Big mistake
Posted in Web strategy on: Monday, June 15, 2009 by Paul Boag
Every web design agency screws up from time to time? We’ll tell you our screw ups, if you tell us yours!
I recently received this email from Dinu…
Looking from afar, established agencies like yours seem to be almost perfect. However, I’m sure you’ve had to deal with missed deadlines, over-booking, etc. I would like to hear about some of these #fail stories (just to get a “you are not alone” feeling for the rest of us), and also to know how you managed to overcome these common pitfalls.
Its a great question and one that few in the industry discuss. After all who wants to admit their failures. To be honest, I am just as interested as you to hear how other web design agencies screw up! As a result, I am going to keep this post short. What I want to do instead is open it up to general discussion in the comments – What have your big mistakes been? Please share, I am dying to know.
That said, it would be rude to ask for your failures without revealing my own! Here are my top 5 (there could have been many more!)
1. Not nurturing our biggest client
We nearly lost our biggest client once. Our work was good. We delivered on time. We kept our pricing realistic and fair. However, we nearly lost the client because we started to take them for granted.
When we first started working with them, we were hungry and enthusiastic. We would be proactive and suggested loads of ideas. Overtime however, we got stuck in a rut of delivering whatever they asked. We stopped innovating and suggesting alternatives.
Fortunately we had a good enough relationship with the client that they didn’t drop us immediately. Instead they told us they wanted the “magic back” and so we worked hard to repair the relationship.
We discovered that a good agency has to do a lot more than deliver. They have to be proactive, enthusiastic and work hard to provide the best customer service over the long term.
2. Ignoring culture when recruiting
We made a major mistake recruiting a developer. His qualifications were good and on paper he looked great. He even interviewed well. However, when we got him on board it quickly became apparent we had made a terrible mistake.
His previous job was working in the public sector and he could not adjust to the culture of an agency. The speed and variety of work overwhelmed him and the cultural shift proved too much.
This wasn’t his fault. It was ours. We should have spotted the problem before we offered him the job.
3. Not challenging clients
In the early days of the company we were so desperate to please clients that we basically did whatever they asked. I remember one client in particular who turned into a micro-manager, picking over every aspect of the design. We would dutifully make a change only to have him decide he didn’t like it, and get us to change it back. Unfortunately once the relationship had been established it was very hard to change, and we were a doormat to this particular client for a long time.
Things have moved on and we now view our relationship with our clients as collaborative. We work together to produce a great website. Part of providing a good service is a willingness to challenge bad decisions and provide our design expertise. We used to be nothing more than pixel pushers, and clients were paying for a better service than that.
4. Allow scope creep
This is a mistake we didn’t just make once, but rather again and again. In fact we still occasionally do this now, although we have become much better.
Because of our desire to please clients, we would allow them to add new features late into the development cycle. However, ultimately we were doing our clients a disservice. Scope creep leads to additional expense and slipped deadlines. It also adds complexity, which can often damage the user experience.
Features added late in the development cycle are often less considered and rushed in their implementation. Ultimately this can lead to a second rate product.
Today we encourage our clients to phase development and so move new suggestions into an upcoming phase.
5. Under pricing project
We still do this! However, the reason we do it now is at least different to the early days. If we under price now it is because we have made a miscalculation over the time a project will take. In the early days we would under price because we were desperate for the work.
However, as with scope creep, under pricing can lead to cutting corners. It is easy to fall into the trap of taking shortcuts to keep the project profitable and ultimately that costs the client. Also, it is hard to ever pull back from low pricing. Once a client has been given a low price they will expect the same for future projects.
Under price at your peril!
So, what about you? What are the biggest mistakes you make running your web design business? Let us know in the comments.
28 Comments
Comments are for the discussion of this post. If you have other questions / comments then post them to the forum or send me an email
My biggest mistake was running an UPDATE query on a live database and forgetting the WHERE clause. Needless to say it wasn’t a good day. Owned up to it straight away and got on with collating all the paper records to redo it all.
Makes you feel pretty small, but I check EVERY query now!
I would agree with under pricing. That seems to be my biggest mistake. That, and waiting several weeks to quote a project. The quote is the easiest part, especially when you’ve quoted that type of project dozens of times!
Ive done this a couple of times and its so god damn annoying. Flattening a psd file and then saving it by mistake without saving a copy.
A reason for why you shouldn’t rush work!
OOOO… Done that SO much times, but then I remember the days when Photoshop didn’t have layers lol
Infact, the most annoying part of flattening a psd file, is when you don’t know you’ve done it. You then get asked by your client to change something a few months later. You think its going to be a 5 minute job… and of course it isn’t! raaaar!
I started using photoshop when version 5 was out. I can’t imagine what it would be like without the layers palette! Hard work I imagine!
Thank Adobe for History functionality! I too remember Photoshop pre-layers. It gets cumbersome, but force of habit from the old days means that I still try to create copies in advance of significant changes. That way you can always retrieve at least some work in the case of accidental flattening/saving. Makes for more work when it comes to archiving though!
I find the time I’m most likely to flatten a PSD file is to use all or part of the finished design as a base for something else. To avoid having to flatten it at all, simply include one PSD in another as a Smart Object. This way you can transform the whole thing as if it were a simple raster layer.
There’s probably a better way of doing this but just select all the layers and folders in the source image, right click and choose duplicate. Then duplicate them into a new image. Once you have your new file, right click all the layers and choose ‘create smart object’. That’s it! All your layers in one layer, fully transformable.
You can even edit the contents of the Smart Object later on, if you need to.
All of my work files I save in Dropbox, the reasons for this are many. Two of the best ones though are obviously the backup but the main one is the revisions. This way I can revert back to an older version if need be :)
I seriously recommend it!
There is also a plugin (with a free option) call Pixelnovel Timeline (ref: http://pixelnovel.com/timeline ) where it backs up online revisions of your work. This tapped in with Eversave ( http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/29454 ) and you are probably the most careful or paranoid designer in history (just like me :P) Well to be like me you would have to have various backup utilities, backing up your dropbox folder too :P
Source control! Source control! Source control!
Subversion is free. Tortoise makes it easy. Source control is not just for developers =)
1. Telling clients, “It’s OK, I can design around the content holes.” even though I know not having all the content will delay the project about a month.
2. Undercharging clients when I should be charging them a lot more.
3. Taking on jobs with clients where every five seconds they throw up a red flag and I know I should run away as fast as I can. Usually this is a money issue.
It is a terrible habit of mine that I do too many concepts. I get to brainstorming, and for some reason, I feel compelled to show way too many concepts to clients. I need to learn to cut it off at one, or two, or maybe, possibly three (if the budget is there).
This became apparent about a year ago when I literally sent the client about 20 concepts for a logo. These were divided along 3-4 lines of thinking, but still, I should have made my recommendation stronger from the start.
I also waste a lot of time “finishing” concepts, whether they are for layout or logos or whatever. Clients get used to that, and then get angry when everything isn’t super polished.
Thanks for sharing Paul. I’m sorry to say that I’m pretty familiar with every mistake in your top 5. I guess the biggest mistake I made in the past 12 months was underestimating the value of contact with the key stakeholder on a web project. I assumed that it was sufficient to liaise with our main point of contact but soon found that 50 (time consuming) design iterations later and we were no closer to getting sign off as the company director hadn’t seen a single design! Needless to say we called an emergency meeting to remedy the situation but it was hard to bounce back from all that profit-absorbing and ultimately unnecessary work.
Under pricing…I do it time and time again. And every time I say to myself, “Never again am I going to work this hard for such little pay.”
I just recently finished a project that took over 3x the time I quoted for. I was gutted, especially as it meant I was slogging away the night before I was supposed to go on holiday. What’s the etiquette in that situation? I can’t just increase the invoice can I, as it was me who underquoted, right?
I had a potential client text message me about a web dev job. I forgot to write down the client’s contact information and later deleted all text messages. Thankfully I was able to look on the bill and figure out their number (against about 3000 other texts.)
The worst mistake I’ve made (and it only needed to happen once) was not making sure the phone call was disconnected before discussing the project with my partner. We hung up the phone, but the speaker was still on (the system had no light for the speaker) so we didn’t know it was still connected. While we didn’t say anything damaging about the client, the project was taking a micro-managed path and we were frustrated, so the conversation could have easily gone in a bad direction. Needless to say we now cradle and lift the receiver at least 5 times to endure the line is disconnected.
Our biggest mistake was not planning for growth. For the first year we were so keen to take on business and break even, that when things finally started to go our way, we didn’t trust it & were too slow to invest. It took months to put the billing system in place which should have been there from day one and to find good contractors. In the meantime, customer work was delayed and we were lucky our key clients stayed with us. The stress really got to us and could have been entirely avoided.
Oh dear, #2 now has me very worried! I currently work for a public sector org. I’ve worked in a studio before and the lousy workflows and lack of clear objectives now drive me nuts!
Job app after job app is ignored… I keep telling myself that it isn’t because I work in the public sector at the moment, but maybe it is! AAAAAGH! How can I shed myself of this horrible stigma?? I don’t want to be trapped here forever! HELP!!
“Favors!”
I am at the point in my business where I am weaning away from doing work for friends, and friends of friends and into actual leads and referrals. But I still have 1 or 2 ‘favor’ clients who are family friends or long time supporters, who pay late and little, and take up so much time that I could be spending on my good clients.
I need to learn to say NO!
I agree. My constant mistake is taking on too much to generate more cash flow.
I find web development is a pain as you only get finaly settlement of a contract after sign-off, and most contracts are complex and lengthy which doesn’t help the short term cash flow.
This is something I’m attempting to solve with my web hosting services and other project of my own I’m developing.
Matt
Well I have a few, biggest though was taking on a job to host, customise and support a Magento install.
Seems simple enough now, but then I was in the middle of deploying a new server for that client and others, had no idea how to use Magento, and agreed to a silly deadline and low fee considering where I was with Magento and the work I had to do.
Needless to say I lost the client 1 week away from having it fully complete, even though I demo’ed the service working, just not fully customised. Still the client was difficult to work with and is an arse any way, but it was my fault.
I was the second web development company he had dealt with regarding his site, which doesn’t say much about him as a client, that and the site still isn’t running.
Things I learnt, 1. Don’t take on a contract whilst deploying a new server, 2. Don’t work with Magento again.
Matt
My biggest fail was putting all of my eggs in one client basket. Out of the blue, we landed a HUGE client overseas, and immediately focused on them and only them – no more business development, leads, etc. and let our other clients go on the back burner. WOW was that a big mistake. The huge client dumped us and broke the contract 1/2 way through a really really big project and took off with the designs we had already shown them. Of course, then we were in the dog house with the other clients we had ignored. Man – that took a couple of years to really get over. NEVER again. But hey, sure did learn a lot from that one – now EVERY client is “big”.
Spending hours writing up a quote only to find the company wasn’t willing to give the work to someone in Australia. They hadn’t realised I was in a different country when they invited me to apply, and I didn’t know that they didn’t know. These days I point it out straight away and call them for a chat on Skype so they understand we can still communicate across borders!
Taking on too many projects at the same time is one I still struggle with, and the “favour” jobs that end up sucking up so much time, with very little pay-off, and under-charging is always a big one!
Mine is what most people fall into – Underpricing.
As I type this up I am finishing off a project which I underpriced dramatically. The worst I have ever done. It is a return client (whom I charged normally last time) and for some reason I have ended up doing a massive job over a few weeks now with what feels like a million revisions on three different items for only £200. It’s shocking. I have an awful month and I just wasn’t on my game. I hate the project now I really do and cannot wait for it to be over.
Worst thing is this is a worldwide company. No wonder they are making profit. :P I commend them on their business skills though lol
Underpricing seems a really common mistake (we’ve made it too). I wonder how much of this is brief creep (clients adding stuff or making lots of revisions), and how much is that we don’t want to do a half-arsed job?
Regarding flattening Photoshop files, not directly related but I can remember using Photoshop 5 and that version had layers. When was the layers palette introduced into Photoshop?