I regret my website redesign • Hacker News Board

Re: I regret my website redesign

#141

Post by hedora » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 3:43 PM UTC

I know nothing about this area, but I'm surprised the redesign improved sales by 40%.

Also, I get paying for logos and branding, but I'm having trouble wrapping my head around how the website couldn't just be pure 90's HTML with some CSS sprinkled and google js in.

How did so much schedule / money go to "refractoring"? Were they doing back end work like integrating with the mailing list or revamping the store logic or something? Is there a big telemetry backend, maybe? (I'm actually asking why this is hard, not trying to be snarky.)

Re: I regret my website redesign

#142

Post by Consultant32452 » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 3:43 PM UTC

bathtub365 wrote: post #60

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…

Are you rethinking your philosophy after wasting $46,000? > you get into disputes about what is or isn't in scope, This is to your advantage as the one who is able to withhold payment when delivery isn't up to your standards, and you are protected contractually. With pure time & materials it's much harder to sue for non-delivery unless you can prove they didn't work the hours they billed for.

I'm on a T&M contract right now where we are having the stupidest of disputes.

T&M with a SOW full of deliverables. Client asks us to do a ton of work outside of scope. We inform the client it's out of scope, but that we are happy to perform the work as part of the T&M. Can't get anyone to push through a CR "because it's T&M so it doesn't matter." Client has been paying all along. Getting to the end, client doesn't want to sign off on completion of the project because we didn't do the SOW deliverables (per our previous alignment). They already paid so I don't actually care if they sign off on the work, but it's stupid for everyone involved.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#143

Post by GingerMidas » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 3:43 PM UTC

skilled wrote: post #121

mushufasa wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how does one contact you?

fartingwizard[at]hhhhhsssshssss[dot]dev I primarily code in Python so that's why the weird domain name.

Professional, nice.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#144

Post by goodoldneon » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 3:45 PM UTC

beckingz wrote: post #79

goodoldneon wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McDonalds’ fries are actually good. But point taken

They're hot fries. Warm greasy potatoes with a bit of crunch are always good. In 30 minutes? Not good fries.

I'm a sucker for thin, salty fries. I know they're low quality but my mouth enjoys them

Re: I regret my website redesign

#145

Post by dieselgate » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 3:45 PM UTC

fourseventy wrote: post #53

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…

Ya but your philosophy cost you $47k for work that could have been done in 2 weeks by a competent developer...

Philosophy, costs, timelines, and justifications aside - I’m curious if, in your experience, many “competent” developers have this sort of design experience in their wheelhouse?

Re: I regret my website redesign

#146

Post by 999900000999 » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 3:46 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #127

999900000999 wrote: post #55

> Why didn’t you just use a Shopify template? If I could go back to when I first created the website, I would have made it a simple Shopify store with a custom theme. That's the biggest take away here. Unless you have a unique need, use an off the shelf solution.

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.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#147

Post by TIPSIO » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 3:47 PM UTC

swalsh wrote: post #84

skilled wrote: post #37

I am pretty sure there are a handful of good (based on Tailwind CSS) template generators which will produce results superior to the pages you received. Sure, you'd need to hire someone to do the logo and the custom icons, but I am certain that would not cost you anywhere near $46k. Furthermore, I cannot comprehend how this actually happened even if you shared all the details. Holy shit, for $46k you could have gotten…

In my opinion, you're not paying $175 for a good looking page. You're paying that premium for an expertise in what will convert, how to build a funnel, and what to measure. I can pay a guy $60/hr in India, and get something that looks decent.

Except the name of the game for agencies is to book a big expensive project and farm it out to entry level employees (dev and designers) with just enough supervision to be better.

Then have a fun enough office to try and keep people around in an extremely high turn over industry.

It is what almost everyone is doing unfortunately who gets big enough to carry a team.

The best designers and developers also don't tend to want to do contract work like this.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#148

Post by bachmeier » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 3:47 PM UTC

None of this is specific to a website redesign. If you have a small project, don't hire someone that does big projects. Full stop. I learned this lesson helping my father run his business long ago. There's a threshold where the business model changes from delivering a quality product to sucking as much money out of the customer as possible.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#149

Post by testplzignore » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 3:47 PM UTC

mtlynch wrote: post #3

Author here. Happy to take any feedback or answer any questions about this post.

Some feedback from a person who is the target audience of your product:

https://tinypilotkvm.com/illustrations/tinypilot-overview-il... is the most prominent image on your site and of little value in my opinion. Rather than have a sketch that looks like it very well could just be a stock image (and my brain is trained to ignore this type of image), I recommend having actual photos that show the same scene. A photo of the device hooked up to a real server (and with neat cabling if you want to impress me). A photo of a laptop showing what the software actually looks like.

The photos on https://tinypilotkvm.com/product/tinypilot-voyager2 are good. Put them on the home page.

Slow down the screenshot carousels a bit. They go too fast for me to be able to see what is going on. And if there isn't already, have a page with screenshots of all of the key features of the product. That's what I would want to see to evaluate what the product does.

Others have already mentioned this: the old logo was better. You can tell it was made with love. The new logo - this is a common theme - might as well be a stock image.

And because I like to do free QA testing, here's a bug :) 1. Go to https://tinypilotkvm.com/instructions. 2. Click the first "Read Instructions" button. The URL changes to https://tinypilotkvm.com/instructions/voyager2/v2 . 3. Click Support -> Product Instructions. 4. Click the first "Read Instructions" button again. The URL changes to https://tinypilotkvm.com/instructions/voyager2/instructions/... which shows "Page Not found".

Re: I regret my website redesign

#150

Post by jmull » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 3:48 PM UTC

> Isaac... felt that the underlying problem was WebAgency’s difficulty scaling down their workflows to fit TinyPilot’s budget. Their typical client has a retainer in the range of $20-40k per month.

I think Isaac nailed it. It's just a different mindset between providing a full-service development group and doing a focused update of a site for a small business (very small... one might say "tiny" :)

But I think this was foreseeable by the agency, and they should have considered very carefully whether they could achieve what their client wanted before accepting the work (or gotten the client to buy into a larger scope up-front).

BTW, these TinyPilot devices are very cool. I did a pikvm build to try something, but if I needed something like this for a real use, I'd probably get a TinyPilot.