I can relate.
A few years ago I reached out to a web designer with a nice portfolio.
(They had good design skills, used white space appropriately, and overall, I just liked their style).
I was looking forward to working with them, and to be frank, working with them was GREAT.
They were responsive.
They answered my emails.
They understood EXACTLY what I wanted from my web design.
But then I saw the finished product…
I ended up paying a ton of money for a design that was unusable.
It was so bad, in fact, that if I wanted someone else to use it, I would have had to bribe them, heh.
But now I want to hear from you…
Have you ever hired a web designer and felt cheated?
Or…
Are you a web designer and dealt with a client from hell?
I’d love for you to share your story in the comments.
(One note: please refrain from using names of companies and people).
Oh, and if you know anyone who had a similar horror story, tell them to come share it in the comments here. We’d like to see responses from as many people as possible!
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I’ll just leave this here:
http://clientsfromhell.net/
it works both ways.
Love that site… Man how much I love it. Glad to see I am not the only person who has had to deal with “Idiots” .
wow…yeah I can sure relate to everything on that page…One reason why I stopped creating websites…#1 – impossible to get content, #2 they provide the pictures, graphics video etc. and color theme, and then complain about the quality? the colors? LOL…#3…I have no patience left for dumbasses…LOL Sorry…but some people should not even own a computer and going forward…I can’t see how those businesses will survive!
Love that you said, “No content.” This is why I tell my clients to start by working with a copywriter. I know design basics and I know what a designer needs, plus how to translate a branding concept to a designer. So designers really should say, “Call me after you’ve got the copy!”
Haha – funny – we just hired a designer for a new ecommerce site. We’ve seen his portfolio, given him a long and detailed specification, talked it through with him via Skype, and now he is building it.
I hope to come back to you by Sept 7th and say – See! It worked out OK!
I get horror stories almost daily. Folks come to me to *fix* what other *designers* have so graciously bestowed upon them.
…from “they just disappeared” to “they said it was impossible”.
Jason Manheim is the answer to all of your web needs.
As a web designer, this post makes me cringe a little
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of point to bashing a bunch of web designers. How about, if you had a GREAT web designer, post that in your comments as well. And feel free to mention their name and website!
You make a great point, but I’m curious to see why people dislike working with some designers.
However, I added one more annotation to the article. Here:
Have you ever hired a web designer and felt gipped?
Or…
Are you a web designer and dealt with a client from hell?
Didn’t mean to create a bash fest… I’m more curious to see what people have experienced
.
I think that’s good to add the other side to it, thanks Derek
Maybe both us designers and potential clients can take some tips on what NOT to do then, and make the design world a happier place to live!
Devon – I think you are right, leave what works / doesn’t work so we can all learn how to have a better experience, and get the work we need done.
With out a lot of drama.
It’s spelled “gypped”. As in ‘gypsy’, those notorious scam artists.
Hey Derek, I am a designer myself and I don’t recall starring in someone else’s horror story. (Do tell me if I did!)
However when I started hiring designers for my own + client projects I ran through some people. Once a guy was taking so long time to response. He would send and email and then vanish for 4 days and again he would say he is going out of town. This made my business reputation suffer.
Another time I hired someone who I felt was very talented but found that he was not reliable and had less skills than expected. I lost money and the work.
What I think is these are valuable life lessons we learn. If we lose money, time and effort and still don’t learn something from it, all is lost.
I see this as a price for the experience.
Tamal brings up a good point: unreliability drives business people crazy. No matter what business you are in, and web design is a business, if you say you are going to do something by a date certain—do it. If you cannot meet the target—whether due date or budget—call the client before you reach that point and explain what is happening. If you are over budget because the client is asking you do to more than you contracted for—”scope creep”—that is your fault. You should amend the agreement for added work that the client requests, when the client requests it, and not surprise them down the road.
Bruce
Well spoken, sir.
I haven’t been the recipient of a horrible design since I do my own, but I’ve definitely gotten a lot of clients who were trying to repair one! It shocks me that so many people take on design work when they aren’t able to actually do the work. I’m no guru or expert, but I do have the skills to implement what people ask me to do – if not, I refer them to someone who can. I think a big part of succeeding as a designer involves being willing to give up work if it’s in a client’s best interest. I’ve found that running my business that way has resulted in a great deal of trust from my clients!
Apparently you’re not aware, but the word gypped (or “gipped”) is actually pretty damned racist. Hard to take a “marketing guy” who would make the mistake of blasting out an offensive email like this seriously.
Hrm. I just googled it, and didn’t realize the etymology of the word. I’m sorry about that. I changed it.
Glad to see you changed it. I clicked through specifically to tell you about it, the word makes me literally cringe when I read it. We grew up saying it all the time never knowing what it meant and when I found out I was pretty upset!
Now I’m off to read your article =)
These days it seems that everybody get offended very easy. People seem to be wound up like a tight spring, just looking for something to go off on.
People need to cut some lack and quit jumping the the racist wagon. Personally, I took the word “gypped” and in it’s context as being “he got screwed” Oh, I am sure the the word “screwed” is going to offend somebody, as well. When is it all going to stop. I know, when we all shut up and quit speaking. However, that will offend people, as well!
Right on, Steven.
true enough… should we stop using the word “bull dozer” because of the etymology of the word?
I think if people take offense at a word used in a completely unrelated and non-offensive context, then they’re the ones who need to take corrective action.
Further, the word gypped didn’t come from nowhere. People who coined the word originally felt it relevant to their experience somehow. Who am I to judge – maybe someone did rip them off.
I find the word “squeeze” to be offensive to all oranges everywhere. Please don’t use it when you feel you’re in a bind. Oh wait, “bind” is a bit offensive too… what about all those poor people in binding contracts with their banks and they can’t pay their mortgages? Whoops, sorry, did it again with “mortgages”. Housing payments are lovely things, they shouldn’t be referred to with such a horrible words as “mortgages”.
Silly examples, but it highlights quite clearly that sensitivity to a WORD is subjective.
Sensitivity to an ideology, now that’s a completely different.
That is all.
Careful. This – “Further, the word gypped didn’t come from nowhere.” – comes as close as possible to justifying racism. Swap the word “gypped” for “Jewed,” for proof.
Was going to mention, at least, that it was misspelled.
I thought you were talking about Reagan (“the gipper”) or something. 
But the word is “gypped” and comes from the term “gypsy.”
Being a redhead of Irish/Scottish decent, however, I think we can reasonably refrain from getting our knickers (or moles?) in a twist when people use a term that has long been disassociated from its origin.
Screaming about spelling, however, is always appropriate.
You have been completely refuted below: http://diythemes.com/thesis/web-design-horror-stories/#comment-21122
I am currently in the process of this very same thing. I have seen the designers portfolio and felt comfortable using him only to find out it has been a major headache. Very detailed with my specifications and we shouldn’t have that hard of a time connecting but he is just not putting it together. Hopefully the final design is closer to what we originally talked about but as of right now I totally feel gipped.
As a guy who designs…I’m interested in learning from the bad experiences that others have had. I have been on the repair-end of a number of bad transactions; clients requesting my service to re-design a brand new site…which has taught me a lot about getting all the info I can upfront and keeping my clients close as I work through the project to get their buy in.
FYI, some consider the word “Jipped” or “Gyped” as a racial slur. I know it’s not meant as that here, and I’m sure that there are many who will find it PC, but just thought I’d point it out. Not telling you what you can or can not write, just pointing out that there might be a few folks who will find this word a bit offensive. Other than that, interesting article and responses.
I see that it’s already been edited. Thank you.
I had not realized that. Someone mentioned that above, and I changed the wording to cheated.
Perfect. Hey, we don’t know what we don’t know, right?
Lol… why? Gipped is the right word. If some find it offensive, maybe they should get out of the house more often. Its not racial or descriptive of a group of people. I am disappointed that you caved to peer pressure so easily.
Or do you pander to the politically correct simpletons of the interwebs?
@John P –
I would invite you to ask a Romani person (the correct term for the ethnic group to which a majority of so-called “Gypsies” belong) how it feels to be on the receiving end of violent, racist persecution for centuries that persists worldwide to this day. Words tend to matter a lot more when one is in the minority group being persecuted. Just because a dominant culture doesn’t consider the term racist doesn’t mean the term wasn’t born of racism and injustice.
Pandering political correctness, to me, is calling a garbage collector a “sanitation engineer.” Garbage collectors are not a persecuted people, and therefore do not require the protection afforded by a change in our vernacular.
The Romani people have been violently persecuted around the world for millenia. Is it too much to ask to respect their suffering by changing what is, in essence, a very minor habit?
Well said.
Romani I am … gypsy I am not. So fail to see why you or anyone would be offended by a term that isn’t even correct or representational of a ethnic group?
Get a clue before dictating P.C. , nonsense apon a ethnic group.
We Romani have never considered our selfs gypsies…lol
Derek,
I have a web designer story that was odd too. When I put up my first site in the 90′s, I found a firm that had done some nice work and contracted with them to build a site for me. Over a few meetings and mock ups we went through what the site would look like and agreed upon a price and timeline.
They delivered a “draft” site on a disk and it was atrocious, nothing like I wanted or we had agreed upon.
When I called them to discuss, I found that they had gone out of business the day before! While the site stunk, at least I didn’t end up paying anything for the useless work.
I employed a firm in India to produce a website, they were not the cheapest however they had a promising portfolio and were available for online and telephone discussions.
Every deadline we agreed was missed and they constantly under delivered on the functionality of the site.
Finally I gave up chasing and accepted a very below par job, the project was now way over budget and the opportunity cost of spending more time with these designers was too high.
I worked on the site and attracted a fair bit of business, the site got a PR4 and all was well until I was asked out of the blue to provide a reference for the wed designers by someone that was considering using their services.
I chose to be honest and said that I couldn’t recommend them…. within 24hrs my site was hacked and destroyed, I used the backup and again the same thing… apparently a back door had been left in to the database which I could not find, every time i put the site up again it was hacked and made unusable.
As a consequence I was unable to use the site and watched that business decline whilst I had a new site built from scratch.
Be warned, these guys were very convincing, however they were obviously not really interested in helping, just making money.
Even the original coding was unusable as it had not be written to accord with any known protocol. What a waste of money!
Wow, that one is bad. So sorry that happened to you.
Never had any design that was unusable, but have tweaked a little bit after the fact.
As with anything in life, communication is key. If they’re not communicating with you and showing you comps, then drop them. I’ve had some frustrating experiences with other services before, no communication and products delivered with typos, poor quality etc. But I made it clear when I didn’t hear from them or didn’t see the quality getting to where I wanted it to be that I wanted to cut my loses, agree on a fair price for the work they had done, and move on.
In the end, it’s my business, my reputation, and my money.
With that said, I’ve also worked with some amazing designers that were fast and communicated a lot.
The ones that worked the best used a pretty specific questionnaire up front to get a feel of my brand, my “mood” and what I was trying to accomplish online (conversions, list building, etc.).
I haven’t personally but I’ve worked on client sites that were so user un-friendly it was ridiculous. One guy spent $30,000 for a WordPress site and it was a very mediocre site at best. Everything was coded in to the php and there was no easy way to fix the stylesheet because the designer was not in the picture anymore. Another had no widgets at all and you had to go through hoops to make simple changes. Most people switch to WordPress because it is supposed to be easier to use. I feel they both got royally gipped.
Holy crap, my prices are too low. (Just kidding – I cannot even begin to justify that kind of price tag.)
Derek,
3 separate debaucheries, a few thousand dollars and a ton of wasted time until I found Jason Manheim at @designpx via Godhammer via the DIY Themes Forums.
Both these gentlemen are studs and back everything they say with value overflowing.
Here are their links:
http://designpx.com
http://diythemes.com/forums/member.php?1375-godhammer”
And of course Thesis, Derek and the entire Thesis community rock.
Much appreciated, Les.
It’s always a pleasure working with you.
I think this would be helpful if people explain *why* they felt cheated. Then people can learn from the stories.
i felt “gipped” BEFORE i paid…so i taught myself!
i used to employ a web designer. i later wanted a website for another venture. he wanted to charge me Thousands of dollars (i mean like north of $4k/$5k) for what i thought was a simple site!
at the time i had more time than money, so i taught myself. i have built several sites now, all with the thesis theme.
…here is the first, which after a hiatus of sorts, i am preparing to put back online: http://trade.tbiii.com
i can’t imagine maintaining a web presence without having the firsthand experience of building a site.
yo, i didn’t see the above post, but i did know the origins of the g-word…! no offense intended–feel free to edit my post!
thanks.
I have two websites and I have struggled no end with three different avenues of approach. I am beginning to believe that website designers and technoids were created to put thoughts of murder into the hearts of well intentioned entrepreneurs.
I couldn’t agree with you more.
It appears that getting a high quality website together is a very difficult task indeed.
I’ve been fleeced for a lot of money and am trying to get some sort of recompense. I may have to take this into my own hands and employ some very aggressive people to intimidate and threaten them into giving me my money back.
In general I had good experience but one time a guy I had not used before tried to pull one over. I had some calculators that played up and no time myself so reached out and when he fixed the first one he said it took him 4 hours. I had 4 more to fix so I was a bit surprised but maybe he was right. So I had a detailed look of what he done and he did not fix the issue at all he just got the calculator to show up but it was not functioning.
So on Sunday night I had a look myself. It took me 20 minutes to fix each calculator. Immediately stopped the contract and gave him a one rating on odesk.
I don’t mind paying a good hourly rate but hate when they inflate hours. Trying to charge 16 for what takes an hour tops, gives the good people out there a bad name. And yes his feedback was really good and he had a 4.9 average and a few thousand hours. (at least I know why so many hours now)
Nik
While I haven’t had this specific experience, I have had clients who have. I am especially driven crazy by the cost that some people have had to pay to get a non-functioning site – or not-functioning-like-it-should.
I am just learning the how to create sites – using the Thesis theme. A long time ago (we’ll leave it at that), I graduated College as a computer programmer, but never really used it. Then I started playing around with my own site creation and learning code and tweaks.
I am far from a designer. I don’t have that creative flair, but I do work with a graphic designer now to build sites for her clients. She is constantly coming up with different stuff, which at first challenges me because I don’t know how to make it work. But after some digging, and super supportive forums, and other ‘expert’ gurus out there who don’t mind sharing, I find ways to add elements that the designer envisioned. And her clients are happy with the results.
Funded start ups and larger businesses have their “pick of the litter” when it comes to developers and designers. Entrepreneurs are forced to work with what is left, which often isn’t a lot. My feeling is this: web designers/developers are like New York City apartments, always at least one fatal flaw. #fivestorywalkup
I will echo the comments of others that this just seems a very strange topic to post on the Thesis blog, when probably the most motivated and strongest group of Thesis ambassadors are the Thesis developers and designers who work with Thesis full-time and use the product to create great designs for their clients. Inviting a bunch of horror stories and perhaps scaring the readership off of working with a developer just doesn’t make sense in the larger context of the Thesis ecosystem. Bad move.
Actually, this is the EXACT reason why we posted this here. There are TONS of great Thesis designers, and as you can see from this comment:
I’m hoping not only will this flesh out some horror stories, but will pave the way for another article where we have people share their success stories.
I agree with Derek that there are many excellent Thesis designers and developers out there. Sharing a few laughs and groans, to me, makes it seem even more likely that potential clients will choose to work with precisely those experienced, awesome, and much-appreciated Thesis ambassadors you mentioned. People like you!
Exactly!!
A few years ago, by the early days of Thesis, I asked a guy from the DIY Forum to do a makeover to my blog. He wanted to charge me 300 dollars for just changing the fonts and colors in the header.
You got what you pay for I guess.
They day I make 2k from the blog I will hire a real designer.
I hired a local company to design a new WordPress template for our site. They lead me to believe they were doing the work onsite locally. But they outsourced my project overseas. The designer actually put a skyscape from a city their country in our header! After a while I was so frustrated with going back and forth with edits that I just paid for the project even though I couldn’t use their design.
So I created a new template myself. I should have done it myself from the beginning but I mistakenly thought I would get better results by hiring a “real” designer.
Now that it’s finished, I’m happy I ended up doing the template myself because I learned a lot and now I have complete control over our website.
Yep! I recently hired a designer to work on my Thesis site but ended up with a site that was unusable. I had to feed them code whilst it was being worked on and had to change just about everything back to the way it was before and then work on the design myself. Worst of all was that all conversions stopped when the ‘new’ site was up and the theme now throws up php errors for the most basic code! Disaster.
I work in CRO for ecommerce websites. We have a number of clients who equate design to conversion rate improvement and wonder why their newly designed site isn’t drastically improving sales. Sometimes it actually hurts! This speaks to your story about how you had to bribe people to use your new site design.
We’ve found that, while a design can improve the trust and aesthetic qualities of a site, testing where to place important factors (motivational elements, important information about a product, etc) and usability lead to higher conversion rates than design. How you word these areas is also very important ( such your past examples of messaging “Training Manual” vs. “Ebook” for getting customers to buy your download).
I think this is why there’s been a shift from the old thinking of “site redesign” to “continually test and improve my site” over the last few years online. This is why CRO is starting to appear more and more in discussions and why you’ve even written articles about testing blogs to get your visitors to do what you want them to do.
I’m not bashing design, it’s important how you present your site. Everyone needs to update their sites at some point in order to stay current with the online presentation of their business. However, I consider design the face-lift part of the online optimization process, it doesn’t change who you are, what you are doing, or what you are selling. Figure out what is most important to your visitors through testing, then make sure the design is tailored to you site’s strengths. A redesign is not the end-all, final solution to your online business woes.
I always advise my clients to worry about the design aspect last. Let’s see if the idea works first, that way we are putting our design time and effort into something we know is worth spending your money on. Test your site for a year or two and then, once you’ve identified what is the most important areas of your site to your customers, go redesign your entire site with information that helps your designer out. Your designer will appreciate you taking the guess work out of what should be prominent or less-prominent when working on the new design!
Don’t blame the designer, blame yourself for not doing the research up front! =)
My problem with the web design firms I’ve hired (for clients of mine) is not the quality of the page, but their promotion. You hire a firm to put up a page for you and they do a great job. Then they drop the ball and leave you hanging, all the while charging well over a thousand dollars a month, for what amounts to hosting fees (in effect).
In other words they promise you the moon, right? Oh, they will do SEO and place ads and yada yada. In the end, your account is nothing more to them than a recurring fee.
Mike
So tell me, why are you spreading more attitude and bad blood around? Why are you not asking for helpful hints before you hire a web designer- or perhaps you could ask for descriptions of designers or developers that went the extra mile, and use those stories as examples to hold others up to?
Isn’t there enough grumbling in the industry, (in the world?) about what could have been bettre? And why do you assume it’s always the designer’s fault? Designers and developers can tell client stories as well.
I propose you get a better attitude, praise the job well done, and spread all the knowledge you can to everyone what questions to ask, how to be a great client – or designer or developer – and quit complaining and get a life!
A lot of times the problem comes with a lack of proper communication. Clients tend to ask for “a site that looks like {siteX}” or “something in the style of {siteY}”. They don’t stop to think if that type of design will work for them and their business.
Designers should be having these conversations before opening up Photoshop. When they don’t, you end up in an endless loop of “tweaks and revisions” and both end up feeling cheated. Both visions have been compromised due to a lack of preparation and discussion.
If clients and designers talk and are on the same page about the goal of the site (before starting), things tend to work out better.
I’ve built my own sites, which is no doubt obvious, but given that, I’ve never had any designer–client experiences.
This article is exactly why we here at Circle Marketing give case studies and testimonials and not just “pretty pictures.” it’s nice to have pretty portfolio pictures, but the RESULTS of the website and marketing are more important than just the look. Every website should be first intuitive and user-centric, then be built for maximum conversions and tracking, and THEN be pretty.
I found that hiring a “web designer” or a “web developer” is not as good as hiring a marketing company which provides those services. Why? Because great designers usually spend their time designing, not learning code and conversion. Likewise, great developers are coding all the time and don’t have the high quality visual aesthetics to create beautiful and professional work. A marketing company, however, has both of those people on staff along with analysts and marketers whose sole goal is to create the absolute BEST and most EFFICIENT website possible for the provided budget.
But don’t just take MY word for it. Check out our site and our work and case studies and make us PROVE IT!
Sir, your site lacks visual appeal, is all over the place. Looks like a bomb went off in a scrap book room. So not hiring you, as you claim to be the best of both worlds and yet alone on design fail. Thanks for making my choice of companies 1 easier.
Sorry, but I have to agree with John. Very bloated and dated looking. With so many web design & marketing companies out there, the first impression can be make or break. If I landed here through Google, I’d leave immediately.
Contrary to John P., I like the simplicity and efficiency of your homepage. Thanks for having the guts to show an example.
Yes, I’ve had both. It’s the reason I learned to design myself.
Bad Designer:
When I first started blogging four years ago, I didn’t CSS from HTML from a pixel. I wanted a cool design. I was on Blogger then (stop laughing). I searched for a designer I could afford and found one. She turned out to be a psycho.
She couldn’t do what I asked — taking an existing template and making it look and function the way I needed it to function. Nor could she build me a template that would be what I needed. She sent me an email rambling on about how I was so horrible and she was just a blog designer, had had a miscarriage, etc. Then she kept my money, left me with a non-functioning template and a month later started selling templates that were exactly what I had asked her to make for me! She even used some of the images I had purchased in her new templates!
Client from Hell:
I took on a client last summer who was referred to me by a friend. Her existing site was apparently designed on MS Paint. The images were pixelated and distorted and the colors were an assault on the eyes. I asked her to pick the theme she wanted to use and purchase it. She asked me to do it for her because she wasn’t good with things like that. When I reminded her that the price of the theme was separate from the non-refundable deposit, she said she would paypal the fee, just send her an invoice. First mistake.
I then asked her to send me the images she wanted used in the design (she is in the beauty industry). She couldn’t do it. Putting the images in a zip file and attaching it to an email was a disaster. I got ten of the same image.
I finally got her to send me all the images, but I still needed the original picture she wanted used in her header. I never got it. Her old designer (?!?!?!) ignored her. Then I got an email from her saying she wanted to go with a local designer because she couldn’t “do this whole computer thing anymore”! She also asked for a refund. When I explained that the deposit was non-refundable and she stilled owed me for the theme, she went to paypal and filed a dispute, which she lost.
Nearly six months later, she went through her credit card company and filed a dispute for the deposit. Paypal couldn’t fight it and I lost the money.
Client from hell? YEP.
I am a web designer/graphic designer and in 12 years we have not had this problem. But as part of a new marketing strategy we have just begun to offer a 100% money-back guarantee just to alleviate any concerns a buyer might have. We wouldn’t want to take anyone’s money for something they didn’t love.
Well, I think I found who I want to work with. Someone who takes pride in their work and ethically backs it up. Unlike so many I have seen posting here, complaining about not getting paid for not delivering product promised.
I’ve designed static websites for over ten years and sites using Thesis since its inception. It’s been my experience that most of my peers and I are undercharging and over-delivering. On top of the design and development work I’m contracted for, I end up writing copy, doing information architecture, creating branding packages, teaching internet and WordPress basics, all for a pretty modest fee. (Um, that is about to change!) But my point is, there are people out there doing great work and who really listen to their clients–up front and throughout the process. The failure of a website isn’t necessarily a failure of design. Just sayin’.
You make a great point Lisa. There are terrible designers out there, but there are also web designers that truly deliver what their clients ask for.
Derek, I hired a web designer about a year ago to help me redesign my website using Wordpress. She helped me get a functional site up and running. When I asked her how I could tweak things (I was a Wordpress novice), though, she didn’t return my calls. As I had paid her bills timely, there must have been some other reason that she ended the engagement.
Having worked as a consultant for more than 20 years, I found her behavior somewhat bizarre. It showed a lack of tact and professionalism. Solo practitioners may be more at risk for this, as they have no one looking over their shoulder or peer reviewing their work.
Happy landings,
Bruce
I wish bizarre behavior was rare but it is not.
Hired a designer for a site a few years ago….charged me 700 beans, which I thought was a deal. Site looked borderline ok when complete. Shortly after that I bought a wordpress book for 25 bucks and realized how easy it was to do it myself. In fact my designer probably made the site in two or three hours yet moaned about HOW MUCH TIME HE SPENT. I was TAKEN for the money but learned in the process.
Wow what book? You just might of saved me from hiring someone to fix my site.
WordPress Theme Design: A Complete Guide to Creating Professional WordPress Themes ?
Wordpress For Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson. It was a fantastic book for me, as I knew NOTHING. The rest I learned online for the most part. I switched to Thesis soon after that and the rest is history.
Lisa Sabin-Wilson does great work. Another thumb’s up for her book!
Yes she does…I even hired her company to fix one of my sites (had some issues with the feed), and that went well too. Anyway… I still keep that book handy.
Worked with a well-recommended designer who kinda did what I asked, offered me no advice and when it was done said, “here.” I paid him. When I asked for a few changes (to comply with what I had asked for) he got sullen. When I asked how I should up date it, he told me to learn to write HTML. Now I have to figure out whether to pay someone to do updates, to redesign or to just go my way and have a crappy website. The last really isn’t an option.
I’ve been working with many designers and found that it’s very hard to find a good “cheaper” one. Whenever I decide to choose mainly based on the price/salary… I’m not 100% satisfied. The problems are either in the skills set or in communication or both. I would also suggest that you do NOT pay upfront when possible so you’re not stuck with a designer who is “too busy” to even communicate. Nothing new, I know, but: pay more, expect more and pay pennies, get monkeys.
Anyway, my horror stories are not that terrifying but waiting 2 months for an easy site, paying a lot of money for it and then… deleting everything the next day because it is so terrible… it did happen
Ha! It is so ironic that you wrote this post because I am going through this RIGHT NOW! I hired a designer and paid the money for a website to get completed. They showed me a preview of the site and I looked at it like, “What the heck is this?” To give you a better picture, it was as if someone just copy and pasted the text that I gave them and threw it up on a website – there was no logo, no design, no different pages – nothing! I told his wife (who’s answering customer service calls) that it’s like ordering brochures and someone handing you a blank piece of paper and writing in pen the text you wanted. The website is AWFUL and at this point, I feel duped and want my money back. Should I go to a lawyer and pay much more in lawyer and court fees than what I paid for in the website or is there another way to get my money back?
Once, I hired a designer to do a redesign of my site. The first design I was sent was…my exact site layout (to the pixel) with different colors.
The second design I was sent was…the same layout, colors from first design and a few borders were removed. $500 down the drain (that was the retainer). Thank God my contract allowed me to cancel before I paid the other $1500.
I will add that this designer has since produced work for other people that I have liked very much. Perhaps I caught them at a bad time…?
And a note on the word “gyp” (or gip/jip). It is not, in fact, racist at all. Primarily because Romanis (the real name of “Gypsies”) are not a race, they are an ethnicity. That makes it a logical impossibility.
In reality the origin of gyp/gip/jip is unclear. There are many cultures world wide that use a word similar to gyp/gip/jip, mostly in a colloquial sense as we do (Fins, Norwegians, South Africans, to name a few). Some of them mean nearly the same thing as the English word (Fins- where it means “a trick” – and South Africans – who technically use “jippo”). The first use of gyp/gip/jip in America was the late 19th century (1889 by many accounts). Prior to that, Brits used a phrase “gee-up” (which means “to treat roughly”), gippos were a shortened jacket worn by valets in the 17th century and that word led to them being called “gyps” in the 18th century.
Many of you falsely believe there is a connection between gyp/gip/jip and Gypsy. If anything, the word Gypsy is, in fact, the ethnic slur. It was coined in 1514 under the false belief that Romanis actually descended from Egyptians. It was used pejoratively for centuries and only somewhat recently has been accepted by SOME Romanis. SOME. That means many still find that word offensive.
What’s my point? The sensitive among you need to stick to the point of the post and stop taking emotional positions without even a trace of fact behing why you feel the way you do. You do YOURSELF a disservice by automatically assuming connections exist when they do not. You do society a disservice by spreading FALSE information.
@ Quiet Smrt -
Thank you for adding to my knowledge of the gyp/jip topic. My emotion around the matter comes from A) knowing what it’s like to suffer discrimination (lots of gay friends), and B) knowing how delighted Romani people are when you know the actual name of their ethnicity. Regardless, spreading disinformation serves no one. I stand educated.
Good correction and point although seperating misinformation from the Internet is like Sisyphus and his boulder. BTW My view: there are no “races” besides the human race, only ethnicities, 19th century racial theory takes a long time to die
That being said: it’s the Internet so lets get over the slang and onto the topic, as you say. Sometimes a busy designer will farm your small job off to a cheap subcontractor offshore – this is where you will see a product out of step with your communications. Having an SLA or something protects you from shoddy work, and you can resubmit the job till it is of decent quality, but as graphic designers here point out they can do a perfectly fine job and the client can screw them around: so it cuts both ways. Like a good mechanic – when you find a graphic designer you can work with hold onto them!
Man! This exact problem was my entry into the internet marketing world. I found that most graphic designers know how to design beautiful looking websites that aren’t conducive to making money.
Marketers often need a design that not only looks good but SELLS as well.
That’s when I found most graphic designers have no clue how to make a design that sells. Marketers need someone who knows how to design AND sell online.
So I always get clients that need Squeeze Page repair or optin-form integration to their existing sites. Needless to say I hear all sorts of these horror stories that end up generating more satisfied clients for me.
ummmm…I’m trying to figure out what kind of business has a website that doesn’t need to sell. Seems to me every business is trying to sell something…so regardless of how esthetically pleasing the sight might be, if it doesn’t sell the company, product, service or whatever, then ummmmm what exactly is it’s purpose? Am I the only one here who doesn’t get this?
Ann I’m not sure if you’re asking a question or actually agreeing here, lol.
I find myself thinking the same thing ALL the time. However, you have some businesses and entrepreneurs that think a beautiful website is enough to “make money”.
They end up with what T. Harv Eker refers to as a “fancy brochure” instead of a lucrative online presence.
So it goes back to your question, “what is the purpose of your site?”. In my experience most folk don’t necessarily lack the purpose or vision for their site; they lack the implementation know how.
Unfortunately, most of the designers they end up hiring know how to design but lack the ability to create a site that converts high and sells well.
On lord yes. I made the sad mistake of hiring a designer through Guru.com. Her design was beautiful. But once she installed it, my entire web site went south. She didn’t do anything I had asked functionality wise, and she didn’t set it up so you could see my content. It was just her mockup with nothing working. Complete disaster! Avoid Inixmedia in Seattle WA at all costs! It was awful!
Oh, and to top it all off, I asked for half my money back. She insisted she did nothing wrong. I still get so mad thinking about it!
I had bad experiences in the past. Mostly, it was down to people not listening close enough to what the client really wanted and not paying enough attention to readability (white space etc.)
But I prefer to share good experiences.
Working with Adam Baird (on Thesis) for my blog was a wonderful experience. I found his contacts here on DIY-themes. He came up with a nice design from the outset because he took to heart what I was looking for.
I think it helps a lot if the designer fully specializes on the platform you are working with. It makes the process much smoother and everything works from the beginning.
Here the link to Adam on this site: http://diythemes.com/thesis/designers/adam-baird/
And I totally agree with what Steve says : The Thesis community rocks.
I believe that the value in initiating a discussion in web design horror stories is to help both clients and designers learn from others’ mistakes. Most people take some measure of pride in a job well done, and don’t want to be “that guy.” I wish I had read these stories before hiring my designer last year, I would have been more shrewd in how I approached the whole thing. Instead I was naively trusting that I didn’t need a formal contract in writing. What a mistake. Another part of the value in this discussion is raising awareness of client’s rights, and reminding everyone of what it means to be professional:
“No matter what business you are in, and web design is a business, if you say you are going to do something by a date certain—do it. If you cannot meet the target—whether due date or budget—call the client before you reach that point and explain what is happening. If you are over budget because the client is asking you do to more than you contracted for—”scope creep”—that is your fault. You should amend the agreement for added work that the client requests, when the client requests it, and not surprise them down the road.”
A few years ago I hired a web design company. I explained that I was not a techno and not interested in doing any code . They promised “turn key” and x amount of designer time. Turns out the “time” was email time. I would ask a question and 2 days later would get a techno answer or a answer to something else. In A phone conversation – I could say , no that is not what I mean ……….
Wasted soooooo much time. This was a retail site, due to launch the day a expensive ad came out. Guess what – it was not ready. Then it was ready and the shopping cart would not work. It took them 3 days to get it to work and I am the one that called the shopping cart co to see what the deal was. It was something simple that the company had not pasted in. I had to call the company and tell them what to do! Then the pictures would not enlarge.
It went on and on, they would not talk to me on the phone. Of course by this time I was livid! 6 months I fought it. Then shut down the site.
LOL…this happens sooooo often! It might be because the client generally doesn’t know anything about what kind of functionality he wants, and therefore doesn’t realize that a web designer. Then too I think too many “web designers” are fluent in dreamweaver or some other html editor, and conversant with downloading a theme, and changing the graphics and text a bit…then call that web design. Yet, when it comes to actually writing even a smidgen of code, they are lost, completely. I worked for a firm that wanted me to sell their website designs…when I interviewed the designer, I asked them what languages they programmed in…their answer…WordPress! LOL..no html, no php, no css, no java, no jquery, nada coding skills, they were so daft they thought WordPress was a coding language! It’s a convoluted world out there.
I agree with :
alice
I have two websites and I have struggled no end with three different avenues of approach. I am beginning to believe that website designers and technoids were created to put thoughts of murder into the hearts of well intentioned entrepreneur
I add: WP is part of the problem. With any free or premium theme you never get what you see in the Demos. Then you are left with poor support and even worse ducumentation. I exlude PHOTPCRATY fron this citique.
The point is: that the companies that employ the techies and designers are mostly after the quick buck and don’t give a damn over customer satisfaction.
Mr.Srewed
PS: don’t store my Email address.
7.25.12 Wed.
I spent over $20,000 … and 5 years later still do not have a working website. It took 3.5 years to finally get someone’s attention. Walk away? Not an option for me with that much money on the line.
I sent a certified letter to the then President. That got a new person who worked and fought for me. The programmer was enthusiastic — until this man was transferred to the media dept (his ultimate goal). Then Nada … Finally I got ahold of this special person who then got someone appointed to work with me, and the programmer again started working. A week later she left for Europe, and he again stopped. It was 9 mo. until he once again started working. Would not do what I requested and filled the page with dozens of clip art icons. Co’s are crawling the internet looking for people illegally using their clip art, and they are suing and winning. WHEN THE 2ND PARTY returned from Europe, he told her the programming was done. He had not even started. Would not take my phone calls, nor respond to my emails. Finally, he started working and this woman kept a close eye on him. He then again stated it was finished. My front page was a mess, like a horror story. I took my own pictures and developed my own logo and … not there. She put pressure on him, he completed a BEAUTIFUL SITE that I was proud of. Plus I did all the scripts, researched all the keywords, meta tags, etc. I was to be published the next day. It was now 5 years and a couple of months.
NOW THE COUPE DE GRAS … he left the company that day and took down my website, and it was no where to be found on their servers.
A N D the company told me to build my own.
It is a “B I G” company with tons of complaints and sued by dozens of states … they lost every case for millions of dollars.
And they are losing the hosting fees with no website.
I am starting from scratch with no help. The 2nd person won’t respond to phone calls or emails, and the WONDERFUL 1st person wised up and left the company around that time.
See Stores Online if you want lots of trouble and no help!!!!!
Last month, I did talk to someone at this co. who told me that everything they told me to do was wrong, and he would not buy from a site setup the way mine is. N i c e !!!!
Now it is 5.5 years and we are again working to redo everything.
I always try and do mockups (Travis Isaacs’ Keynote Kungfu) first. But I work with good designers.
Plus I have a reasonable UI/UX brain so flesh out most of the use cases and stuff out first (from a Luke W Mobile First perspective).
By the way, this isn’t just about designers, it’s developers too.
Hi,
Who to blame here? Designers or Clients? I would like to contribute my 2 cents here. First I have to ask one question:
How many of you are engineers or hold some kind of Project Management Degree? (not empiric but real academic degree)
Let me explain a bit, taking an engineering approach to a web design project will comprehend 4 stages:
analysis: requirement gathering and analysis of them
design: mocking up the website based on the requirements
implemetation: coding the HTML and deploying it
testing: verifying the requirements are met
The first 2 stages will require lots, LOTS of >>good<< communication, meetings, collaboration between the designer and customer. Bad/unclear requirements lead to rework and frustration. For example: "The website must be clean and modern looking" – That is a bad requirement. "The homepage must use white spaces at a 20px margin between the main and secondary content blocks and at a 10px between the secondary content blocks in a two row layout, first row holding the main content, second row holding secondary content blocks A -B -C." – That is a way better requirement.
If you agree on a mockup and sign off on it, expect to get exactly what you signed off on. If you introduce a change in the requirements after signing off on it, expect delays and rework.
I agree that hiring a marketing firm is better, hopefully you'll get designers, web developers, copy editors, marketers to work with you.
Finally I ask you, do you think that if someone would have hired Leonardo Da Vinci to paint the Monalisa based on the customer desires and likes, do you think he would have painted it exactly as he did? No, I don't think so.
Any kind of design, even web design is somehow related to art, and art is a very relative subject. Of course there is some common sense as to what looks ugly and what looks pretty, but still, it might be that you love your website design, but your visitors hate it.
My two cents.
Ugly Websites Make Money.
I don’t understand WHY they do, but they do. I’m sure the functionality & simplicity was a factor, and/or the need was so great, that ANY site in that niche would work.
I’ve seen ugly designs (or non-designs) lose revenue when beautified.
I also agree that just because the person paying for the design likes it, does not mean their customers will. It all comes down to communication (& understanding) of the goals. Oh, and always be testing.
Dave
I’m an English as a Second Language teacher and course writer, that unusually also has a background in aviation, technologies, system engineering, programing, and project management background. I’ve only been working with Thesis about 3 months, but I think it is one of a toolset (along with s2member, hot potatoes, a select few other plugins and of course WordPress itself) that can finally provide for my needs.
I’ve been searching for about ten years (via three failed journeys with larger organisations, using Joomla/Moodle), and last November I decided to “just do it myself” with WordPress. I’m building the site I want now, but this is only possible because: (a) I have spent 7 months learning php, html/css, and javascript, (b) I am the content author as well, and (c) I intimately understand the needs of my web site users.
Teaching myself and then doing it all myself is slow and inefficient (less so over time), but it is an investment I liken to going to university or doing a TAFE course. You do it for the benefits it will bring.
So I’m not (yet) good enough to code from scratch but I understand the implications of a asking “can you just move that thingy from here to there?”, the dead-end represented by pre-built themes, the possibilities of web site flipping, and the shifting sands of social media marketing and SEO. I’m not trained in visual design, but I can appreciate the concepts of layout, white-space, typography and colour palettes. Thanks to Lynda.com and the wonderful open source/WordPress/Thesis communities, I can now make a site LOOK how I want and DO what I want – albeit with a lot of peeking and poking (to recycle terms from C64 Basic).
Only now can I really understand the web site design challenge in spanning the fundamental need to communicate something to visitors, right back to the technical nuts and bolts of the web site itself. I’m using that knowledge now to create the site I have always dreamed of that will truly help my students. I’m also starting to help my friends get their own small and micro businesses online – early days in a possible extra income stream.
The comment above that the best job is done by a team of people bringing together all these skills is absolutely true, but it is also beyond the budget of 95% of the people in need – small and micro businesses as well as individuals. Working out how to help them, whilst remaining viable yourself is the “next big thing”, I reckon. It’s exciting that people with bigger brains than I have created toolsets and training, and are willing to share their expertise via open source software and their donated time on forums, so as to make possible what would have been impossible only a few years ago.
The exciting times in web design are in the near future, and the opportunities are in bridging the gap between web designers and clients. I have a lot yet to learn before I could in good conscience charge a professional-level fee, but I feel I’m on the right path and will get there – which is a lot better than a decade of frustration at what might have been.
Cheers!
I assisted a local company with their website horror story. I first met them a year ago and after several meetings, gave them an outline of what they needed for the site they were looking at and the functionality. However, these people barely knew how to send email, so communicating with technicians was a joke. Of course, the went to guru.com and hired some tech from india who told them a good story. Really good, but it was all BS…I checked out all the websites he sent as his “portfolio” not ONE had been created by his team…nothing, nada..I informed my client he hadn’t done any of the work and if he was lying they needed to bail, now! They didn’t because he was only charging them $3,000. Having built websites I knew full well nowhere no how were they going to get that website built for less than #20,000. It couldn’t be a template rehash, it needed extensive custom coding in php and many interlinked databases with various timers and schedulars and automation. That just is not going to get done for $3,000. They signed off on the sight (which was uglier than sin I might add) and agreed to pay the tech outside of guru.com, they paid him directly via paypal. No one tested ANY of the functionality on the site, mainly because the tech wasn’t paid enough to care, and the client had no clue what to test or how. LOL… After 3 months their sight was hacked, everything was falling apart, so I directed them to a team I had worked with and trusted. They weren’t cheap, but they know what they’re doing. The cost for their new “FUNCTIONAL” sight is closer to $27,000. It’s been a learning experience for them, a costly one since they wasted over $5,000 on a 2 sites that didn’t work at all.
The onus is on the buyer…that’s why the term is caveat emptor “buyer beware”. Know what you want, know what you need, and understand that it’s going to cost money unless you’re willing to learn to code yourself…oh yeah and then there’s the whole “design” thing. A website to me is like building a store…you need various trades people to build the building, supply the display racks, hangers, till, etc, wiring, lighting, flooring…One person can’t do it all….same with a website. That’s my opinion at least after 17 years of this IT stuff.
The nightmare would be – spending $27,000 and still not being satisfied!
“They understood EXACTLY what I wanted from my web design.”
“I ended up paying a ton of money for a design that was unusable.”
*
Derek, can you please tell us the whole story?
What happened? What went wrong?
I’m a webdesigner myself and this article and most of the comments make me sad.
So, its designers from hell and clients from hell?
I don’t think so.
Webdesign isn’t a coat of paint. Something cheap and quick.
Webdesign is about goals, content and functionality. If you don’t pay for it, you won’t get it.
In some cases the paint thing works. But it’s kind of a lottery, you almost never win the jackpot.
Exactly, Kirsten.
Previously I hired 5 designers to design a weblayout for a client. The first one just didn’t respond anymore. The second one had a nice portfolio, but the end result was terrible (lucky for me I didn’t payed him yet). The third one, the same as the second one: had a nice portfolio but the results were not as I expected. The fourth acted quite responsible, but then he just didn’t respond anymore, and I just payed him $400. Lucky for me I payed him via PayPal so I could get the money back.
The fifth one was finally OK. It was someone from my own country (Netherlands) and he delivered everything on time.
Eventually I deliverd my project about 4 months too late…
I dont think we can blame designers, there are many things involved and you need to be part of the design process to be truly satisfied.
I spend alot of time fixing sites that people have screwed up because they dont know what they are doing. This week alone ive fixed 2 thesis sites, and 2 normal sites and its not the end of the week just yet.
One site I was working on the guy added all the code to the thesis core files which messed up the way thesis works, luckily for the client I was able to reverse that and add the correct functions and hooks to fix the problem quickly and even optimized their site for less than the price they originally paid.
I dont like people getting screwed by phonies, and im always happy to help, but I feel bad for my clients that have had that experience. The way I see it, if someone offers to do the job for more, like 15- 20 dollars an hour, then go for it, someone offering 3-5 dollars an hour, I would be suspicious. I would also recommend getting your site checked out by another developer, this is something that I offer, just to help people and make sure that the other dev has done the job correctly.
Any decent dev should be able to spot problems within 5 minutes or less so its worth getting it checked, like a doctor when you ask for a second oppinion. Then you can decide if it is done right and pay.
I made the mistake of outsourcing a client site to a popular freelancing site. I was totally disappointed with the results and had to build the site myself so as not to disappoint my client. The learning point was to research the supplier with meticulous care and be prescriptive about what you want. I thought that I had done both but obviously not well enough.
I thank god that I have the skills to build my own sites – it would be a nightmare to be at the mercy of another web designer. I really love Thesis. Thesis = freedom to me.
I can definitely relate Derek but probably not all together for the same reasons listed here in the comments section.
I’ve been on both sides of the “aisle” so to speak. I hired a web designer about 12 years ago and he charged me over 2k to design a website from “hell”….nothing worked the first time and then trying to get him to fix it cost even more money….3k’s later I still had a website that didn’t work.
2 years later and 2 years of learning how to build and design my own website I then had a workable website and for free….WordPress.com in its early stages and I loved it. I loved it so much I decide to retire from my banking job 10 years early and I was fully vested for my retirement. So for the past 10 years I’ve been designing self hosted WordPress sites and I’ve owned thesis now for almost 3 years. I love you’re platform.
I’ve been proactive with my clients….They provide all the content, images, videos, audios etc…..and I’ll design them a quality website with what they provide me. However, before I use any their images, videos or audio’s make it very clear if the quality is bad…then I tell them up front that the site will not look as clean and as professional as “they” expect.
I average over 75 newly designed websites every year for the past 10 years and my average is $299 on a low end for a really, really basic site to $1,500 for an “All the bells and whistles” website.
I don’t have “clients from hell” anymore because I’ve gotten better at gauging my clients better and making sure up front what I need and what the expectations will be…….they’re happier for it.
Thanks, RC
Thanks Rick,
I feel I’m on that path as well – 1 year down and on my way.
The trick, perhaps, in pricing is recognising the budgetary constraints of smaller customers (who may become bigger over time). It seems easy to set up a basic web site in a couple of hours, but you really want to allow the possibility of the site’s growth and development as the business grows, both in terms of budget as well as an understanding of what they want in their wider online business strategies. Often they don’t know that up-front.
This is the issue I have found with starting a client on a free or cheaper premium theme. It limits growth and development. It also forces all the design decisions to be made up front – which is very, very hard for the client, and where I believe the process so often goes wrong.
However if you start with Thesis, you have limitless expansion possibilities. This would allow you to nurture an ongoing relationship with a client. As well, your own practice becomes more streamlined as you get more and more skilled with your own toolset.
I liken this to a master cabinet-maker. He or she is not limited in design possibilities as a result of the choice of their toolset. A craftsperson doesn’t build with pre-fabricated components (i.e. pre-built themes). Rather, they use the fundamental wood-working tools – chisels, mallets, augers, planes and shavers – which I liken to HTML/CSS, PHP, and Javascript. Furthermore, they practise within a workspace conducive to their craft with everything they need at their fingertips – which I liken working within WordPress/Thesis.
Currently I’m looking at ways to easily create individual looks with Thesis within that lower price bracket. I’m also looking at building a modular/hierarchical approach to adding functions and fancy bits so as to improve my own efficiency.
Thanks,
Mike
Hi Derek,
I’d love to know where the disconnect happened between what you were envisioning for the website you had a designer develop for you, and what you actually received. Wondering what made it unusable for your purposes? As a web and print designer, I’m continually looking for was to ensure my clients are satisfied with the finished product. This article would be a great jumping off point for additional posts written about the following:
1) How to choose the right web designer
2) How web designers can find ‘dream’ clients
3) How clients/designers can turn around a bad project, and knowing when to call it quits
4) Clear communication between skilled Thesis Developers and their clients; what both parties can do to increase satisfaction in the designer/client relationship
5) The ins and outs of clear contracts
Good suggestions!
I’ve had a web firm for 17 years and in that time I’ve had the good, the bad and the ugly, thankfully in disproportionate amounts…the good far outweighs the bad. But I recently had a bad. A hurry up I’m desperate can you help me situation with a low budget. I could do what she wanted with her budget and in her time frame but that quickly grew to something else. Work far beyond the scope that was explained and or contracted for. Demands that made it clear she expected me to be working over the weekend. Rude and disparaging emails and…with no big surprise, no payment. After setting up a theme and installing a graphic banner, I was locked out of the site admin. Really? So I went in through ftp and reclaimed what I could; I deleted the graphics we had produced and replaced the stylesheet with the default one and promised to deliver as soon as final payment was made. Oh boy…that was like discovering a hornets nest. Only through sharing that awful experience with a peer was I made aware that I was probably dealing with someone who never planned to pay. That I found a workaround to get back our work that she had not thought of? Priceless.
I have said this over and over and it holds true every single time. No client ever waits on me; I am always waiting on them. For content, for images, for email addresses, for payment. Every single time.
Unreal!!!! Really shocking that someone would ask for so much work and have no intention of paying you for it!
We recently had a minor disappointment. We were under a time crunch, hired a designer to create a logo for us, and decided to settle for less than exactly what we were looking for. The price charged for the services was about one-third hired than the estimate, and because of the time crunch, we ended up paying and extra 100 bucks for something that wasn’t exactly what we wanted. I’d rather someone overestimate the cost, personally, than get surprised by a bigger bill when we’re trying to budget these things out.
I felt cheated after I discovered just what the company I hired did to build my website. All they did was install Wordpress, add a nice header, and that was it. I was responsible for the theme I purchased, the layout of the site, widgets used, content, etc. So to install Wordpress and add a header, I think charging $4,000 is highway robbery.
Yes, the header was lovely. But I talked to the designer who did it and that person said it took them a whole two hours to complete. (That individual has since left the company). Add 10 seconds to install Wordpress. For $4,000. Quite an easy way to make loads of money, I would say. Had I known….
You’re right, Vanessa – if that is ALL they did, that’s a ridiculous price. $400-500 for a unique, designed header (unless we’re talking slapping some text on a stock image, in which case <$100). What you're describing is much of what I do, and charge $299 and up for, the only variable being how much the designer charges for creating the header, plus a small admin fee for me, since I'm the one that plays message relay between designer and client. I think that's reasonable. $4,000 for a simple WP site, stock free theme, plus header? Nope.
I needed some custom coding done on a site and I hired someone with a great portfolio. They dragged their feet, came up with a million excuses, starting using excuses like they were in the hospital, then their friend was in the hospital, then their dog (no joke). They broke countless deadlines. Finally we moved on to another designer and he was fantastic. On time-on budget.
My issue is clients who hire me and then have no idea what they really want. I try my best to help them sort it out, but usually things unravel pretty quickly because I don’t feel it’s up to me to tell them what they want. Some effort has to take place on their part.
I think LynnC says it all. Many of us want a new design and really don’t have a handle on what it is that we want. We think we know. Then we get what the designer thinks he or she understood and it’s miles apart. I’ve paid for more designs that I gave up on and never used than I care to admit.
Now I just do my own. I wish I was better at it. Maybe I should design what I want and get a professional to tart it up a bit.
Great post.
This post is a bit different, but I can see a few things happening here. 1.) What problems are you all having? 2.) In the near future we are going to help you solve those problems. Thanks for participating.
Great stuff.
We once were talking to several web design companies to create a travel booking website.
One company followed up really well on our description and one guy called me up to ask further details about what we wanted to do exactly, what mattered to us, what our plans where, what our target audience was, etc. I felt really good about this company, even though the price they asked was actually higher than the budget we had posted in our project description. But the guy seemed to “get it”.
Well, he got it indeed. The guy bought our domain name (the .net version), registered our name on dozens of web.20 sites and set up a website that was very similar to the thing we wanted to do, except that it was a “quick and dirty” version by using some kind of template. When I questioned him about it, he said he didn’t know anything about this, but the domain whois showed that the registrar had an office in the same building in Bangalore, and looking at it it was an obvious ripoff of our plans.
A couple of months later, we received an email by someone offering us the .net domain, website and all the associated web2.0 accounts for $12,000. We didn’t pay it (not just because we couldn’t afford it, but also because I’d swallow rusty nails and rotten meat before I’d reward someone for acting like that). But we learned a couple of lessons that way, the major one being make sure to register your name on major web2.0 sites before going on a roundabout.
Why all the emphasis on the negative. Instead of horror stories what about some great successes. OK, not all web designers are equal but success depends as much on the client and the interaction with the designer – so maybe not all clients are equal either.
It seems communication ended when you went live. If you were my client and unhappy with the site, I would have periodically emailed you to make sure you were OK with the site. Communication is still very critical up to one year after go live. I think that if you provide a service, you need to give great customer service as well. I can see where this can be missed when you hire a contractor and they are in the thick of it. At the end of the day, we all want to be treated with respect and find a common ground. It’s up to the service provider to keep communicating with the client. And the client must express their concerns calmly in order to come to terms or find a successful resolution.
I recently had the experience where the web designer wanted me to pay the full amount upfront. He said that shows my commitment??? He also said he was doing me a favour as he had given me a great price? Therefore he thought he could ask me to pay 100% upfront.
Needless to say this gave me a red light
So now I am looking for another developer that I can build a long term relationship with as I am marketer and business coach and I am helping my clients develop effective websites.
However I want to have the right tool to make changes when I need to with great flexibility for changes etc.
I am looking at the Catalyst versus Thesis or Genesis ? Does anyone here have experience with all of these and can you let me know what you think?
Thanks
@WarrenHorak
I get to hear some *horror* stories every month, some designers/developer mess up Thesis sites for clients and they leave it in a state where upgrades are not possible.
Hacking the core files is the only thing they know to modify or customize the look and feel.
And then, I get a chance to fix up such sites. Making it work smoothly for all my lovely clients is a complete pleasure.
How about a website designer who tried to talk me out of any metatags – and this was 7 years ago. The few he deigned to include were my name and the name of my state. 18 months after the launch of a site that was not drawing visitors I learned how to view my website’s code. I discovered that he mis-spelled my name and the name of my state! When told about this his response was “I can fix that”, period. No apology.
Now I have my websites on WP and Thesis, so I can only complain to myself.
One thought: Thesis is becoming so oriented to professional web designers with instructions that are technically sophisticated that as a true DIYer I am feeling shut out. Maybe it is time to rename DIY to DIPro.
One thought
I am the owner of a web based language translation service. I learned to use wordpress and thesis on a basic level and got great results, but felt we needed a better design. I hired a designer to build a basic design with the idea that I could build out more pages to target our different markets.
Our experience was not terrific nor was it horrible. We were happy with the design, but were unhappy with the customer service and confusion. What I hope to contribute are suggestions based on our experience. I don’t see it as productive to “bash” clients or designers. I am sure there are good and bad in both groups.
Here are our suggestions based on our experience as a translation company hiring a designer. we hope it gives both designers and customers a few tips to make things go smoother.
Suggestions for Designers
#1. Please do your best to educate your customers before the signing of a contract. Especially about what the customer has to provide (images, text, etc..) This was not made clear to us, so it created confusion.
2. Should not have to be said, but please learn how to estimate your cost/time properly. Also, please educate us on how you estimate. If we as customers understand how much hard work and how many hours etc.. we may like feel a bit better about high dollar estimates. I sense our designer “underbid” but wanted to stick to his word, but then lost enthusiasm.
2. Deadlines / Time lines: give ranges instead of hard dates, and if you have an unexpected delay advise well in advance of the given date ranges. I can’t tell you how much it irritates a serious business owner who is coordinating everything around designers request. We hired a graphic artist to prepare our banners and images.. We also had our site translated to 13 languages. It was terribly frustrating to rush to do all of that by a certain date for the designer, and then have the designer be late on their end.
3. Acknowledge all Emails quickly: answer your email even if with a one liner that you will get back to them with a detailed answer later. Waiting around for email updates or having days of email silence is really unprofessional when customer are investing you your service.
Suggstions for Customers:
1. Do your homework about the design process. Business owners tend to want to make fast decisions and delegate out tasks and expect the to just get done! I love that! But I quickly realized it doesn’t work that way with web design. You need to understand your part in providing information to the designer in a clear way. If you don’t know what you want as far as aesthetics, structure, style, and functionality, or if you don’t understand enough about wordpress and theses functions, it will be very difficult for your to clealy communicate to the designer. Problems will surely come.
2. Thesis/Wordpress designer do not provide images or content. They prepare the slights structure and layout. You will need to arrange this for them. That was a big surprise to us as first time customers. All those great banners, pictures, and buttons are images that need to be prepared or purchased with license rights if you want to do things properly.
That is all i have time for now..sorry for any typos.. no time to proofread. I think there are terrific advantages to using Wordpress & Thesis and hiring design talent. I just learned from our experience, and this blog topic that there is alot designer and customers need to work out to have a successful project.
I am glad, way too, even nevertheless I no for a longer time reside in L.A. The Southland ought to have at least a person strip, After i initially received my license, there was San Fernando, and later me and my buds hired out Irwindale to carry autocrosses in advance of I moved absent. As far as placating the residents around the noise challenge, back again the following during the East, the road study course Lime Rock Park shuts down the training course on Sundays, and holds car exhibits for the track, and an automotive flea market place in component of your paddock. The track gets gate money, plus the residents get 1 day of relative quiet.
Hi, I just started a business back in july 2012, had a great guy come round and design the website and it looked really good, The only problem we had with him was the fact he never paid his bills for the company, shut the whole operation down and then left us stranded because we didn’t have the rights to the website he did, I never felt so cheated in all my life we had the website up for 4 maybe 5 weeks and paid him a ton of money and we lost everything, so we had to scramble around and get another one knocked together as fast as we could and least this one looks 10 times better, But what an absoloute nightmare our main source of advertising gone just like that no warning at all,
I will be a little more cautious in future, always the way one person ruins it for all
Hello,
I want to ad a bit to this discussion. I have been designing websites myself about 12 years. From html, CMS and of course eCommerce.
I always have few issues when communicate with clients.
When people come to me, usually they have some expectations.
Problem with clients is they always the same no matter what experience they already have in the past – they are coming unprepared to meet a designer /developer.
Proper website design cover few aspects I only will cover here couple.
1. Purpose of website ( mostly for business or informational but main goal is to get traffic and good SEO or sale online or generate leads and so on)
2. Website audience ( mareket niche)
It is really hard to work with someone who is usually not prepared. People when go to buy a car, usually they do their homework. They search what they need, what they can afford and what they can expect to buy for their money. You are not going to dealer and hand them $20 000 and say give me something for this money. You spend countless hours to make your decision.
Usually my clients coming and concentrate on visual aspect only and I bet many developers have the same experience.
The quote is based on their requirements. Then here we go – changes and changes and changes. But nobody is prepared to pay for them.
It is hard and it takes time and experience though. As many times what they want is not what they really need. Amazingly though people are not prepared to listen YES I found many times they don’t want to know. They just want someone to do their magic for them.
Good website design is not about graphic design, structure design, programming and features – is all above.
To design effective site – takes knowledge of your business, your goals, your needs. If you are not preparing yourself to do so…..don’t expect magic to happen.
Now I have a experience and don’t listen to what people say – I help them to clarify what they really need. Then if client ( and yes few I met ) I don’t want to know that is why I hire you. I reject clients like this. I never advertised myself only word of mouth and still booked till June 2013. But I am picky now. Don’t want clients who are not interested in own business. These clients cost my time wasted to keep my word. Many times I worked in the past for month or two for as little as $1500 would you ? Just because I met clients from hell. And my reputation was important so well I keep their demands. Not any more.
If you just want design….do yourself favour – go buy template and you have a design. Someone customise for you and you have a website. Or better use free website builders. You don’t have to know anything else.
If you want good site that meets your goals, your visual presence – well do your homework. Study your industry, study your competition, prepare yourself.
Spend time with good marketing person to ask what would be necessary, spend time with Internet marketing consultant and SEO, or read. Then you are ready to meet designer.
Don’t blame designers – they are in business of making money. There are there to use their skills and knowledge to create what you asked for.
There is no excuse that you don’t know technology. I don’t know nothing about cars – but I do my homework when I buy new one.