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I regret my website redesign

mtlynch.io

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Re: I regret my website redesign

#551

Post by ale_jrb »

notahacker wrote: post #482
SkyMarshal wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have to admit, when I saw the two screenshots, I thought the OP's problem would be exactly that, not the agency process. Original design not great but has a big picture of a hardware device, an unmissable order button and some explainer videos. New design much more visually appealing, but looks like a different company, potentially even a different class of product and whilst the order button isn't exactly difficult…

The bottom of the post mentioned that sales have increased by 40% with the new design. It will probably take some time to know if that sticks, but it seems like it works from that point of view, even if it was maybe overpriced.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#552

Post by sanedigital »

romanows wrote: post #543
ghostly_s wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Other way around, in my experience. We run a team of ~20 at our studio—the "A-team" all want to work on the smaller projects because they're usually more interesting, they have more control, they get to move faster, etc.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#553

Post by hnick »

romanows wrote: post #543
ghostly_s wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It has the risk of being a B-team but it's also a good way to onboard new hires. You get a much higher turnover rate of new things to try, do, and learn. One place I worked did communications generation (PDF letters etc), we had massive clients and 300 hour projects and we had 3 hour simple letters. Churning those small ones out was the best way to get me to learn when I signed up. Just as long as someone sensible and experienced is watching. And some people just don't gel well with project marathons - I'm definitely a sprinter who loses focus on huge projects despite my years of experience. I'd rather do a lot of small ones.

It eventually got sold to a bigger more respectable company and those 300 hour quotes crept up north of 1000 hours and it was impossible to finish any job in under 10 hours but that's another story about internal red tape.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#554

Post by nerdponx »

Ken_At_EM wrote: post #546

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…

If anything I take it as a positive signal when a company has an "amateur" website. If they are successful without a fancy modern-looking site, then it means that the product must be decent enough to sell itself, and the business owners are presumably putting their energy into the product & service and not just appearances.

I have no idea if this is true in general, but it seems to hold up in my own experience.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#555

Post by ElectricalUnion »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #509
ratww wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I still like Agile and Scrum, as much as other devs might hate it. “Yeah I want REAL deliverables after the first or second week”. Keeps me honest. And will keep me from working with architecture astronauts don’t really deliver anything but hot air and build ultra-extensible structures that are actually impossible to extend beyond the fantasy world of their maker. Or the equivalent for designers.

I'd bet you a large sum of money this agency used Agile. Agile is not a guarantee of deliverables you care about. There is a lot of useless stuff you can deliver.

Well, waterfall used to not deliver anything at all. Not delivering anything is pretty useless.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#556

Post by wruza »

JamesAdir wrote: post #526
qrohlf wrote: post #62

As a small business owner myself, this resonates. I would love to be in a position to be able to confidently pay money to other professionals to make problems go away. Unfortunately, my overall experience has been that hiring any “expert” in a field that I am not also an expert in has a 50% chance of working, and a 50% chance of blowing up in my face and creating more problems. I recently attempted to get a new accou…

As someone who have been on both sides of the table I can completely resonate with your statements. But I think that there is an expectation by small business owners that every expert will completely understand their business and will deliver exceptional results from day 1. So I think there should be some learning curve with very clear results expected on each and every step.

Is answering email at least this week exceptional? What learning curve a small business accountant has even? It’s not a factory with amortizing equipment, worker schedules, rolling production and distribution of expenses. I work with accountants all my life, and for small businesses it’s a matter of loading contracts, bank statements, invoices and salaries into an app, sorting expenses by legal category and that’s it. There is nothing to learn in a small business accounting, it is entry-level for this job title.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#557

Post by ineedasername »

This sounds like every accidentally toxic (maybe sometimes no accident) contractor relationship I've ever seen.

The initial energetic kick off, the slow decline into unimportant details, lowered enthusiasm, and unreturned messages, and so on. Often driven by lack of clear scope from the client & a vendor whose enthusiasm far outpaces even the loose scope restrictions provided.

In this case, sure, the author bears some responsibility but from their account they seem to have gone in with a relatively clear scope.

The thing that really makes it all not smell quite right is that the pace of work didn't even get significantly better when the author agreed to a retainer contract, only when they cancelled it with a month still prepaid for work to be done. So the vendor, perhaps not completely or intentionally predatory in it's practices, moves quickly to get the client out the door without making too much of a fuss.

This is the unfortunate state things can arrive at even with the best of intentions, so hopefully that's all it was here too, but it still doesn't reflect well on then vendor. A disciplined contractor will work a bit more to keep a client on point and aware of progress towards goals vs. budget remaining, estimates for going out of scope, etc.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#558

Post by romanows »

theden wrote: post #393
koshergweilo wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are some really good (free) AI logo generators out there you can use to generate logos very similar (perhaps even better) than this. How have I never heard of these. Which ones are good though? I couldn't find any free ones

This one looks good https://logomaster.ai/ not free but you can make one for < $50

Probably worth $50 when time is money but all I got were results I could have duplicated in GIMP, as someone who doesn't have a lot of experience with GIMP. It looks it just picks a font and an icon?

Re: I regret my website redesign

#559

Post by patja »

raunak wrote: post #188
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #93

Good God, that logo would be $50 on Fiverr, those illustrations would be $10 each, and that landing page would be 2 hours with bootstrap. This is how you turn $500 worth of work into $45,000 worth of billing.

I doubt you could get that level of quality illustrations/logo from Fiverr, but I could be wrong. The actual page redesign, I agree - where would you recommend hiring a designer from if you don't actually know design, then?

99designs is another option, albeit at a higher price point (but still far below OP's budget). I was very satisfied with the logo and redesign I got there. Got to see a lot of options before settling on the designer we chose.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#560

Post by doctor_eval »

ratww wrote: post #484
WorldMaker wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to be the point where sunk cost fallacy strikes hard in the post to me. They had paid $X for "80% of the first milestone of work" and that sunk cost locks them in to everything else that happens. They seemed too fearful from that point onward that if they fired the agency and brought in a new agency or freelancer that they would start from square 1 and do all of the previous work (and spend) over again. Th…

This is why I still like Agile and Scrum, as much as other devs might hate it. “Yeah I want REAL deliverables after the first or second week”. Keeps me honest. And will keep me from working with architecture astronauts don’t really deliver anything but hot air and build ultra-extensible structures that are actually impossible to extend beyond the fantasy world of their maker. Or the equivalent for designers.

Agile and scrum are in practice such nebulous terms that while I don’t doubt that you have had good experience with the particular version of these concepts that you yourself use, the agency could well consider itself to be using the same concepts - yet here we are.

The older I get, the more I come to understand that the problem with projects is people, not methodology. 30% of IT projects still fail, despite “agile” now being widespread.

The first value of the agile manifesto is “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”. Unfortunately, most implementations throw this one out first.

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