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For what it's worth, the new site does look a lot better. A good read, might come in handy to avoid similar mistakes in the future. Key takeaway I think is the one about avoiding being somebody's smallest client if you can
Author here. Happy to take any feedback or answer any questions about this post.
In this comment:
> There were still issues, but I was prepared this time. WebAgency kept suggesting new flourishes to the design. I declined them all and told them to focus on the design I’d approved. I’m glad I did because they’d probably still be working on the website today.
I think you need to do this with every project reguardless of the size of the team you are working with.
Design companies seem to want to make customers feel like they are unskilled / unable to make design decisions for themselves, but maybe this is all experts? And I can say I have had very stubborn customers in the past, and it was good for everyone involved to have a customer that knows what they want and expects it, even if the designer doesn't really like the results as much as their own ideas.
In the same vein as companies "not wanting to be a company's biggest client" there's a reason for not being a company's smallest client as well, as this shows well.
What's the reason for "not wanting to be a company's biggest client" except maybe inexperience.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple gets a lot of flack for keeping design constant over the years, but this is the reason why they do it. People hate changes to their workflow.
People crave consistency. McDonald’s isn’t popular because it’s good, but because the burger you eat in Santa Monica is the same you’d get in Pigeon Forge, TN.
Granted, I don’t have a personal website and nor have I hired a website freelancer. So, heap on the salt.
Sorry that you went through all this. I can tell how frustrating it was and it doesn’t feel good to be scammed. It’s generous of you to share your experience like this and maybe educate someone who might’ve been getting ready to make a similar error.
Author here. Happy to take any feedback or answer any questions about this post.
Why are you so nice? You got tricked. You got scammed. Whether it was through their excessive incompetence or their active malice. You should name and shame. The new design looks like a random free template. It‘s ok, at best. You are a victim here! Don‘t you see it?
Sure, you'd need to hire someone to do the logo and the custom icons, but I am certain that would not cost you anywhere near $46k.
Furthermore, I cannot comprehend how this actually happened even if you shared all the details. Holy shit, for $46k you could have gotten the spaceship-equivalent of a design from someone who actually loves what they are doing.
Mate, $46k is annual salary for A LOT of people. In the amount of months that it took for them to "finish" the project, a junior dev could have picked up design chops and done a 10x better job at this.
Just wow....
ALSO A QUICK EDIT:
If anyone needs design work done (best I can do is a checkout page with a bunch of unstyled ordered lists) my pricing starts at $40k per 8 months, which is a lot less for what the author's company was charging him.
> I genuinely believe that WebAgency tried their best on this project. I don’t feel like they meant to deceive me or squeeze money out of me. We just didn’t match. I was used to working with individual freelancers, and WebAgency was accustomed to larger clients.
...I think that is a very forgiving, but utterly self-doormatting, perspective on the issue. This was an incompetently managed agency who kept bullying you because you let them. At $175/hr, even as their smallest client, you deserved waaaaaaaaay more professionalism. IMHO the biggest lesson to be learned here, that you didn't really talk about in the blog post, is not to let someone -- agency or employer or freelancer or otherwise -- fleece you over like this. Isaac kept stalling and not delivering and mis-spending your contracted funds. You should've demanded a partial refund or threatened to sue. Their behavior wasn't acceptable, but you just kept saying "it'll get better...". It never does.
Sorry to be so harsh, but you kept trying to defend their "best intentions". No, they just didn't take you seriously, and then they failed your project and dragged you down with them. Nobody should be paying for an agency like that, especially for $175/hr. What a rip-off :(
You did mention that you probably would've seen better results from a freelancer, and that's probably true -- especially from a place with some bare accountability, like Upwork where there's reviews.
I'm pretty such I could have had the whole project finished within a couple of weeks for around $5k
To first order, there's (usually) only one site metric that really matters, and that's page load speed. Craigslist still thrives despite having no features and looking prehistoric, because it's so fast. Google.com homepage looks almost empty. Meanwhile the also-rans with busy pages (remember Yahoo leading the search space? Digg leading link aggregation?) are now near forgotten.