[web-itec]

i wouldnt even pay £500 for something like that

its dated and doesnt flow atall, looks like the kind of thing youd find on a template website for free

[rallport]

Without knowing the specifics of your requirements and what other backoffice systems onlyw3b.com developed for (I assume you have tons of backoffice functionlaity for that price) I can't say you've been over charged.

Upon looking at it, here are my gut impressions based purely on what I see from the links you provided:

• Developed using asp.net = immediate higher cost for development and hosting - it it really necessary?
• The design looks highly dated, similar to a wiki type site, something like a web developer would churn out, not a web designer. As a web developer and not designer it's about the type of thing I end up with if I was forced to design a site from scratch. For £19,000 you simply just HAVE to have a better design that than. Maybe some custom imagrey/graphics - something! It currently looks like a dated intranet site in my opinion - sorry
• From a CMS point of view (and as much as I hate to say this!) I canp;t see much that couldn;t be achieved using Wordpress and a free theme. 6 or 7 posts types. My own CMS that I've written could handle that no problem at all - I certainly wouldn;t be charging £19,000 for it
• I'm not web designer, but I do recogniose that a site needs to be designed and laid out for the audience. The fact the site is aimed at younger people is doubly worse, as the design simply doesn't fit.
• There seems to be absolutely NO seo. Look at the homepage title tag, it's simply "Get Smart" - have they said the project is totally complete? I hope for the cost onlyw3b.com has thrown in some epic monthly SEO - as at present no thought SEO wise seems to have taken place. Noob mistake on the homepage - look at the recent articles in the grey box on the homepage. The developer hasn't used the article title as the link anchor text. Awful.

I'm still left thinking you've maybe missed something that the company offered you? Maybe some adidtional marketing advice, on site training for a lrage group of people? A bespoke logo where you've had 1000 variations to choose from? A bespoke CRM backoffice system? Some bespoke copywriting from a pro copywriter for each page? Just something more than what I've just witnessed on screen?


For me, that site looks like an afthought, something onlyw3b.com threw in as an extra.


Personally, I'm gutted for anyone paying £19,000 for a site like this - granted you must have approved the said design off at some point though, so you are partially responsible for it.

Coming back to the design, it seems it's doubly bad. I've just read their design page at http://www.onlyw3b.c...ite-design.aspx I quote:

Quote

Our team of seasoned designers, developers, copywriters, usability and SEO experts will engineer a website of outstanding quality that gets top marks for every aspect of professional web design.

I don't believe for one minute that a "seasoned" web designer has designed that. As for getting top marks - well just refer them to this thread. As for "competitor beating", well make your own mind up.

This post has been edited by rallport: 05 February 2012 - 05:57 PM

[rallport]

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.

In all honesty I personally would. YOu could get a better designed site that make more of an impact using a free wordpress theme. Sorry

[futuresys]

Without reading what you've written or any of the comments I think I see the problem. Unless I'm mistaken the site was designed by Marketing and PR company. Now I'm not meaning to offend anyone so apologies in advance but I would never want such a company designing my website. Get it done by small, independent, specialist web company. They will have more knowledge and experitse, spend more dedicated time on your website and wont charge you an arm an a leg for it.

Sorry, but I can't help but feel you've been done over by a company who were more interested in getting your money and moving on to the next project.

[rallport]

futuresys, on 09 February 2012 - 04:33 PM, said:

Without reading what you've written or any of the comments I think I see the problem. Unless I'm mistaken the site was designed by Marketing and PR company. Now I'm not meaning to offend anyone so apologies in advance but I would never want such a company designing my website. Get it done by small, independent, specialist web company. They will have more knowledge and experitse, spend more dedicated time on your website and wont charge you an arm an a leg for it.

Sorry, but I can't help but feel you've been done over by a company who were more interested in getting your money and moving on to the next project.

Nar, that's not the problem in my opinion. Apart from the cost (for which at the end of the day, we can only speculate on what other services the client had) the web designer has missed the point of audience of the website - it's a case of the design doesn;t fit the niche. The design, as functional and useable as it is (reminds me of a design a pure web developer would come up with) would be better suited as a template for a backend admin panel or a kind of wikipedia intranet system - nothing more in my opinion.

Additionally, there is next to no SEO on the site, which has a lot of disadvantages.

When you're paying close to £20,000 for a site, you;d expect the design to be absoplutely spot on and appeal to the target audience.

[Ben Evans]

It's better than your current site. If you don't like the design tell them before you sign it off. And tell them not to use so many divs in the process. If you didn't ask to see the design before the build you should pay £19k for stupidity tax.

[MMMedia]

nublue, on 03 February 2012 - 04:16 PM, said:

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.

Have to agree with this.

Pre-sale, consultation and post-sales are per client, some clients demand so much time and attention that an individual charging 'a tenth of the price' would struggle to meet their needs.

Regardless of the price, the job should have met the agreed scope and expectations.

If the scope of work was too ambiguous then both parties are to blame, from the clients perspective not understanding the industry isn't a defence because knowing your own requirements should be paramount.

In respect of the agency they should be professional enough to manage and maintain the expectations of the client, filling in the blanks and making sure that every aspect is covered and they can and will deliver to meet those expectation because they have a moral/professional obligation (not necessarily legal) to do so.

[rallport]

MMMedia, on 11 February 2012 - 05:26 PM, said:

Have to agree with this.

Pre-sale, consultation and post-sales are per client, some clients demand so much time and attention that an individual charging 'a tenth of the price' would struggle to meet their needs.

Regardless of the price, the job should have met the agreed scope and expectations.

If the scope of work was too ambiguous then both parties are to blame, from the clients perspective not understanding the industry isn't a defence because knowing your own requirements should be paramount.

In respect of the agency they should be professional enough to manage and maintain the expectations of the client, filling in the blanks and making sure that every aspect is covered and they can and will deliver to meet those expectation because they have a moral/professional obligation (not necessarily legal) to do so.

I take your point, but I'm still stuggling to see how the site the OP posted ended up costing £19,000 - all I see are a couple of page variations that any decent CMS could handle with ease. This is the main reason that led me to conclude that the site is thrown in as an extra or there is some sort of epic backoffice functionality behind the scenes.

Unfortunately, both parties are not to blame if the project was out of scope - that is a bit of cop out by the agency imo. Part of any web designers/developers job is determining exactly what the client requires (hell, some clientys don;t really know what they want in my experience). The client shouldn;t need any knowledge of project planning at all.

[MMMedia]

I really don't like to critique other companies pricing because we really don't know what went on before and after or any behind the scenes element, and I'd hate for the shoe to be on the other foot!

But yes the agency has an obligation to 'hand hold' the client, direct them and coerce them down the right path - after all it's a big part of what they're paid to do. My comment was more that the client should, when spending any amount of money, have at least the top level view of their expectations, and if they don't know specific details to work them out with the designer/agency so they know the path they'll take will suit. Or at least if they do allow freedom to the designer then they are fully aware of what that entails.

The assumption here is that this critical part of the process has been neglected, we only have one side of the story but if the account is accurate it surprises (dare I say disgusts) that a professional business would be so neglectful of their client!

Ultimately if we had a client who wasn't happy we'd do everything in our power to correct the problem(s) wholly at our expense, if even then they still didn't like the product we'd pull it and go our separate ways. I don't see how and regardless of our exhaustive input how morally we could demand full payment as has occurred in the above example.

[kree8or]

Aside from the legal questions and 2is it worth the money?" type points, Its a site for young people right? where are the pictures of young, attractive people on the site? We all know that teenagers are drawn to pretty things...

[Treend Solutions]

£19k does sound to be quite a lot, the site does look like it has a lot of dynamic content though which would bump up any project costs, the layout i didnt think looked too bad, however, surely they would have sent you mockups of potential design options for you to pick and suggest from?

Was there not any cost estimate at the start of the project based on your requirements?

[rallport]

Treend Solutions, on 15 February 2012 - 05:22 PM, said:

£19k does sound to be quite a lot, the site does look like it has a lot of dynamic content though which would bump up any project costs,

I'd disagree. Even Wordpress could cope with the different layout no problems. There's not £19k worth of development there in a million years.

[Treend Solutions]

rallport, on 15 February 2012 - 07:36 PM, said:

I'd disagree. Even Wordpress could cope with the different layout no problems. There's not £19k worth of development there in a million years.

Its not the layout that would bump up the cost, more the dynamic content (search features, signup, profiles, submitting jobs, admin pages etc... im not sure what's behind the scenes for this site, im hoping there is quite a lot of bespoke programming and not just a lot of basic pages with information.

Jonjo, just an idea, if you ask your developers why the project is so expensive then post their response here and someone here can make sense of it

This post has been edited by Treend Solutions: 15 February 2012 - 07:58 PM

[rallport]

Treend Solutions, on 15 February 2012 - 07:58 PM, said:

Its not the layout that would bump up the cost, more the dynamic content (search features, signup, profiles, submitting jobs, admin pages etc... im not sure what's behind the scenes for this site, im hoping there is quite a lot of bespoke programming and not just a lot of basic pages with information.

Jonjo, just an idea, if you ask your developers why the project is so expensive then post their response here and someone here can make sense of it

True. But at the end of the day it's literally just information - basic CRUD operations. Any web developer with a bit of commercial experience could knock that out pretty quickly - even quicker so if you;re using your fav. framework.

Additionally, the majority of that code won;t be bespoke. For instance, I'd imagine common sections like the articles has already been written - so it;s a case of dropping in the code. I'm sure ASP.NET has some sort of HMVC functionality too, meaning the developer could get a blog up and running with a few mouse clicks.

Like you, would be interested in why the final figure was is so high - purely as I'm nosey

[Treend Solutions]

rallport, on 15 February 2012 - 08:30 PM, said:

True. But at the end of the day it's literally just information - basic CRUD operations. Any web developer with a bit of commercial experience could knock that out pretty quickly - even quicker so if you;re using your fav. framework.

Additionally, the majority of that code won;t be bespoke. For instance, I'd imagine common sections like the articles has already been written - so it;s a case of dropping in the code. I'm sure ASP.NET has some sort of HMVC functionality too, meaning the developer could get a blog up and running with a few mouse clicks.

Like you, would be interested in why the final figure was is so high - purely as I'm nosey

that makes two nosey developers lol

I have written an application that in total cost around 20k, it was a full warehouse management solution integrated with ebay with reports, picking lists, full dispatch process, mobile software to scan products.... HUGE project, so will be quite interested to here what this site has to offer.

[rallport]

Treend Solutions, on 15 February 2012 - 08:47 PM, said:

that makes two nosey developers lol

I have written an application that in total cost around 20k, it was a full warehouse management solution integrated with ebay with reports, picking lists, full dispatch process, mobile software to scan products.... HUGE project, so will be quite interested to here what this site has to offer.

Yep, it's kind of the thing I was alluding to in my earlier posts in this thread - there simply has to be lost going on behind the scenes - something comparible to the Magento admin area for £19,000

[nibb]

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.

dam id love $1m from a site