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I regret my website redesign

mtlynch.io

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Re: I regret my website redesign

#341

Post by atwood22 »

shepardrtc wrote: post #231
mtlynch wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for reading! 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 they can't use their time effectively, I terminate the hire, but I don't try to fix it with different policies. I agree that there are payment schemes that will cause…

The only goal of a company that has billable hours is to rack up billable hours. If that involves building an amazing piece of work, then that's fine. But if it can be done by blowing off the client and feeding them bullshit, then that's fine too. I watched consulting companies bilk literally millions of dollars out of a household name company by simply lying to people that didn't know any better. I really respect yo…

> The only goal of a company that has billable hours is to rack up billable hours.

This is only true if the contract doesn't have a maximum budget. Often, the goal is actually to reduce billable hours because there is a maximum amount that can be spent (cost-wise) and you need to make sure you have enough hours left to actually finish the job on time.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#342

Post by lacrosse_tannin »

Parts of this sounds similar to what happened to my (small company) job.

We signed up for a small 20 or 40K design project. Landing page and pricing page. In the weekly meetings, the designer would present all this out of scope work to us. "Heres the new blog design" Is this a thing they do on purpose?

Can we have the fonts and logos please?

And yes, all the people doing the actual work were green and/or overseas contractors

Re: I regret my website redesign

#343

Post by pepan »

This agency was very unprofessional. The fact that they kept working out of scope even though you had to remind themselves not to is a huge red flag. And also the fact that they kept reminding you that you were their smallest client?? Suspicious how often that came up...

Re: I regret my website redesign

#344

Post by einpoklum »

awad wrote: post #326
einpoklum wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Marketing team decides they want a new site. That's your problem right there. And the fact that their decision is the company's decision.

Ideally, who should decide what the public face of the company should be if not for marketing?

Let's not get into ideals, but: The different stakeholders in the website should agree on it, rather than just one of them deciding - as marketing is just one of a website's purposes; it's not merely a marketing tool.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#345

Post by rurp »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #25
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…

Customers/users learn a bad design and get accustomed to it. Any changes, even ones that ostensibly improve it, add cognitive effort and contribute to their aggregate cognitive overload (taking into account everything else they have to learn and remember on a daily basis). The original design achieved “don’t make me think” , and any changes, even improvements, reset that.

God, I wish this were printed on the wall of every software design office. Mediocre designs are fine if people know them, because they learn to work around the rough edges to the point where they often don't notice them. But a new design (probably also mediocre!) requires way more cognitive load. Tech as an industry is horrible on this front.

Just to pick on one example: Android. Google absolutely loves changing the settings and UX on each major version. People use these controls so much they eventually get habituated... until they change and have to go hunting around and learn the new workflows to get back to par. Each one of these redesigns probably wastes millions of cumulative user hours.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#346

Post by d1sxeyes »

mtlynch wrote: post #132
boesboes wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didnt hire people. You hired a company. That abused your good faith. Also, 'If they can't use their time effectively, I terminate the hire', appearantly not? They clearly where not using their time, your money, effectively.

I don't think the problem here was in using their time effectively. Or, at least, it wasn't the high-order bit. Looking at their task breakdown, there weren't outrageous items like "10 hours - change a button color." The times were a little higher than I'd expect for devs who do this all the time, but not egregiously so. I think I overspent on this project, but I attribute it more to poor communication and poor manag…

8 commits to disable console logging in production?

How many hours did they charge for that? I would imagine that it would take more time to commit 8 times than to actually change this…

Re: I regret my website redesign

#347

Post by boesboes »

mtlynch wrote: post #132
boesboes wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didnt hire people. You hired a company. That abused your good faith. Also, 'If they can't use their time effectively, I terminate the hire', appearantly not? They clearly where not using their time, your money, effectively.

I don't think the problem here was in using their time effectively. Or, at least, it wasn't the high-order bit. Looking at their task breakdown, there weren't outrageous items like "10 hours - change a button color." The times were a little higher than I'd expect for devs who do this all the time, but not egregiously so. I think I overspent on this project, but I attribute it more to poor communication and poor manag…

That's fair enough, I dont' think this is on the devs. At least not entirely, but I'd argue that a company that can't maintain budget and scope & is off by _that_ much on the first estimate is not very effective either & should be 'fired' as a company.

And then there is the sunk costs which are not so easily dimissible...

That being said, it is a nice and fresh website. And congratz on the success with the product! It's something I've been 'dreaming' of, find a nice niche product and make it well. No BS.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#348

Post by lacrosse_tannin »

debacle wrote: 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…

Do we work together? haha

Re: I regret my website redesign

#349

Post by andix »

What I learned about doing projects: it’s all about deliveries and milestones. Agree on them, write them down and then enforce them. Don’t continue without getting the previous milestone delivered (at least 80% or so).

And if you don’t get what you agreed on, pull the plug. Even if you just have the slightest feeling of doubt, that something is not right. Quite often there is something very wrong already.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#350

Post by ErrantX »

atwood22 wrote: post #341
shepardrtc wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only goal of a company that has billable hours is to rack up billable hours. If that involves building an amazing piece of work, then that's fine. But if it can be done by blowing off the client and feeding them bullshit, then that's fine too. I watched consulting companies bilk literally millions of dollars out of a household name company by simply lying to people that didn't know any better. I really respect yo…

> The only goal of a company that has billable hours is to rack up billable hours. This is only true if the contract doesn't have a maximum budget. Often, the goal is actually to reduce billable hours because there is a maximum amount that can be spent (cost-wise) and you need to make sure you have enough hours left to actually finish the job on time.

Well in this exact case; the agency quite successfully structured things so that the billable hours were grown significantly beyond what was originally contracted...
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