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I regret my website redesign

mtlynch.io

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Re: I regret my website redesign

#651

Post by danjac »

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.

Scrum is really for low-trust environments where management fundamentally don't trust the developers to deliver - whether because the developers aren't experienced, not very good at self-management, or too easily distracted by shiny things, or because you're an archetypal MBA type who distrusts any underling who might be smarter than you.

If you trust your developers (whether in-house or contractors) to do the job you can pretty much let them manage themselves with whatever kanban-ish system that works for them. If you don't, you have a ready methodology that gives you meetings upon meetings and two week deliverables and every little thing broken down to the smallest unit under the guise of "empowerment".

Re: I regret my website redesign

#652

Post by bawolff »

romanows wrote: post #549
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.

There always is - that is why the sunk cost fallacy is so attractive. But still, this seems one of the most clear cut example of the switching costs being worth it, i have ever seen.

I'm doubtful that the author learned the correct lesson even by the end. I suspect if a similar thing happened again the author would fall victim to it again.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#653

Post by bornfreddy »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #643
achikin wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But hey, they were not named :) And that lines up with my experience in agencies - there is always an “Isaac” who’s job is to cool the customer down.

Yes, I’m very confused why he did not make the agency.

My guess - contractual obligations or some other liability?

Re: I regret my website redesign

#654

Post by sizzle »

nerdawson wrote: post #440
bequanna wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which absolutely makes me think this was a well thought out con designed to prey on those types of fears and maximize the value extracted from the mark. Those lottery phone scams out of Jamaica which target the elderly in the US are almost the exact same scam as what was described here. Promise something, get them to send money, don’t deliver, tell them you need more time/more money. Keep repeating until the mark wal…

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

The agency is incentivized to draw out the work to maximize billable hours

Re: I regret my website redesign

#655

Post by einpoklum »

fsniper wrote: post #583
einpoklum wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

1. Things have already gone wrong...

2. I guess I would add "slowly and carefully".

Re: I regret my website redesign

#656

Post by bornfreddy »

LtWorf wrote: post #631
makeitdouble wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google has decided that the clock on my phone must be HH\nMM and there is nothing I can do about it :(

There's LineageOS. Not sure it is worth the effort to switch just for this though.

Which is also the solution for "OS gorilla". Use Linux. You have a vibrant ecosystem of distros, they work (as much as any OS), and you are free to mix and match. No need to stick to OS that changes under your feet with no recourse.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#657

Post by sizzle »

There is a perverse incentive when the client has a retainer to bill hours and makes excuses to line their pockets. Why tolerate this behavior? The customer is always right, force them to stick to the contract or break away and take them to court if they are working on things outside of your contract and billing you.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#658

Post by danjac »

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…

Is this an example of the Market for Lemons? If I hire a developer I have a pretty good idea what to look for (and to a lesser degree, a designer, as I have worked with enough designers to know how the good ones work). But I would have no idea what makes for a good accountant or corporate lawyer or plumber, so would need to depend on referrals and a certain amount of blind trust.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#659

Post by sizzle »

tehwebguy wrote: post #629
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…

It wasn’t scope creep it was a scam. Shady contractors in every industry pull stuff like this. They didn’t deliver what you actually contracted for until you put your foot down because that was the hook — they couldn’t keep taking your money if they gave you what you wanted. For anyone else reading this the best move would be to shut it down as soon as a single minute has been billed for out of contract work: “Hey th…

Absolutely this and you can take them to small claims court for breach of contract.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#660

Post by jaclaz »

mtlynch wrote: post #487
jaclaz wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First thing, thanks for your post, it has been really interesting. I would like to ask how you made the correlation between the new site and the increase of sales, I believe that your product is a very good one and would have expected that your intended target, if anything, is less sensible to site design[0]: >But despite all the missteps and stress, the results might justify all the pain. I expected the new website…

Thanks for reading! > I would like to ask how you made the correlation between the new site and the increase of sales, I believe that your product is a very good one and would have expected that your intended target, if anything, is less sensible to site design Yeah, I tried not to lean too hard on this because I don't have rigorous evidence that the redesign caused the improvement. But anecdotally, it seems like it…

>One other change to the website that I feel like is well-supported by this point was changing how we present our products. We used to show four products in our catalog, but in November, we simplified the website to show only our flagship product, and it was almost an overnight doubling of sales that's persisted ever since:

This is much more correspondent to the "mental model" I have of the majority of your customers, they want/need a Tinypilot , and they get a Tinypilot (as fast and as directly as possible), no matter how the site looks.

Maybe there is a coincidence of some kind, something else that increased the visibility of the site or the knowledge of the device existing at the same time of the site redesign.

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