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I regret my website redesign

mtlynch.io

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Re: I regret my website redesign

#581

Post by markdown »

nerdawson wrote: post #454
level wrote: post #172

I recently left a boutique agency of 5 years and I can definitely resonate with this one. Our agency aimed to catch big fish, and we did, but since they are hard to land we'd pick up small jobs in the meantime, just like the project that you're describing here. In my perspective, this isn't someone deliberately ripping you off. I imagine they intended to ship at the cost they quoted, but the team didn't adjust their…

I've worked at small agencies for the better part of a decade and couldn't agree more with this summary. A lot of the comments seem to take the view that this was some deliberate ploy to overcharge. In reality, it was just poorly managed. > Small customers become "nuisance" customers as soon as a something better is landed. My guess would be that when quoted, the project was expected to be completed by a certain date…

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Re: I regret my website redesign

#582

Post by Nathanba »

999900000999 wrote: post #146
raverbashing wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah then people wonder why people prefer going with Wix/Squarespace etc That's why. It also tones the "customer nitpicking every detail" way way down, when you can only pick from set choices.

It really gets you 95% there. Like try to explain to a non technical person how to deploy a website on AWS with a real domain. Zryo is actually cheaper than Wix if you just need to put up a static site. Yeah I can do it for free on S3, but it's easy to design my Zryo site and it looks nice.

I don't find any wix templates that would be anywhere near as good as what he has now. And trying to customize the wix/shopify template stuff to work exactly how he wants it is not trivial either.

It's really mostly his frontpage with the bad line/vector graphic that is the problem and what made the design seem bad and the whole story seem so outrageous at first. When I actually visit the site all his other pages look very good and clean. Of course I still think that the agency basically architected this situation and it amounts to a scam in my opinion, practically holding his work at ransom and then demanding that he pay more. I don't think that they ever intended to finish the work for 7k.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#583

Post by fsniper »

einpoklum wrote: post #225
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…

> a lot of technical debt ... let's rebuild the whole thing using Rust and Kubernetes and Deno and move the hosting to Azure etc. For me, I'm the dev who says: "This codebase has a lot of technical debt. Let's get rid of all of the containers and VMs and kubernetes and artificial servicification, take it off the cloud, and refactor it into smaller programs which do the work efficiently and which can be built and run…

Oh not only a rewrite, but also a re-architecture. What could go wrong?

Re: I regret my website redesign

#584

Post by [deleted] »

dbingham wrote: post #577
mtlynch wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing! > All the variations of the logo and design mocks are clearly overkill for a $15k project. The design team had time to fill and wanted to provide lots of options for you to pick from, as they typically would on a larger project. Those variations are an expectation for $100k clients, and you got the $100k customer treatment, but unfortunately not at a discount. Oh, huh. I w…

Here's the thing I don't get. Did you not have some guarantee of completed work? When they quoted you the $7k, I could see building timeline flexibility into that quote, but I have a hard time imagining building so much flex into the contract in terms of budget that they can hold your work hostage to where you sign the retainer contract. It seems like you should have had some sort of legal recourse to hold them accou…

[deleted]

Re: I regret my website redesign

#585

Post by de6u99er »

I don't understand why you went with a time & material contract. You could have easily gone with a fixed price contract for the logo redesign. Since this would have meant that the risk of scope creep is on the side of the agency, they would have most probably delivered only ehat was agreed on and they would have minimized the time for meetings.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#586

Post by lmm »

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.

> I'd bet you a large sum of money this agency used Agile.

They probably said the word "agile" a lot and then continued doing something else, that seems to be the usual pattern.

> Agile is not a guarantee of deliverables you care about. There is a lot of useless stuff you can deliver.

Which is why it's the product owner's responsibility to prioritise.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#588

Post by Joker_vD »

makeitdouble wrote: post #578
thrdbndndn wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remembered me of a rumor (or fact?) that almost all Windows 10/11 designers use Mac. And it shows: the end results broke all the UX Windows users were used to.

Graphic design has been a Mac stronghold for basically forever. I remember them being the only exception to the Windows only” rules most companies had for a very long time. Also as a Windows->Mac switcher myself, I’m not sure breaking Windows UX is a bad thing.

It is. If I didn't like Windows UX, I'd switch to something else on my own, thank you very much.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#589

Post by agileAlligator »

>WebAgency tries to keep project management to less than 5% of billable hours. At my scale, 5% would be too limited to provide any tangible benefit, so he eliminated project management entirely.

???

Excuse me, what?

How did he think that eliminating project management entirely would be a good idea?

Re: I regret my website redesign

#590

Post by JohnAaronNelson »

atourgates wrote: post #506
level wrote: post #172

I recently left a boutique agency of 5 years and I can definitely resonate with this one. Our agency aimed to catch big fish, and we did, but since they are hard to land we'd pick up small jobs in the meantime, just like the project that you're describing here. In my perspective, this isn't someone deliberately ripping you off. I imagine they intended to ship at the cost they quoted, but the team didn't adjust their…

I've been at a small agency that's grown into a midsize agency over the last decade+. Everything about this story rings true, and the author's conclusions are absolutely on point. Now our agency is at a place where we can say no to work like this, both because we have a solid client base that supports us financially without projects like this, and because we've learned that no matter how good our intentions, neither…

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