Curvine Web Solutions Blog

In the course of our business, we come across people who are ask us to salvage a project that went “off the rails” with another Web site developer.  Each of these projects teaches a lesson (to us, the business, and even the original Web site developer). We recently contacted some business owners to have them contribute some stories and what they learned. Here are some projects that ended poorly, and what we can all can take from them:

Web site Development Story #1: Lori Karmel WeTakeTheCake.com

Story: “I hired an outside company to redesign my company website and design a new shopping cart. The fee was $15,000 paid in three installments. I hired them in May 2008, I was begging them to have me ready to launch by October before entering my busiest season. As it turns out, they outsourced the shopping cart without telling me and did not hire the company UNTIL October when we were suppose to launch.  We were featured in In Style Magazine for one of our products and the issue came out at the end of November but the cart was not functioning properly and the site crashed multiple times a day. The cart was not intuitive and customers were frustrated and abandoned their order. As it turns out the site was not set up with proper keywords and we lost our search engine rankings. We had a number one ranking with Google. We lost $50,000 in sales from our holiday season. ”

Lesson: Get it in writing. “What I have learned is that I should have asked for a list of what I was required to supply. Once I supplied what they asked for, a time line should have been in effect with penalties for not meeting the deadlines, leaving plenty of room for testing it. Also, get it in writing if any part of your site will be outsourced to another company and who will be responsible for their work.”

Web site Development Story #2: Susie Shina www.susieshina.com

Story: I contracted with a company from India whose portfolio looked great.  I’m an rising fitness author/personality with minimal website developing knowledge.  The communication issues were unbelievable…I blame myself for not knowing what I needed/wanted to promote my projects BUT they couldn’t guide me through the process.  Anyhoo – 5 month process, $5000 down the drain – can’t use the site. I hired a us team to try and salvage the project but there were so many errors in the coding that we couldn’t use it.  I could go on and on – ugh – I feel taken advantage of because of my lack of knowledge.

Lesson: Be careful with outsourcing! “I’m much wiser now – I’ve had to study up – which is something I didn’t want to do – leave it to the professionals right?! – I will not outsource to other countries again and now feel guilty that I did it in the first place – serves me right”

Web site Development Story #3: Tom Harnish

Story: “We hired a freelancer to build a site and a shopping cart for us. A stormy genius it turned out. He was a handful to manage. Did great work, but fell in love with  someone in England. Packed up and moved at the worst possible time in the development effort. We subsequently sold the business, but the developer claimed he did the work for us, not the company, and demanded the new owners pay him thousands of dollars for a ‘license’ even though we’d paid him first hourly, and then a salary when he contemplated suicide due to lack of funds. We responded with dozens of emails and company checks that made it clear he’d done the work for the company, but said he had a back door and would bring the system down if the new owners didn’t play ball.  And he didn’t at the worst possible time during the Christmas buying rush.”

Lesson: Get a written contract, and consider working with a team instead of just one person.