Web-Related Business Conditions On the Up

Business conditions have improved for Internet design professionals, according to the results gleaned from the latest TrendWatch Graphic Arts Internet Design & Development survey, which was taken this fall.

Advertising agencies and Web design, development, and production firms bottomed out in Winter 2001/2002 and have been rebounding ever since, despite an ebbing of conditions in this past winter. Business conditions for graphic designers, too, bottomed out in the last survey, but are on the rise as well.

Few markets are immune from a bum economy, especially one that was largely caused by a crash in the high-tech sector. But just when we thought the perception of "economic conditions" as a business challenge had hit its peak, it is now sprinting back up to 83% of all Internet design and development firms (from 66% six months ago)—an all-time high for this challenge.

When the economy recovers, Web work isn't likely to return to the level that Web designers and developers had enjoyed in the late 1990s. The Internet surely has not cooled as a medium, but the nature of Web work continues to change.

Many factors are driving these changes. The first is that the original volume of Internet development work is declining simply because the Web build-out has ended. Everyone who wants to have a Web site now has one, and aside from the ebb and flow of businesses coming and going, as well as the consequent need for presence on the World Wide Web, there's simply less demand for original Web site design, just like there is less demand for print work.

There is, however, increased demand for Web site updating and maintenance. Indeed, at 59% of survey respondents (up more than 20% in the past six months), "Web page maintenance" has overtaken both "Web page design" and "Web site programming" to become the top sales opportunity for Internet design and development firms.