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

251–260 of 789 posts

Re: I regret my website redesign

#251

Post by bbreier »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #234
swalsh wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, you're not paying $175 for a good looking page. You're paying that premium for an expertise in what will convert, how to build a funnel, and what to measure. I can pay a guy $60/hr in India, and get something that looks decent.

> I can pay a guy $60/hr in India Man, you’re really overpaying if you think an Indian designer would be $60/hr. That would be more than the annual salary of a senior FAANG engineer.

wait what? 50 weeks * 60 / hr * 40 hr weeks = 120k yearly. what senior faang engineer is making less than that?

Re: I regret my website redesign

#252

Post by ridgered4 »

MaxPengwing wrote: post #19
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #10

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.

You can eventually learn to use a bad UI, but you'll never learn a constantly changing one.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#253

Post by deltarholamda »

EveYoung wrote: post #180
deltarholamda wrote: post #89

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…

Even the Pope had to keep Michelangelo focused on the Sistine Chapel and not wander off to work on his tomb. Not that it matters in this context but wasn't it the other way around? Didn't Donato Bramante try to sabotage Michelangelo by convincing Pope Julius II to give him the Sistine Chapel comission, assuming that Michelangelo would fail (due to his lack of experience in fresco painting) and ruin his reputation in…

I was actually thinking of "The Agony and the Ecstasy," which is on somewhat shaky historical accuracy footing.

Rex Harrison whacking Charlton Heston with a stick because he's slacking on the ceiling is how all project managers should handle both devs and creatives. I hear that's how Larry Ellison does it.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#254

Post by [deleted] »

dieselgate wrote: post #153
deltarholamda wrote: post #89

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.

[deleted]

Re: I regret my website redesign

#255

Post by gusbremm »

tootie wrote: post #57

Man, you get what you pay for. If you actually want a thoughtful design based on user needs and strategic goals with an actual rise in conversion rates, $46k is not even close. I've never seen it done for less than $200k. Agencies I worked for in the past wouldn't pick up the phone for less than $500k and we had clients tripping over themselves to hire us. That being said, we did take on smaller clients from time to…

And that big, fancy agency will outsource the whole project for 1/20 of the paying price to a small company.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#256

Post by roguas »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #29

I have seen many outsourcing projects with my coachees and with founders, I've managed my own and cancelled several when I was called in to fix them. The key to this kind of work is to understand: The agency is not your buddy, they have very different goals than you have. Too often do I seen people who have nice chats with the agency over a coffee. They are not your friends. You need to write the contract to align th…

And what is the solution? Essentially at the end of the day you want to design: effective labour as service. If only it was this simple we would have it already. Not saying you should not put important clauses into contract to perhaps later have some backing in court, but...

Essentially, I think it's good to not treat business parties as friends. However, I would put a lot of attention into this relationship to increase common/shared understanding. For as long as we think we have common understanding and somehow at the end of the day I makes me very unhappy -> I might give it a one more try and do another session of explaining, but finally I will just switch if it happens to often.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#257

Post by [deleted] »

allenu wrote: post #210
dangus wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I wanted to give this feedback about this image, too. Try reading that image from the website on your smartphone. It's very hard to see what's going on.

Even on a regular laptop screen, it took a little too long for my eyes to grok what I was looking at. My initial impression from the photo is that this company is selling some SaaS and not a physical device. In my opinion, the original page with the picture of the actual device made it much clearer what you were getting. For the OP, perhaps use a color for the device's housing? Assuming the costs are the same, a cute…

[deleted]

Re: I regret my website redesign

#258

Post by OJFord »

travisgriggs wrote: post #227

Curious what others think of the icon progression? There was an article a week or so ago about how all cool/crazy/distinctive logo designs trend to boring sameness. The end design looks like something I'd expect to see on the Delta app I download when I fly and promptly redelete afterwards. My person favorite, for reasons I don't understand, is the center icon in the first column. I don't know why. I just like it's d…

I prefer it pre-colour too. I have no idea why they thought the ones that scream 'messaging app' were a good idea. The face ones are weird.

I think there's two jobs involved really though, and (as an armchair expert who's never done it) that ideally you do the first one of roughing out an idea for what it should look like yourself. The second job is refining it, tweaking the edges, weight, choosing exactly the right colour, etc.

Again as someone who's never had the luxury of having to do it, I think I'd request those things separately on Fiverr/Upwork/whatever and not pay a lot for it. 1) Here's some info about my company, give me 25 distinct rough sketches for a logo; 2) I like this logo, please be designery and refine it for me. You could even break (1) up and hire 5 people to give you 5 each or whatever.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#259

Post by buzzthro »

Even though I don't quite agree with everything in your postmortem, I do want to thank you for reflecting and sharing your experience. It's not easy to admit mistakes in public and open yourself up for criticism. Cheers!

Re: I regret my website redesign

#260

Post by codegeek »

bbreier wrote: post #251
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can pay a guy $60/hr in India Man, you’re really overpaying if you think an Indian designer would be $60/hr. That would be more than the annual salary of a senior FAANG engineer.

wait what? 50 weeks * 60 / hr * 40 hr weeks = 120k yearly. what senior faang engineer is making less than that?

"In India"
Post reply on HN