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I regret my website redesign

mtlynch.io

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Re: I regret my website redesign

#591

Post by JohnAaronNelson »

shortformblog wrote: post #75

As someone who has worked at a content agency for a decade, let me just say: I feel really bad that this happened to you, and that scope creep is real. I almost feel like you needed to ask for three separate things: A brand identity, a marketing strategy refresh, and then (finally) a website redesign. That all three were combined into one process likely caused this problem to drag on. The agency had its problems, but…

Don’t feel bad. The end result was positive. Sales increased enough that the cost will be made up in a few months. Person actually made out well considering the effect of the work.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#596

Post by makeitdouble »

Joker_vD wrote: post #588
makeitdouble wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't you wish there was a vibrant ecosystem of commercial OSes, each providing a different choice regarding the UX or other aspect you want to prioritize, each being financially viable based on their merits and not getting crushed by a monopolistic gorilla ?

You'd have options to go to when Microsoft makes choices you don't agree with.

I sure wish we were in that world.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#598

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: I regret my website redesign

#599

Post by tamrix »

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…

What's 7k? One week of work + client comms ?

You can't really imagine anything being completed and deployed in that time.

It was a death trap to begin with. They're experience should have flagged this.

But both are equally at fault. This is what happens when clients have the lowest bidder mentality.

"the cheapest price is always the best option because it's the cheapest."

Re: I regret my website redesign

#600

Post by Minor49er »

This reminds me of a former employer of mine. It was a small company with an internal team of three developers who worked on the main product. The CEO had a relationship with a design consultant agency that she had been using for years. Every few months, they would sell her on the idea that the company's site needed a new design and she would oblige every time. After all, according to them, the current design is the reason why the site isn't reaching its potential in new traffic, and the web changes all the time, so a new design is always the key to solving that problem. Utter crap. And what's worse, after the design was completed, it would still be handed off to one of the in-house developers to actually implement, so it took time away from actually improving the product, which was what really needed the help. Needless to say, the consultant's relationship was an expensive time-suck (and looking at their site now, apparently it still is)
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