Client Review on ambitious web services

Feedback:

Unfortunately, our experience was not a good one. If I had it to do all over again I wouldn't go with these guys but anyone I do go with in the future I would do a few things differently. First, I would have a set scheduled completion date. These guys yanked me around for 6 months and I got so fed up I just dropped the whole thing but not before I spent about $2,000. They had an hourly rate instead of a fixed rate for the website. That meant they could drag their feet all the while my business needs this website. Second thing I would have done differently, I would have asked to see the backend of the website editing system to make sure they were actually using an editing system that was user friendly. I took their word for it when they said it was a great backend editor that was easy to use. Turns out it wasn't. It was awful. Also, they use an archaic editing system not known for making wonderful websites. They really need to update their web development to at least to the 21st Century. Something like Joomla or Wordpress would be a better idea than their Microsoft Publisher. It's like going to Wal-mart instead of Saks Fifth Avenue...but your paying Saks prices for Wal-Mart quality. Third, I would pick a web developer who builds sites on a format that I can easily take and run on my own server. They lock you into a contract that forces you to stay with them and their horrible customer service forever and ever at $30 a month. If you have someone build a site on a server like hostgator that you can manage yourself, then you save yourself the headache of having to wait for someone else to make changes to your website, at their snails pace. On your own server you can also manage your e-mail accounts. The customer service was not good. We called the owner after what we thought would take 2 months max to complete the site, turned into 4 months, then 6 months, but she didn't call us back. Instead we got these half-hearted e-mails defending her employees and what she thought we were saying. If she had just picked up the phone and talked with us we may not have felt compelled to leave this review. We couldn't come to an agreement and in fact it felt like she saw us as the enemy. We are reasonable people - customers are not the enemy. Last but not least, I just wasn't happy with the designs they produced. In their portfolio they have some good looking sites but what they produced for us just was not quality work. By the time they finally produced something we were so tired and wanted to just get the darn thing up that we didn't make revisions to the design. I thought "for crying out loud lets just get it together and edit the design later". I guess thats not how it works. Since they work by the hour I didn't want to spend anymore money for something that wasn’t even launched yet. They had already spent a lot of time (and consequently my money) creating something I just hated. I just couldn't imagine spending $30 a month for a site I hate and that I can't easily edit without it crashing. Plus, we were spending $100 for SEO with this company that was really a waste of time and money. All we got was an auto generated e-mail with key word search terms that we could have found on our own. We even changed our website password and they never even noticed. My guess was they didn’t actually do anything on our site to help us. We learned more from listening to a podcast on SEO then we did from this company. I hope this helps others. I hate that it has come to this. But this isn't the first time this company has heard this. I have tried to tell Marilyn, the owner, all of this a few different times but she didn't listen to me. So my last resort is to let the world know my experience. Maybe you will listen to me and learn from my mistakes.