I regret my $46k website redesign

Hire an individual freelancer instead of an agency

This. Especially when you're getting started. An agency can be a double-edged sword. A good one can really help you out. A bad one can sink you. That's prob a lot of ppl hire agencies based on recommendations.

Man, this makes my blood run cold. That's so much money for a redesign.

I've worked for agencies and I've hired agencies, and I can say that you hit the nail on the head here. You would think that the agency's project manager would create a structure (scope, process, timelines, review or time spent, etc. etc.), but they often fail.

If you ever hire an agency, or even a freelancer for that matter, make sure everything is crystal clear, to the point of being over-documented.

This sucks Michael, I'm sorry you had to go through that.

Even though your blog article is very measured and you've made a point of not being too harsh about the agency, they truly are shameless crooks. I'd feel humiliated if I'd so massively over charged and under-delivered for a client. I mean it's not that the new site is bad, or the new logo, but relative to the time and money they've stolen from you it's incredibly offensive...I'd be naming and shaming them for sure.

I was on the edge of my seat reading this. Your advice at the end is something I will remember! Thank you for sharing valuable insights after such a bad experience.

Sorry to read that...

But I'm shocked how I undervalue my services!

Woow, as a creative agency founder, where I've delivered over 300 projects, and a designer/developer for 15+ years, this is one of the more horrible stories I've heard of a client-agency relationship. I'm honestly at loss for words, wow. Thank you for posting this.

I am sorry for what you had to go through. What a read! Can I translate it and share on my Medium by giving credit to your blog? I would like to share this journey with my circle. (https://medium.com/azerbaijan)

Great experiences never come from working with huge overpriced agencies, at least they haven't for me.

That being said, working with an individual freelancer isn't great either because you don't get any tension on their end in terms of ideas. It's just a bit too big a risk.

I've found that the best middle-ground is to overpay small agencies. If you are their biggest client they will kill for you and do everything they can to make sure you're happy at the end of the day.

Great breakdown here. I've considered going the route you have with a redesign and certainly some things to keep in mind as I move forward.

I think you can safely assume that it's more than just a few agencies that have burned clients.

I know of several cases of agencies' working with clients who then reneged on their agreements, left without penalty with the content the agency developed.

It's not a good practice and can slowly kill an agency if used repeatedly.

That said, you're probably dealing with one of two types of agencies now.

First, the boutique agencies that rely on providing high quality at competitive rates by utilizing excellent skills and exacting work methods.

Second is the lower-end agency that provides services using low-cost resources in order to compete on price.

They may be able to get your "designer for hire" for peanuts, but what happens when he/she leaves? If you're locked into an agreement where you can't get out because penalties are stiff, then you're going to be stuck with your new agency and possibly still paying them regardless of results (or lack thereof).

That's an awful position to be in as a business owner because it provides no incentive for them to give you their best work when they'll either way be paid anyway.

As someone who has worked at agencies and launched an on-demand design subscription platform as an entrepreneur, I can empathize with the challenges you are facing. It can be all too easy to exceed your budget, get stuck in unproductive meetings, encounter unexpected fees, and experience delays in timelines.

I also wanted to add that the product looks great, and it's a shame that it isn't showcased more prominently as a solution, especially alongside one of the videos at the front of your site. Additionally, for a project like this, an on-demand solution for design could work very well.

I appreciate the detail and insight in this post, Michael. Sounds like a tough experience, but it's great that you're sharing it for others to learn from.

Gives me a lot to think about, as I'm just starting up a subscription design service (https://www.design-friend.com/). The goal with the subscription structure is to solve a lot of the issues you had: price transparency, completing one task at a time, clear communication and feedback, plus you can cancel at any time.

I wish we'd existed when you were doing the rebrand, it definitely would've been a much better experience! Let me know if you ever need anything else for TinyPilot, we'd be happy to do some awesome work for you. 😄

This was too painful to read. I almost judged you for overcommitting to this whole thing and allowing it to go on for 8 months. But then I remembered that I, as a first-time founder, also took 8 months to fire a bad hire that I intuitively kinda knew wasn't gonna work out since their 2nd month. In the hindsight it looks easy and I'm like "I should've done it earlier" but as it was happening, I was optimistic things could've changed.

thanks for sharing

So brutal. I'm so sorry you had to go through this. Especially since I've heard the story time and time again in all my work years. With design agencies, and dev agencies (and individual freelancers as well).

What I've learned to practice (and what good agencies and freelancers will practice) is:

1. Communication + transparency build trust and instill confidence in clients.
2. Keep clients in the loop on where their money is going.
3. Set expectations clearly, stick to them, and communicate any change in the plan proactively.
4. Don't just take their money; tell them when they can get more value for less money or effort.

This has been really effective in the long run. It helps me do good work for those that need it, and give them the best long-term value combined with quality. And it also makes my reputation stand out from those that would take the money and run.

I hope it never happens to you again!!

I have not yet read the whole article, but have you heard of Fiverr ? you could have at least tried to get a couple or even more design prototypes for modest prices. If things work well, you could find freelancer elsewhere to implement them

Oh my? You would have been better off with a 50 USD template and an Upwork freelancer for 500 USD!

$46K! Wow!

You're not the only one. I've been through similar experience back in 2015. I didn't spend anywhere closer to what you spent.

I didn't know a bit about coding back then; and the only way I could get something custom made was by hiring an agency.

I went to a popular freelancer site. Searched for a top-rated agency with all 5-star rating. Awarded them the project at the hourly rate they quoted. I knew I'd get what I wanted.

But then, they released the first version of the software.

It crashed right with just 5 users (was supposed to handle 1000+).

So they worked on it again.

The new version was painfully slow; that it'd take 10 seconds to load a simple login page.

One month of rework followed.

The app crashed again.

I had lost a few thousand dollars and 4 months.

I was frustrated, nervous and felt helpless.

Gave myself 6-months to learn programming. By the end of 6th month, I built everything on my own.

It worked for 500+ simultaneous users!

Yikes, that sounds like a total nightmare, I'm sorry you went through that.

Some time last year, my users were churning, and a lot of them cited "UI/UX" as the reason they no longer wanted to pay for my product.

So I posted on r/forhire and found a designer who was willing to revamp my entire admin dashboard for $750 total.

Sounded too good to be true, but what's the worst that can happen? I'm out $750?

Believe it or not, after I rolled out his work, the complaints and churns citing "UI/UX" stopped almost immediately.

He did a magnificent job.

I'd hire him again in a heartbeat, except for one major drawback:

He was slow as hell, took him 4 months or so.

Guess it's either fast, cheap, and/or good, but you can only pick 2.

Really interesting article.

Stories like these is the reason I don't want to start an agency of my own even though I'm considered a successful freelancer by my colleagues (I'm a dev who can understand business-speak lol).

I have a feeling that a lot of people who've used agencies before have had terrible experience and that outsourcing/agency work is a bit scammy (billing for hours you've not worked, branding less-experienced people as senior ICs, etc).

Sorry for this. Thanks for sharing your story with others to learn from your experience...

That's unfortunate, you live and you learn. Thank you for sharing and getting a positive outlook on it.

Wow... that must hurt! I'm sure this would be just an anecdote and you'll recover that money for sure.

Having said that, and having read every single word of the post you linked, I think you missed one important "Why don't you...?"

In my opinion, that's 99desings. When you have a 10K budget you could pay only premium designers and they ROCK. Once you have the design you Google PSD to WordPress and you'll find several services. There are some of them that are pretty good.

Then, you finally have a WordPress developer to make some modifications to have the site look and work exactly as you want.

That's the process I've made several times for clients that had that type of budget and it worked every single time. The good part is that you start with several designs to start from (99designs magic).

So sad your history was a bad one. But now you have the experience to know what not to do. Maybe next time you take a look at the process I've just described. I'm sure you're going to like it.

Whoa, that's brutal. Thanks for sharing this tale of caution

Oh wow,...that's a shame.

I am So sorry...

See, this is why I just launched a productized Web design and development studio....

So Michael, a real good thing what you've done is to save and show all the process. Now, you know and people let you know, you made a lot of mistakes.

Nobody wants feel we're catched into a fraud, but feelings don't pay the rent.

Your website increased in sells? That don't comes with a redesigns of aesthetic items.

And one crucial thing: when agency make you feel like the mos tiny of their clients, such a bad signal dude!

You're a clean and nice person. Don't change that my friend.

Thank you so much for sharig

valuable lessons learnt working with third party service providers.
I'm wondering how much difference in terms of conversion did the new design make?

I am actually trying to solve this "embarrassing design issue" from a different perspective. I think, and know, that the majority of founders, bootstrappers, and makers are average when it comes to design. They know how to craft sort of good-looking landing pages and test them fast. Most of them are familiar with design tools, and basic design frameworks, or are at least good at copying others. My approach is that if the majority of people can design something okayish themselves I can make a comprehensive UI UX design review, make suggestions, etc. (I am UI UX designer full time), so they can fix it themselves, rather than hiring or subscribing to those productized design services. My 2cents.

Holy Cow, I just read this and that is just not comprehensible 3 pages | 7 Months | 46K, wow either things were really badly managed, or it just sounds super shady.

We did a SaaS website a little while back for Mailmunch
rebranding, design, illustrations, animations, development all the works. Which was about a 10-page website, and also helped with the messaging strategy.

Took us about 3 months or so to complete with a friendlier budget.

I wouldn't agree that you should opt for a freelancer as opposed to an agency, because I have heard of nightmare stories there too. But you should partner with the right people either through experience or through friends who recommend them.

This was quite an insane read. Really unprofessional behaviour on behalf of the agency.

As a product designer myself; If we do a cost-to-value analysis; it definitely isn't worth $46k. The illustrations too, are quite basic & can be made in around 3-4 days of dedicated work.

You could give a shot to my design subscription service as an alternative to freelancers -
https://www.slingshotdesign.co

Oof. I'm a year late to this party but wow that's one expensive...investment. I'm really sorry you went through that! I'm a design + strategy service of 1. As I like to say - I'm the best of both worlds! I still give personalized attention like a freelancer because I only take on 2 clients a month; not as expensive as an agency with teams but I also provide the structure and premium service people have come to expect from an agency.

I'm sorry I have nothing much to add to this post but I do have a few questions:

1. When you were interviewing people for this web re-design, who were you looking for?
2. What was the most important criteria you had in your head when you were deciding on who to choose for this project?
3. How did this crew catch your eye?
4. In a reply to someone else, you said that they had the style you were going for - did they end up delivering that?

Curious about your thoughts!

I personally hire agencies based on recommendations. I've heard from many founders that they have had bad experiences, and I started to only work with freelancers and agencies someone has previously recommended. I trust my network more than some reviews online and their own brand appearance.

Getting right designs is hard and do you what I find it more hard a Developer Harndoff session where developer and designer argue for possibilities of converting those designs to code.

I've faced this problem in many of my projects and then I started https://uiworks.io

Now i handle UI part of the project at fix price so business owner can focus on logic and business part of the project instead of worrying about color codes and icons.

Man, thank you for documenting your experience. We had a similar problem with another agency, and the main issue was the lack of transparency.

I believe "WebAgency" had to be much more open and clearer with you regarding how they work, how they keep you up to date, and more importantly help you get what YOU want done first rather than what they feel excited about. But hopefully you never have to run into such thing again.

This sounds so scary, can't even begin to feel like you must have felt. I started a new company that replaces unreliable freelancers and expensive agencies for one flat monthly fee, with designs delivered faster. Hope you have more positive interactions working with reliable freelancers.

Michael, I have to confess. I read your excellent post and felt sick in the stomach. Because I went through a quite similar experience a decade ago, but I was on the other side: I was the WebAgency (not the particular one Michael dealt with). It probably soured a friendship as well, as the client was a friend of mine.

Although we got past the ideation stage quite enthusiastically, when it came time to actually design and develop the features, our designer and developer were not properly in sync, our project management was not on point, and lastly my leadership and accountability to my friend/client were lacking. I should have been on top of the project and making sure everything was going smoothly. But as a CEO, I was off to the next client and pitching for new business.

Needless to say, we delivered late and below expectations, and my client's online business never really materialised. I wish I had a better way of making sure new clients were in the pipeline but also staying on top of existing projects in development so they reach the expectations of clients (based on our sales presentations / ideations). Lesson learned.

Regards,
Tom.

Is it a shopify based website? has you done custom coding?

I would have looked towards a freelancer - but also to split the project up. This can help minimise the risk of failure by spreading the workload out.
It isn't the best choice all the time, and you can always chose how deep you go - but at the very least in this case I would have looked for 2 different freelancers to complete the logo and website.
You could even go further and get designs for the website from one person, while getting it coded up from someone else.

Did you find any good reach at freelancer? So, that you can get a good service of Web dev?

That agency sounds like a bunch of kids just rolling with the punches and seeing who will just keep paying for it. That’s crazy. And the website looks like maybe a 10K design, nowhere near the amount paid. I feel so sorry for the business owner. He really got played.

There are some small 2-3 people agencies doing a great job: fast and cheap enough. Yeah, a good piece of advice is choosing wisely and interviewing a few of them.

I wonder, if in the whole history of human existence there is a single person who has had his website redesign done on time and with the budget they expected to spend.
Although, if so, we'd probably know of one, because there's sure to be a giant memorial in honour of this person.

Damn, that really spiraled out of control... Agencies are not always your best choice, escpecially when it is just a rebrand. Try to hire a freelancer next time, get a good one and let them give you a quote. If they say they can't do it, then start searching for a well known and respectable agency. Maybe ask some contacts/forums what experience they have with the chosen agency.

"I asked how long they expected my project to take. "How long is a piece of string?" their lead designer asked."

I'd raise a red flag here.

Few notes

1
If you're hiring a good agency, making sure there is a fit is up to you. But if you're hiring a great agency — assessing the fit is up to them.

Remember: if someone wants to help you, they tell the truth; if someone wants to help themselves, they tell a lie.

2
Good agencies will work on whatever you need to do… retainer basis is preferred. And it would always take a long time to deliver. A great agency has a process and knows how to structure the work around the client's needs.

3
A great agency will deliver the results you envision — they know what you need. A good agency will keep promising you the results but never deliver one on time and within budget.

4
Falling into the confirmation bias — e.i. I need the best from the best may lead to improper assessment.

If you sense something is not right — you don't sense it, it is not right. It is yet another red flag if you don't like how the agency runs sales.

5
Even if your product or idea is not there yet for them to work on, great agencies give you feedback on improving it or make a referral to someone who is a better fit.

Where would you go to find a freelancer to get this sort of work done?
What rate would you regard as 'too low' and presume poor result?

Thank you for sharing, really liked the read!

I agree with your takeaways, starting from an independent freelancer seems like the best value for your buck, if you can find the one that fits the style and criteria. Also with most independent freelancers, you really do get quality time, and in case you have to hire someone else, actual usable material if in need to transition to an agency later on for the finished product since for the freelancer you will of upmost importance.

Hi Michael, this an interesting read, I read it twice actually.
---
Plus the comments here are justified, but I think we all fall into the same category once the project is ours.
I am sorry that this not only crossed your budget 3x but the deadline as well was beyond the oceans, yet I'm glad your sales increased in the end and I hope you actually get all that "invested" back in form of 10x or 100x and more increase in revenue. :D
---
Little shameless pitch:
I have a small casual mobile gaming studio (b2b). In my experience, for that price, I worked with one of my clients and that game app (iOS & Android) took 5 - 6 months to build from design to dev and it was with a client whom I didn't charge any major upfront, until there was success from client side, then we split it in minor % + initial agreed amount, so this way if our client succeeds, so do we, simple. Anyhow, Today that game app has 10million+ downloads.
---
Why did I tell you this?
If your business is doing good and you ever want to also have a gamification side to your business/product to increase awareness, and need a casual mobile game, please feel free to let me know first, that's all I ask. If you do that'll be great, if not, that's also great. Thanks. :D

I have a similar experience. We spent $10k for designing and building our website aurity.co 6 years ago. Now I know that developing it by hand was a huge waste! No cms, hard to maintain, not easy for marketers, hard for SEO...

I will never build a landing page with code, especially nowadays when you have AI and No code tools that can generate your website out of the box. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Time and money which I am going to save I will spend building my main product 😃

Feel you 😓
Hard experience

Yes that's a costly mistake for you and a learning chance for everybody else. Thanks for sharing the detailed breakup so that other's are saved from the ordeal you went from.

Thanks for sharing.

First, this agency sounds HORRIBLE... 1. Did not set proper expectations, 2. Did not stay within the scope of the project, 3. Did not properly communicate, 4. Conned you into an entirely different deal.

This is not at all representative of how a relationship with a professional agency should go. You were swindled by freelancers masking themselves as an "agency".

A proper agency would never leave a client high and dry like this. It's way too hard to acquire clients to behave in this manner. Moving forward, working with folks that prove to be actual partners should provide a better experience.

Nice and Attractive look your website design

Wow. Really wow.
I don't know what is going on in that agency.
3 pages, $46k, wow again.

Great write-up, Michael. I can tell by reading your post and comments that you are handling this experience better than most (myself included).

Tons of lessons in there for others to take away, thanks for sharing!

All the best with TinyPilot!

brutal... that was $10k worth of work

$46k just seems like an astronomical sum. I remember being quoted $2k for a dynamic "order" page for Duda from an agency. A single page. I feel like agencies are only for corperates the way they charge and will never use one, but thats probably a silly view from limited exposure.

I am sorry to hear what you had to go through, Michael. I also run a software service agency, so let me add my two cents here. First, their hourly rates are high, and they have kept you waiting too long without proper deliverables, which is not something to take lightly. They might have charged you for the idle hours.

Every customer needs to feel like the only customer. As a paying customer, you don't have to hear all their internal issues and excuses about other customers taking their time irrespective of whether you have subscribed to their retainer plan. If they are busy with other customers, they should not be taking up more projects in the first place.

I have never proposed a recurring payment plan for a website or a branding project. If you get a proposal like that, it's a clear sign that the agency wants to rob you in the long term. However, long-term retainer agreements work pretty well for software projects. We have made software for some of the largest organizations out there. But, when they started, they were all small startups. Most of the time, we did the websites and branding for free just because they paid us to build their groundbreaking software products. We had become good friends by the time the products were released, so how can we charge them for the simple stuff?

There are agencies out there with solid portfolios that will help you without overcharging. You just need to find them! For example, We only ask for $30-40 per hour (or less!). So it's the same as hiring a freelancer, but we take more responsibility for the work we deliver.

Feel free to contact me if you need help or advice on anything we do - https://primesens.com/.

Definitely a crazy story. Can you post some general analytics from the previous design vs the new design? Are your conversions higher with the new design? Better click-through rates, time on page, etc?

Cool one. Thank you for sharing

wow, what a learning experience

Good read Michael! Very elaborate. Sound like a nightmarish project, I would not wanna deal with this webdesign agency. Good to hear though that the conversion is looking more optimistic than planned, that's what it's all about in the end! Learn from it and move on! Imagine if your conversion rate would have dropped.. it happens. For you next project I highly recommend Webflow, high-quality templates and quite some customization. You would just need a designed for the logo :)

Cheers!

This is a simple project I would require fixed budget, not hourly. These rates you mentioned are insane when you compare it to the output they provided.

I would spend additional $1K and bid on their keywords in Google, with domain [their-company]-scam.com 😄

I have seen more people like you who are regretting after hiring a costly freelancer or web agency and didn't get what they are expecting!

That's why I wrote an article about 1 year ago covering the same struggle and what mistake people make when they hire agency or freelancer.

It's old and written in informal English but, it's worth reading:

https://www.khadush.com/90-of-client-make-this-mistake-when-they-hire-a-designer-or-a-design-agency/

Sounds like a horrible experience. I'm a dev, and I have never hired a design agency - now I'm wondering if your case is an exception, or if that's the norm?

Oof. This was really painful to read, especially as an occasional consultant and freelancer.

Honestly, alarm bells started going off in my head once they mentioned the retainers and "larger clients".

Having worked at a consulting agency like this (except focused on the ecommerce side of things): 80% of that firm's cashflow is more than likely entirely budgeted by 1-5 very large clients. They charge these clients an arm and a leg for everything. And these clients get 100% of their attention because if they don't, and the client leaves, say goodbye to the agency.

You were little fish in a big pond.

And it sounds like things were really terribly run there. The project manager quitting is a dead ringer. Sounds like a CEO making promises that the team under him struggles with keeping.

You're right about going with the individual freelancer. Start with one. Designer, developer, project manager doesn't matter. When the others are needed, ask if the designer/developer/manager recommends anyone. Us independent folks network with each other and we always know someone who is quality that we've worked with before.

What crazy price and work!

In my team we do UX/UI Design in Figma, then we code pixel perfect the design in a modern programming language and at the end we implement a Headless CMS so you can manage your website.

All that for 5,000 usd.

This is why hourly billing is nuts. Also their retainer agreement is still nuts because it's selling hours.

The funny part is, they'd make way more if they switched to value based pricing.

This isn't your fault at all, the initial sales call should have made it clear it wouldn't be a fit. It would have been a service to you to recommend someone else.

Thanks for sharing, sorry it didn't work out, super frustrating.

I am stunned not only by the cost but the quality of the site. It looks mediocre for the amount of money you paid. Put it this way I won't be happy if I charged $2k for this.

They made you this site in 7 months for $46k!!!

With all the hours spent in meetings, bug reports, reviews - you could have done it yourself in less than 4 weeks perhaps.

Now it bugs me, why are we charging so less! 🤔 We delivered a game to a business with their branding, and their requested changes in like 10 days and charged ~$1,700.

I wonder, if its bluffing that always works! I would think twice if WebAgency constantly kept telling they have larger clients and my project was never a priority.

This sucks!! Prayers with your conversion rate being better Michael!

I am quite inexperienced with this but the question that comes in mind is: isn't there a liability in terms of warranty or so when it comes to big and expensive projects as this?

Just reading this half way through froze my heart a bit.

Damn! That sounds like a nightmare! At least the business kept making money every month, and there is a chance to get the investment back. At least money wise, but the time that it took is really sickening.

You should have named them. So more people don't get scammed the way you did.

Oof, that sounds like a horror story! Thanks for sharing so that others can learn from it. Sounds like you did a lot to learn from the experience too with the post-mortem.

And glad to hear that you’re seeing higher sales with the new design, as a silver lining.

Holy cow. Really shocking read, I'm sorry you had to deal with that. I am surprised you're not choosing to name and shame here, but I can perhaps see the viewpoint of asking what benefit that would have for you at this point.

Hi Michael,
Thanks for sharing this cautionary tale, I could only imagine how disappoint it was to spent this much and not getting the results you wanted.
BTW, just wanted to say KUDOS to you, I instantly recognized your product box from a YT Jeff Gerling video I watched last year... :)
Keep up the good work!

You need some planning and set some expectation. For example, if profit > investment, then it makes sense. You can make up your own reasonings. But do have that planning mindset, will help you far more down the road.

Consider this $46k a cheap lesson to life :)

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O really ? you spend 46k on this webiste redesign , you could do a lot much with this money , better seo , digital marketing and content

who spends $46k for 3 pages? that's the dumbest thing to do. funny part is you are dev yourself 😂

could've just hired a top freelancer from upwork who works with webflow. that could've done it in <$3k range.

Yikes! That's a hefty price tag. Have you looked into services like https://trycatalog.com/ before?

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