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Do companies have their own web designers or do they outsource website design to consulting companies?

I am guessing that companies such as Google and Yahoo! have their own internet web development divisions, but what about other companies? Websites like gap.com and a slew of other companies which have very impressive websites - who did the web design for these?

Public Comments

1. both. depending on the size of the company and if they have an IT department with staff for web development, i'm sure it's in house. smaller companies tend to outsource.
2. Advertising companies work for GAP and such, for the most part, and those often have their own designers, but even they might have "regular contractors" - other, specialized web developers (like yours truly) they regularly work with.
3. This seems to depend on how successful a company is at a given time. In rough times, it will lay everyone off (publicly traded companies) to appease the stockholders and potential buyers, and outsource everything. In good times it will often have either the whole staff as employees or a combination of employees and outsourcing. For smaller companies, it's usually easier for them to hire someone with minimal experience but a nice portfolio to help them out.
4. There are actuallly 3 main areas of business: Web Designing, Web Developing, and Web Maintaining. Depending on the business requirement, if they also operates their business through the internet (eg. sells products online), then most MNCs or big companies will have an in-house team to oversees their company website cos' business needs to be running 24 hours 7 days. If it is only for informational purposes, most companies, regardless if it is big or small, will prefer to outsource that to a design firm. Package usually comes with the 3 main areas, prices differ depending on the level of design and technical involved. Sometimes, web maintainance will come under another company. There are some local firms who will hire just a web designer to design and maintain their website. Search engines like Goggle and Yahoo are based in US, including their teams. Local offices work via their in-house structure for daily updating. You can actually see which company is maintaining an organisation's website at the bottom of the web page.
5. Both. It's as simple as that. Rawlyn.