients in the freelance world doesn’t normally come up to even RM1,000. Unless with reason that you’re doing some full fledge Flash website or dynamically driven website for them.

The world of earning an average RM1,000 per simple HTML website has been left in the middle of Dr.Mahathir’s leadership era. Now, with the increase of unemployed graduates with some turning freelance, the business is ever more competitive especially in price. Some have sunk so low that they merely charge RM10 per page for a website project. Is the client happy? Of course, they are. But ever questioned why and how can that be?

Simple. Clients only focus on things that look nice. They don’t take in concern how it affects the overall experience to their website. They also don’t mind if the design looks similar to an example because it looks nice.

If you’ve followed me so far, there have been two aspect as to why the website development market has plunged so low. It’s been created by freelancers who just perform projects to survive in the world and it’s by clients who just don’t appreciate design. Muid had mentioned in his post too on how experimental design isn’t accepted by the people still living under a rock or in peribahasa (or was it pepatah), “katak duduk dibawah tempurung”.

I’m adapting to the change of trends ever so often in Malaysia but will maintain principles I’ve already set when taking on a project. I just won’t tolerate clients who expect to add another designer to help spoil the market. If we (designers) as well as the general public who are our real clients, don’t work together to shift the market in Malaysia, arts and design might be in deeper waters towards extinction.

Do you think clients will ever change?

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