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I regret my website redesign

mtlynch.io

191–200 of 789 posts

Re: I regret my website redesign

#191
post #83

I think I found them, might be heartbeat [link redacted]

The author chose not to name them. Attempting to find that information and then publicly sharing it feels in poor taste, regardless of your opinion of how things went.

Poor taste is stringing along your client and fleecing them for every penny.

That said, I'm not convinced this is the company.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know where Santa Monica and Pigeon Forge are. But traveling around Asia... McDonalds doesn't taste the same between Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand. Infact Thailand burgers are VERY salty...

I wonder if this is an intentional choice to adapt to the tastes of local markets?

I would assume so, Singapore for some reason HATES salt. They don't put salt on fries from mcdonalds, so you always end up with a bag of soggy fries.

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/singapore-hear...

Taiwan has burger king burgers with peanut butter on them...

https://www.burgerking.com.tw/jps9805

Re: I regret my website redesign

#193
post #61

I live through this every 2 years: - Marketing team decides they want a new site. - I tell them when/how we can schedule it. - They decide they want to go outside so it can get done "quicker" by "professionals." - It costs 5-10x what it would in house, the product is harder to work with, using some WordPress plugins no one has ever heard of, it's not responsive on mobile nor usable on our demographic's primary resolu…

A tale as old as (Internet) time - I've seen this cycle happen, too.

Tangentially, I have to wonder to what extent misapplication of Agile, and similar, project management processes is to blame.

You'd think for most relatively simple sites, like we're talking about here, it ought to be planned once and built once, but something about the mindset that the goal posts can be moved during planning and development seems to drag everything out at length.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Developers (myself included) often just do what they want regardless of what they're told I don't believe this is true for adhoc work. There's often pressure to get a job done under time under budget to maximize profit. It's one reason I much prefer working for a service based company as there IS room to do what you want and push boundries.

I did it plenty when I was working as part of a contracting house where “every hour is billed to a client”. There’s plenty of room to spend time making crazy tools to automate your work or provide internal/external/personal value. Sometimes these rogue gambits pay off and return multiples of value…sometimes they just waste massive time. But I can say that I was absolutely a rogue project-doer in an engineering body s…

Good point, if youre billing every hour you can just squeeze the client. I've never worked in a place like that so I can't comment on what it's like.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#195

You know how, during a big programming project, you have to keep the devs from going "this codebase has a lot of technical debt, let's rebuild the whole thing using Rust and Kubernetes and Deno and move the hosting to Azure and switch databases and use microservices and..."? Designers are exactly the same way. Just as technical fiddling is fun and interesting, making new designs from scratch is just as fun and intere…

Yeah I sort of rolled my eyes at all the logo redesigns (especially as these seem to have come first in the process) but it seems Author was fine with it. It’s an impressive read because Author (and Isaac to some degree) seem quite even keeled in dealing with everything.

> seem quite even keeled in dealing with everything

I'm guessing the money they lost in this endeavor didn't materially impact them.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#196
The part where he talks about paying 100% for something that's 80% done but 0% usable hit very hard. As a web agency owner, and multi-decade web builder I've been in this position too many times with sub-contractors.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#198

This reminds me of when I worked for a B2C company in the healthcare space. We hired a freelance designer to redesign our checkout flow and we wanted it done in time for Black Friday, which was by far our biggest day of the year. Of course the project ran long and we crunched so that we could ship the redesign exactly on Black Friday. I think we shipped the Tuesday before (because Thanksgiving) and everything seemed…

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.

Quite to the contrary, Apple makes gratuitous changes to the UI of their OSes on an annual basis.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you rethinking your philosophy after wasting $46,000? > you get into disputes about what is or isn't in scope, This is to your advantage as the one who is able to withhold payment when delivery isn't up to your standards, and you are protected contractually. With pure time & materials it's much harder to sue for non-delivery unless you can prove they didn't work the hours they billed for.

OP, I hope you aren't rethinking it. You'd certainly be justified in doing so, but I think it would be a mistake. There are most definitely people out there that fit your description: > I have a different philosophy when it comes to hiring in that I assume the people working with me are honest and they're motivated to do their jobs well. I'm paying for their time, and I assume they'll use their time effectively. If t…

I have also worked with several honest people who were motivated to do their best, in the most effective way.

Actually almost everyone I ever worked with was like that.

All the exceptions were agency/consulting people.

Their job is bleeding people dry. Period.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#200
post #37

I am pretty sure there are a handful of good (based on Tailwind CSS) template generators which will produce results superior to the pages you received. 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…

He says he got a 40% increase in sales, so I imagine that takes the edge off a little LOL!
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