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

541–550 of 789 posts

Re: I regret my website redesign

#541

Post by napbree »

gxs wrote: post #493
dcow wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand your comment? Who's the offender here?

The author of the article didn’t name the agency he was engaged with. In other words, he essentially wrote a really long, detailed review but never mentioned the actual product. My question to you was simply how would you take it if someone named you in an article like this.

I believe he should have named the agency.

Obviously you never want that to happen to your own agency and would like to think any responsible CEO / owner wouldn’t allow these situations to happen (don’t get me wrong, I appreciate mistakes do occur - but this smells very different), so unless they suffer some consequence, they’ll do it to the next unsuspecting client and keep doing so.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#543

Post by romanows »

ghostly_s wrote: post #535
TheCapn wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The reality is, small jobs like this are effectively make-work projects for an agency. They typically don't pay enough to be an effective use of time for the agency, but are a way to stay in the black between higher value projects. Small customers become "nuisance" customers as soon as a something better is landed. The team members being swapped out as they are needed elsewhere and newly joining team members then ne…

If retaining the small clients is a business goal, you should have a (small) dedicated team devoted to them, that knows how to work in the way that these small clients need.

Don't you think that'd become the "B-team" pretty quickly, though? I think it might fall apart. What might also work is something more like the "pro bono" model of lawyers? Make it a marketing thing, maybe see if the big clients would want to get in on the PR benefits of helping the little clients, maybe rotate your rockstars through the smaller projects and help develop less-experienced talent that way?

Re: I regret my website redesign

#544

Post by mardifoufs »

OJFord wrote: post #248
tmp_anon_22 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> seem quite even keeled in dealing with everything I'm guessing the money they lost in this endeavor didn't materially impact them.

I know we don't know costs, but per the article it's about a month's revenue, and I assume it's pretty profitable. Not the first hire either, so the difference between 7k and 46k total over several months is not a lot in a way.

I think we do know costs in this case! The author is very open about the finances of his products. And in this case, while he did start generating profits from tinypilot in 2021, those were only around 17-18k$ IIRC. So this is still a massive expense for the business I'd guess!

Re: I regret my website redesign

#545

Post by awad »

s17n wrote: post #521
awad wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Founder / CEO. A lot of people will respond "no the founder needs to back off and let the marketing team do its job" but on a decision to allocate 50% of the annual marketing budget, the CEO should be involved.

I suppose it depends on the expertise of the the founder or CEO in question. On balance, something that takes 50% of budget absolutely should involve oversight greater than a single team or executive, but I'm not sure to what level without knowing more about the team dynamics at play.

There are plenty of engineer founder types who have all sorts of opinions on how infrastructure spend should be divvied up...they're probably on average more well informed there than they might be on the value of good consistent branding and website. On the flip side, a sales-heavy type might have strong opinions on how much engineering is spending on keeping the ship afloat, but that doesn't necessarily make them right.

Of course it's possible to be conversant within multiple modalities, so I am just talking to the average here.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#546

Post by Ken_At_EM »

Honestly, the old site comes across as way more “real” to me and I think he should go back.

I appreciate that they’re getting their enclosure done with 3D printing but going for a highly refined website design while 3d printing your enclosure seems like a mismatch in quality expectations. (I think the new site comes off as an attempt at a refined modern design but is very “light” or lacks real personality or depth)

I think the old site and the 3d printed enclosure of the product are the perfect match.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#547

Post by SaintSeiya84 »

Nobody talks about the inflated prices for that kind of work with close to zero effort and required knowledge. A Community College student would have done that 3 pages website in 3 days at most and would looks 100x better. win-win.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#548

Post by awad »

einpoklum wrote: post #344
awad wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Perhaps it's my own bias but through the lens of founding and running a SaaS business, but the website often just IS marketing, while the core offering(s) are hosted somewhere else and have their own team/owners/stakeholders. It's certainly different if your product is a physical good or service, but I'm reading the GP's comment as 'tech startup = software company'.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#549

Post by romanows »

bawolff wrote: post #307

> For most of the project, I was sitting on a bunch of partially-complete tasks. The cost of reassigning half-done work and spinning up a new vendor would be almost as expensive as starting over from scratch. The original project budget was 7k, and you ended up spending 46k, for something that didn't really deliver on what you asked for originally. It is really hard to imagine that it would have been more expensive t…

The author also mentioned that there is a cost to selecting an alternative firm and managing them. Also, I'm not sure the author would have learned the same lessons outlined in this blog post had they not seen the process through to the end.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#550

Post by nerdawson »

dahdum wrote: post #514
nerdawson wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of my career has been spent at agencies. I think you're attributing malice to what was more than likely routine mismanagement.

> I think you're attributing malice to what was more than likely routine mismanagement. I wouldn't call it mismanagement. Many agencies thrive despite regularly delivering these types of experiences. It's a conscious choice they can easily rationalize because of the money. This agency turned a one off $7k job into $46k by smooth talking and scope creeping an actual developer . I'm sure they're absolutely killing it d…

I'm sure some do have that attitude but I don't believe, for most, that they're choosing to operate that way.

TinyPilot is clearly successful and growing. Any smart agency would nurture that relationship, deliver a great product, and secure an ongoing relationship.

By contrast, there's a huge amount of reputational risk in allowing things to spiral. They've walked away with more today but imagine for a moment the damage that would have been done were they named in this article. It doesn't take much for a brand to turn toxic and things to implode.

Post reply on HN