Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I regret my website redesign

mtlynch.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 789 posts

Re: I regret my website redesign

#71

Post by orzig »

The decision to anonymize the agency is understandable, but I wonder about the systemic effects. Right now the reputation cost is born by all agencies, leading to a tragedy of the commons for shoddy delivery.

But encouraging authors to name names would drag them into a public dispute they don’t need, and disincentivize the many valuable lessons that are in here. (THANK YOU! 90% of people wouldn’t have pushed through the discomfort to share their learning).

What is a system of public discourse that threads that needle? I’m sure “Isaac” feels a little bad, but has ”don’t pitch clients we can’t service” shot to the top of his priority list? But again, I don’t want to put more onus on the author who’s already gifted me a lot of hard earned knowledge.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#72

Post by Karawebnetwork »

RugnirViking wrote: post #22

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

Exactly. I doubt it was malice, I mostly suspect an agency used to large clients with no experience or methodology with small ones. A lot of what was set up for his website was stuff that only makes sense if the project is huge.

Let's say you want to set up a framework and it takes you XL amount of hours. That XL amount of hours is worth it if the website has 15,000 products and 75 pages of content. But if there's only one product and two pages, it's not worth it.

Same goes for the management time that crept into the budget. 20k extra on a 1 million contract is nothing and I would say expected. But on a 7k project? That's huge.

If the company has a lot of internal processing in between each step, it eats up a lot of the budget. Daily stand-up meetings, agile rituals, pull requests, handover to a QA department and bug fix rounds. Again, this makes sense for a large project but not for a small one.

Most companies that are used to a formula that works will not change for one customer.

If I had a metaphor, it would be this: If you want to travel 1500 kilometres, it makes sense to take a train. Boarding will be slow and the train will start out slow. But overall, you win. On the other hand, if you're only traveling 500 meters, it's a bit of a stretch. It is better to take a truck or a car.

The problem here is that the company was a train and promised safe travel to the next station 500 meters away. Were they being malicious? I doubt it, they probably made the train trip safe. They probably don't know the details of trucking and didn't recommend it.

Should they have recommended going with a smaller company? Maybe. But I don't know if I would consider that malicious. If anything, they should have been more transparent about their internal methodologies and ways of working so that the client could have properly consented to what he was getting into.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#73

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 »

mtlynch wrote: post #3

Author here. Happy to take any feedback or answer any questions about this post.

I hate to be blunt but you got scammed. Of course hindsight is 20/20 but I feel like you're approaching this the wrong way if your first reaction was to schedule a call with the scammer and amicably discuss where things went wrong.

My first instinct, would be to amicably discuss reimbursement of at least parts of the bill, which in my experience an honest agency would consider especially when they outright admit (hopefully in writing) that the work and management of the project was subpar. And in the event that this doesn't work, I'd explore my legal options. Neither this rebranding, nor the redesign work you got is worth 46k.

Also the only mention of a contract I could find was at the end when discussing termination. It's one of the conclusions you drew, but it's crazy that the scope, deliverables and timetable were not clearly defined, especially if you are paying upfront.

Anyway props to you for publishing this, it's very useful knowledge.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#75

Post by shortformblog »

As someone who has worked at a content agency for a decade, let me just say: I feel really bad that this happened to you, and that scope creep is real.

I almost feel like you needed to ask for three separate things: A brand identity, a marketing strategy refresh, and then (finally) a website redesign. That all three were combined into one process likely caused this problem to drag on. The agency had its problems, but to be honest to me as someone who is familiar with this space, it sounds like they were combining a lot of disciplines into one project without considering that it would have been better to chew smaller bites.

There are times where you do need to bend the rules. At the beginning of the pandemic I sort of broke protocol to get a COVID-19 landing page on a client’s site online because I knew that it would take weeks done the normal way and possibly would have led us to charge the client for something that a skilled designer only needed a couple of hours to build in WordPress. While the landing page wasn’t perfect, it held up for nearly a year, and showed that we were taking things seriously at a time we needed to. A lot of agencies aren’t wired for doing right beyond billable hours, so be mindful of the risks.

Either way, I feel bad that you paid so much for a site that looks way better but doesn’t feel like $46k worth of work.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#76

Post by allenu » 

  A few weeks later, WebAgency called a meeting to share updates, but they hadn’t made any progress on the logo or branding. Instead, they spent the whole meeting showing me design ideas for the website.
    
    “To be clear, the project is still a rebranding and not a redesign, right?” I asked.
I'm sure the quote isn't verbatim from your meeting with, but I'm guessing your tone with them was similar. It sounds like you were speaking to them like you're both working at the same company, for the same boss, which isn't the right tone, IMO.

You hired these people, so you should really be talking to them like you're the boss. Basically, dictate where their work is going. If it sounds like they're going off-track, that's your money they're wasting, so tell them, "This doesn't look like what I asked for.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#77

Post by fleddr »

"But despite all the missteps and stress, the results might justify all the pain. I expected the new website to increase sales by 10-20%, but it’s been closer to 40%."

Should have put this in the beginning of the article.

As for all the issues mentioned in the article, trust me on this, it's always like this. I've been that "small client" hiring externals at all tiers: mechanical turk, freelancers, agencies.

You ask for A but get B. You agree on a timeline but none are respected. You can put your foot down but that does absolutely nothing, they don't need you. You're more like a hobby on the side.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#78

Post by nkotov »

We used a design agency as well for one of our product logos. Come to find out, they just ripped off the Noun Project svgs, added some color, and called it a day. A lot of the agencies I’ve seen typically have enough templates already so it’s to the point now that you just fill in some blanks, choose a color palette, add relevant graphics and you’re done.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#79

Post by beckingz »

goodoldneon wrote: post #34
toomuchtodo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

McDonalds’ fries are actually good. But point taken

They're hot fries.

Warm greasy potatoes with a bit of crunch are always good.

In 30 minutes? Not good fries.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#80

Post by sbf501 »

Unrelated to the website discussion, the last link showing it is still negative profits after spectacular revenue increases is scary. This looks like a great product at a great price point, with solid sales, how are you not in the black yet?!
Post reply on HN