[jonjo]

Hi guys,
I need your help. We've just had a redesign of our website and the final work has been submitted along with a bill for approx £19k. We were promised a dazzling, awesome site with all the bells and whistles which would engage young people and massively increase our traffic.
I feel sick to the stomach with what we've got and need some impartial thoughts about it. We provided all the copy and images for the articles on the site. I don't know what to do next.

Here is the dev site

Am I just being silly and the site is well worth the cost?

[porkchops]

This is a pretty bad time to ask this question.

In my opinion... this design is antiquated and ugly and I don't think it will of much use as an online presence.

Regardless of what I and others think here, a good design firm should show you some high-fidelity mockups to get your approval before continuing with code. You should never be at a stage where you're like, "oh my, this is crap" because you should have seen it develop in stages.

You also should be looking at the portfolio of the company before you start working with them. Assuming that the company making this is the one in the footer, if you look for a portfolio they only have three sites in there (which for a company that large should be a warning sign, 8-20+ is more typical). If you don't find those dazzling and awesome then you probably need to find someone else.

If you aren't happy with what they are making you can try pushing back, but if you have a contract that doesn't explicitly outline how revisions are supposed to be carried out you might be out of luck.

This post has been edited by porkchops: 31 January 2012 - 11:34 PM

[Spitfire]

Nope, it's a complete rip-off. £19k for just a re-design is a complete joke (especially as you provided all the content), £19k for THAT design is ridiculous. Porkchops hit the nail on the head if you ask me, out-dated and ugly.

[mrchristoph]

For some reason it (somewhat aptly) reminds me of http://failblog.org . Agree that the design is lack-luster and you have paid too much, but also agree with comments above that you could have seen this coming way before it was built. On the plus side it seems to work pretty smoothly and I've seen a lot worse websites that have charged this much.

[Renaissance-Design]

jonjo, on 31 January 2012 - 11:17 PM, said:

Hi guys,
I need your help. We've just had a redesign of our website and the final work has been submitted along with a bill for approx £19k. We were promised a dazzling, awesome site with all the bells and whistles which would engage young people and massively increase our traffic.
I feel sick to the stomach with what we've got and need some impartial thoughts about it. We provided all the copy and images for the articles on the site. I don't know what to do next.

Here is the dev site

Am I just being silly and the site is well worth the cost?

You need to outline the terms here - from what you're saying, it sounds like you went through the whole process without seeing or signing off on the design?

What were the terms of the contract?

£19k is a fair price for a large/well-respected agency or for creating a bespoke CMS, but I don't see the need in this case - from what I can see of it any of the usual suspects would have sufficed without reinventing the wheel.

The important thing here is to not take the "we were robbed" mentality, because you as the client need to share in the responsibility for a less than perfect project. If the design doesn't fit your business objectives that's likely due to poor communication from one or both sides, and if so this is not the time to throw it open to the criticism of third parties in an attempt to quibble over the price.

What does "a dazzling, awesome site with all the bells and whistles" mean, in understandable English?

If you're unable to communicate exactly what you expect from a design project, it's possible that the fault lies with you. For all we know the project could have started at a couple of grand and dragged out to £19k through countless revisions while you gave little to no useful guidance.

Three sides to every story: yours, theirs and the truth. Unless you can provide some concrete facts I'm tempted to delete this thread.

[Ste Hughes]

Not worth a quarter of that in my opinion. Not even worth a 10th of that bill.

[oakleaves]

jonjo, on 31 January 2012 - 11:17 PM, said:

We were promised a dazzling, awesome site with all the bells and whistles which would engage young people and massively increase our traffic.

The people who did the job sound like better salespeople than web designers. How did you come to have dealings with them, were they referred, did they contact you?

[jamesosix]

Could anybody show me a site that was bought for that kind of price.

I am just curious as to what a £19k sites actually looks like.

Also, I would have charged you £500 for that

[jonjo]

Renaissance-Design, on 01 February 2012 - 09:57 AM, said:

You need to outline the terms here - from what you're saying, it sounds like you went through the whole process without seeing or signing off on the design?

What were the terms of the contract?

£19k is a fair price for a large/well-respected agency or for creating a bespoke CMS, but I don't see the need in this case - from what I can see of it any of the usual suspects would have sufficed without reinventing the wheel.

The important thing here is to not take the "we were robbed" mentality, because you as the client need to share in the responsibility for a less than perfect project. If the design doesn't fit your business objectives that's likely due to poor communication from one or both sides, and if so this is not the time to throw it open to the criticism of third parties in an attempt to quibble over the price.

What does "a dazzling, awesome site with all the bells and whistles" mean, in understandable English?

If you're unable to communicate exactly what you expect from a design project, it's possible that the fault lies with you. For all we know the project could have started at a couple of grand and dragged out to £19k through countless revisions while you gave little to no useful guidance.

Three sides to every story: yours, theirs and the truth. Unless you can provide some concrete facts I'm tempted to delete this thread.

Thanks for your feedback. There have been no revisions to the design of this site - the site you see is the first, and last, version anyone has seen and bears no resemblance to the 'mock up' we saw at the outset. I really haven't posted this thread to quibble about prices or use it as ammunition against the agency, it's tool late for that. I'm just after impartial feedback because I know my viewpoint is clouded.

I think the post stands on it's own merits. I'm after feedback, from web professionals who know far more than me, on this site as a site that has cost £19,000.

If nothing else your feedback and the feedback of others will really help us in future dealings with web professionals (we know we haven't got it right this time!)

[oakleaves]

jonjo, on 01 February 2012 - 10:58 AM, said:

Thanks for your feedback. There have been no revisions to the design of this site - the site you see is the first, and last, version anyone has seen and bears no resemblance to the 'mock up' we saw at the outset. I really haven't posted this thread to quibble about prices or use it as ammunition against the agency, it's tool late for that. I'm just after impartial feedback because I know my viewpoint is clouded.

I think the post stands on it's own merits. I'm after feedback, from web professionals who know far more than me, on this site as a site that has cost £19,000.

If nothing else your feedback and the feedback of others will really help us in future dealings with web professionals (we know we haven't got it right this time!)

How do we know this isn't a rival trying to sling mud at a competitor? (All we have to do is click the footer credit link which takes us directly to the designers site). How can we be sure we know the full story?

This kind of thing happens all the time in this industry..

[jonjo]

Quote

£19k is a fair price for a large/well-respected agency or for creating a bespoke CMS, but I don't see the need in this case - from what I can see of it any of the usual suspects would have sufficed without reinventing the wheel.

The CMS would cost us an additional £3k

This post has been edited by MikeChipshop: 03 February 2012 - 02:04 PM

[jonjo]

oakleaves, on 01 February 2012 - 11:01 AM, said:

How do we know this isn't a rival trying to sling mud at a competitor? (All we have to do is click the footer credit link which takes us directly to the designers site). How can we be sure we know the full story?

This kind of thing happens all the time in this industry..

Would it matter? Not that that is the case. This is the website feedback section. I'm just after feedback. If people want to offer constructive criticism then that's really what I'm after. We're going to have to do this all again and I want to get it right next time. Thanks.

[oakleaves]

jonjo, on 01 February 2012 - 11:11 AM, said:

Would it matter? Not that that is the case. This is the website feedback section. I'm just after feedback. If people want to offer constructive criticism then that's really what I'm after. We're going to have to do this all again and I want to get it right next time. Thanks.

Yes it would matter.

This section is for people who have designed a website and are looking for feedback / advice on their own work.

Thanks.

This post has been edited by oakleaves: 01 February 2012 - 11:22 AM

[zed]

did I miss where you signed a contract and were aware of their costs up front and told them to proceed?

[jonjo]

oakleaves, on 01 February 2012 - 11:21 AM, said:

Yes it would matter.

This section is for people who have designed a website and are looking for feedback / advice on their own work.

Thanks.

Sorry it doesn't say anything in the rules about the site feedback request having to come from the designer. It's our site and I really need feedback so that the next time we engage with a website professional we will know how to approach it. Really just need some pointers. A critical view on this sites design will really help. Thanks.

[jonjo]

zed, on 01 February 2012 - 11:27 AM, said:

did I miss where you signed a contract and were aware of their costs up front and told them to proceed?

Just after a critical view on the site. Contract questions have nothing to do with it. Our business will succeed or fail on this relaunch and I want to know what web professionals think about it. Is it a no-goer? should we go back to the drawing board? What advice could be offered for the next time we do this? You guys do this all the time and your expertise is really helpful.

[Renaissance-Design]

jonjo, on 01 February 2012 - 11:08 AM, said:

The CMS would cost us an additional £3k

Now that IS terrible. An open-source CMS such as WordPress would have been a perfect fit for a project like this, and would have cut licencing costs out of the equation entirely, leaving only design and development. I would never embark on a project of more than four or five pages without involving a CMS, because fresh content is king in today's search landscape and nobody wants to be beholden to a designer to add or change text.

jonjo, on 01 February 2012 - 10:58 AM, said:

There have been no revisions to the design of this site - the site you see is the first, and last, version anyone has seen and bears no resemblance to the 'mock up' we saw at the outset. I really haven't posted this thread to quibble about prices or use it as ammunition against the agency, it's too late for that.

I assume your budget for your next attempt will depend on how much you've written off with this attempt. If the final design bears no relation to the mockup you signed off on, the question is entirely germane as the agency is at fault. Depending on contract provision, you may be able to write off some or all of the costs since that point. Speak to your solicitor immediately.

jonjo, on 01 February 2012 - 11:38 AM, said:

Just after a critical view on the site. Contract questions have nothing to do with it. Our business will succeed or fail on this relaunch and I want to know what web professionals think about it. Is it a no-goer? should we go back to the drawing board? What advice could be offered for the next time we do this? You guys do this all the time and your expertise is really helpful.

The best advice I can give you is to find a designer whose work you really like (not necessarily what appeals to you personally but what is appropriate for purpose), tell them everything about your objectives and audience and make sure you're involved in the process from beginning to end (I'm not advocating meetings for the sake of it or any other pointless micromanagement, but you should be kept informed and solicited for feedback).

Your most important contribution to the process is first in selecting, then in briefing your designer/agency. Get either wrong and it will come back to bite you.

Edit: what I'm saying here is, we can't effectively critique the design without being told everything it's supposed to do - who it's supposed to appeal to, what the content hierarchy is supposed to be, what it's supposed to be bringing to the user's attention. Without any of that context, all the assessment you'll get will boil down to "that's a pretty picture" or "that's not a pretty picture". Without that same context, anyone you hire will not be able to produce a design that's fit for purpose so why not practice here by asking us in the same critical terms that would be useful for a brief or to feed back on a design mockup? Things like:

• Are the aesthetics appropriate for [intended audience]?
  
• X, Y and Z are the most important pieces of content on this page. Does this design surface them adequately?
  
• Does the main navigation provide access to the areas of the site which users will use most frequently / be most interested in?

There are countless more, but that should give you a starting point. Ask us specific questions and we'll be able to give you valuable feedback. Ask yourself those same questions when writing your brief or when presented with a mockup and you'll be able to fulfil your role in the design process more effectively.

This post has been edited by Renaissance-Design: 01 February 2012 - 01:10 PM

[jonjo]

Renaissance-Design, on 01 February 2012 - 12:29 PM, said:

Now that IS terrible. An open-source CMS such as WordPress would have been a perfect fit for a project like this, and would have cut licencing costs out of the equation entirely, leaving only design and development. I would never embark on a project of more than four or five pages without involving a CMS, because fresh content is king in today's search landscape and nobody wants to be beholden to a designer to add or change text.



I assume your budget for your next attempt will depend on how much you've written off with this attempt. If the final design bears no relation to the mockup you signed off on, the question is entirely germane as the agency is at fault. Depending on contract provision, you may be able to write off some or all of the costs since that point. Speak to your solicitor immediately.



The best advice I can give you is to find a designer whose work you really like (not necessarily what appeals to you personally but what is appropriate for purpose), tell them everything about your objectives and audience and make sure you're involved in the process from beginning to end (I'm not advocating meetings for the sake of it or any other pointless micromanagement, but you should be kept informed and solicited for feedback).

Your most important contribution to the process is first in selecting, then in briefing your designer/agency. Get either wrong and it will come back to bite you.

Edit: what I'm saying here is, we can't effectively critique the design without being told everything it's supposed to do - who it's supposed to appeal to, what the content hierarchy is supposed to be, what it's supposed to be bringing to the user's attention. Without any of that context, all the assessment you'll get will boil down to "that's a pretty picture" or "that's not a pretty picture". Without that same context, anyone you hire will not be able to produce a design that's fit for purpose so why not practice here by asking us in the same critical terms that would be useful for a brief or to feed back on a design mockup? Things like:

• Are the aesthetics appropriate for [intended audience]?
  
• X, Y and Z are the most important pieces of content on this page. Does this design surface them adequately?
  
• Does the main navigation provide access to the areas of the site which users will use most frequently / be most interested in?

There are countless more, but that should give you a starting point. Ask us specific questions and we'll be able to give you valuable feedback. Ask yourself those same questions when writing your brief or when presented with a mockup and you'll be able to fulfil your role in the design process more effectively.

OK - thanks for the advice!

1) We need the site to engage school leavers looking to either go into further education or straight in careers.
2) The content needs to retain visitors to view other sources of similar content or funnel them into our main area of career guides for various disciplines but primarily to match the landing page content.
3) The main focus of the site are the career guides - under the menu item 'Find your Career'
4) We need to heavily promote our career events within the site and also our emagazines
5) We need a way to build return visitors and for the students to share our services with their friends using the tools they already use

They were the main criteria of what we needed and what we need in the future. I'm not sure the new site will facilitate this. Or am I wrong? Do we need to start from scratch again?

[WBD]

jonjo, on 31 January 2012 - 11:17 PM, said:

Hi guys,
I need your help. We've just had a redesign of our website and the final work has been submitted along with a bill for approx £19k. We were promised a dazzling, awesome site with all the bells and whistles which would engage young people and massively increase our traffic.
I feel sick to the stomach with what we've got and need some impartial thoughts about it. We provided all the copy and images for the articles on the site. I don't know what to do next.

Here is the dev site

Am I just being silly and the site is well worth the cost?

Hmm... if they are guilty of anything I would say it's more bad customer expectations management. Didn't you see proofs? How well spec-ed was the work? Were there lots of U-turns and meetings and so on or was it fairly cut-and-dry? It all sort of depends.

I wouldn't say the design is terrible but it's no oil painting.

[Renaissance-Design]

1) Consider losing the parents' section. Totally different audience from the rest of the site, which means the design and style of copy would need to be appropriate to that audience.

2) and 5) FAIL. There's no guidance offered at the end of a piece of content - at the very least, I'd expect a minimal set of sharing options there (Facebook, Twitter and Google+ - anyone who uses other services like Digg, Delicious or SU will likely have a bookmarklet or toolbar to facilitate sharing). I'd also suggest a "related content" list. An author bio/byline is also glaringly missing from those pieces that take an informal, conversational tone.

3) Nowhere near enough visual emphasis, then.

4) If events are important they shouldn't be tucked away in a sub-menu of a tab. I found them in the footer, then had to go looking for them in the main nav.

E-magazines - lose them, they're utterly crap. They lock a LOT of your nice, SEO-friendly content away in inaccessible Flash for the sake of a shiny page-turning interface. People reading online want to read in a way that suits the medium - that means a single-column layout, because scrolling is easy. Interfaces that try to replicate print online are completely missing out on the advantages of the web - you should be able to easily pull the textual content of your magazine articles into posts on the site, formatted differently and without the art direction - those are the advantages that print subscribers enjoy.

This post has been edited by Renaissance-Design: 01 February 2012 - 02:26 PM
Reason for edit: typo

[chtyrone]

Fair play to renaissance for giving good sensible constructive advice on the future development of the site.

I too would like to see what a 20 grand website look like. That's a year's work for most people.

[Renaissance-Design]

Further to my previous comments, here's a post on adapting a trditional publication workflow to the web, which might come in handy in coordinating your online/offline efforts.

I'm going to leave it there, because as I think someone pointed out above this forum is intended for peer review for designers, and there's a limit to the free consulting I'm willing and able to do.

This post has been edited by Renaissance-Design: 03 February 2012 - 02:20 PM

[Glowbridge]

jamesosix, on 01 February 2012 - 10:58 AM, said:

Could anybody show me a site that was bought for that kind of price.

I am just curious as to what a £19k sites actually looks like.

Also, I would have charged you £500 for that

Well, Louis CK's site cost him $32,000, which is just over £20k in real money. Not a great design, not incredibly feature-filled but the cost did include bandwidth to send out a couple hundred thousand GB's of data and the stability to make sure every potential customer was satisfied. $1m return so far, doesn't seem like a bad investment.

[brightonmike]

Glowbridge, on 01 February 2012 - 02:52 PM, said:

Well, Louis CK's site cost him $32,000, which is just over £20k in real money. Not a great design, not incredibly feature-filled but the cost did include bandwidth to send out a couple hundred thousand GB's of data and the stability to make sure every potential customer was satisfied. $1m return so far, doesn't seem like a bad investment.

That guys website as a tangible product is definitely not worth even close to $32,000. That figure of $32,000 was probably much more about marketing, promotion, social media, SEO, than the actual website itself.

This post has been edited by brightonmike: 01 February 2012 - 03:04 PM

[porkchops]

brightonmike, on 01 February 2012 - 03:03 PM, said:

That guys website as a tangible product is definitely not worth even close to $32,000. That figure of $32,000 was probably much more about marketing, promotion, social media, SEO, than the actual website itself.

https://buy.louisck.net/news

Yep. The budget for the website was in the 6 figure range.

Quote

the first 250k is going to pay back what the special cost to produce and the website to build.

[ComfortablyNumb]

Talking of SEO - No <h1> tag and no meta description! For £19k these are pretty bad omissions.

The site looks like a wordpress template and in my view would never interest school leavers.

Renaissance has pretty much said it all.

[WBD]

jamesosix, on 01 February 2012 - 10:58 AM, said:

Could anybody show me a site that was bought for that kind of price.

I am just curious as to what a £19k sites actually looks like.

It does happen. For instance, I was about to bid on this beauty, until I noticed that they'd specified they had to have someone within 25 miles of Alton and until I read the bit about SAP integration and so on...

I think that's probably a £20K site. They might not realise it yet though.

[FizixRichard]

hmm I don't know of any £20,000 sites off hand, but if you want to see what a budget the size of a small mortgage can buy you, check http://www.blitzagency.com, they are working with brands and stuff though.


As for your site, I wouldn't say its worth 20k, but you should do as RD has suggested, speak to a solicitor about your qualms, not bad mouth the agency here, you could end up with that going against you if it does go to court.

Anyway, you should have been seeing the site progress in stages, if the sites design doesn't match the mock-up you saw at the start you can claim that they haven't delivered on the specification.


Bottom line though, if you are not happy with the end result, just tell them. Talk to them about it first, they might resolve your qualms with a nicer design and tighter coding and it'll be all good.

[CreativeShelf]

£19,000 for that! I could of done it for £250!

Pay them the deposit and get out of there.

[nublue]

CreativeShelf, on 03 February 2012 - 12:59 PM, said:

£19,000 for that! I could of done it for £250!

Pay them the deposit and get out of there.

I think the price is largely irrelevant. The issue here is the website is not what you requested/expected. As has been mentioned you should of really known what the end result would be as planning and specification documents should have been provided to you and indeed signed off by you.

I would suggest trying to work through the issues with the comapny as this will be a lot less work then trying legal action etc.. and will hopefully result in you receiving a site you like without any additional costs.

With regards to price. I dont think it is fair to comment on this as the price you pay depends on much more than just the finished product and it is only the finished product we can see. Yes a freelancer may of created this exact website for £1000 but no well sized agency would be able to do that for you as it simply wouldnt be profitable.

This post has been edited by nublue: 03 February 2012 - 01:49 PM

[Malyo]

19k (19 000 ?!)? are you kidding me ? Plus the site is far away from being decent, not to mention it should be more than that for that money. I also agree with Creative Shelf.

@Nublue i think that price actualy matter at some point, if it was a 20 pounds page, noone would pay atention to that, and focus only on design, but you're right as well with design being the problem here.

This post has been edited by Malyo: 03 February 2012 - 01:50 PM

[alzer81]

in my opinion its ur own fault for letting it get this far before you realise that its not worth the money...where did u get the web company from? do u have a link to there portfolio or past work?

[MikeChipshop]

It's not your fault that you don't know how the industry works and it seems this agency took advantage of this fact. A good agency would have walked you through everything step by step and you would have had several phases to sign off along the way.

As we don't know the whole story i'll reserve judgement on the agency involved but for your next project read everything Renaissance has posted and learn it from heart.

As for the site, no not worth £19000. More around the £1000 mark.

[notbanksy]

There's not much to add to the conversation at this point, but nobody's mentioned this so far.

Any redesign of this site should make sure that the home page unambiguously and clearly states what the site is, who it's aimed at, and what site visitors can hope to achieve. At the moment I can see it's related to jobs, but there's no strong focus. Regardless of the suitability of the visual style (yes, it's not terribly original, but I don't think it's as awful as some of the members here suggest) I think your message is pretty much buried on the home page. There's no incentive to click through to any other page at the moment, unless you have prior knowledge of the site.

[4colourprogress]

I have no merit in talking business sense with you as I don't do this stuff for a living, design wise though I think it has a very "template" like feel to it and is just too impersonal and it has no personality I don't think it would draw many young people in.

[Pasha4ur]

£19 000 on a redesign of that site? OMG I thought that only in my country like so to plunder customers. That in the West all is good and professional




Tabs, buttons, gradients and even search input was made through Photoshop as images. Now all world do this through CSS3 and sites load faster! Even I know this (I only 6 months in web design)

In my country for 10 000 € the biggest web-studio can make internet shop which will sell products on all country territory. Such beginner as me (I didn't ever work at studio) draw designs for $80-150

This post has been edited by Pasha4ur: 03 February 2012 - 04:13 PM

[nublue]

Malyo, on 03 February 2012 - 01:49 PM, said:

@Nublue i think that price actualy matter at some point, if it was a 20 pounds page, noone would pay atention to that, and focus only on design, but you're right as well with design being the problem here.

I think you miss my point. The reason I said price does not matter, is that everyone is basing there quote on what the finished product looks like.

What we dont know is what is happening in the back end? did it include a 6 year support contract? is it hosted on a big dedicated server setup? did the company provide all the copywriting in this cost? Does the cost cover a system purchase and stock photography purchases etc... Hence why I think price is irrelevant, as 19k is just a figure. Without knowing in great deal what the customer got for this figure it is not really worth dicussing imho

[neil0wen]

This sounds a bit weird to me. Was their no discussions of costs and and exact requirements?

If so, for £19k surely you would have contacted other design agencies to compare?

[BlueDreamer]

Don't think it's been mentioned yet buy if an agency is charging £150 an hour it only takes 10 hours to rack up a £1,500 bill, and 100 hours for £15,000...

[seedism]

My wife says that the white space hurt her eyes, thats enough feedback for me.

Is it worth the cash, not if it was not the design you approved.

Is it worth 19K, you payed it so I would say yes.

Is an piece of art worth the cash people pay? apparantly, else they would not pay it...innit.

And if you make a cool 1.000.000 at the end of the year through your site like CK you will have a party and praise the webdevelopers for their work.

btw, renissance is right, get rid of the emag's, I dont agree/like it but flash is not a good option anymore for that type of application, every student wants an Iphone, or has one already, they will never be able to read them.