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Sorry to hear that you have gone through a lot of uphill battles with this. Without knowing/hearing the side of your designers, I`m going to play Devil`s Advocate here; not to be negative, just to hear what they`ve told you, and shed some outside opinions.

First, did you have a contract or guarantee with a finished by date? If not, you can`t go off on them for taking too long. If you did have it in writing, then they need to have legitimate reasons for the delay, and if it has happened multiple times, then maybe you should demand a partial refund of what you`ve paid, or on the remainder. Also, did you cover browser compatability and what SEO methods would be implemented?

There should be no reason why they can`t provide ftp information when requested since you own the server space ( if that`s the case ); however, they do have a valid point of not being responsible if another party accesses the account and creates problems with the site or programming. And if you do stop working with them, can you line up another designer to take over and finish any sooner, and with the results that you want?

For design and layout, remember that they are not mind readers; no matter how much you describe what you want, or envision it yourself, they can only get so close. Sometimes the concept is clear to you, but someone else isn`t going to see it the same way. This is when you have to be precise and overly descriptive of what you want, if you have an exact concept you want done. If something isn`t right in your eyes, tell them exactly what you want and how you want it. If you suggest something and they don`t follow your suggestion, then ask for a clear reason why it can`t/won`t be implemented.

There are always going to be corrections during the process, sometimes more often on some sites than others, so this isn`t anything new. When you designed your original site, I`m sure you made changes and adjustments along the way also. Not everything goes into the first few drafts.

Again, I`m not defending them, but I can understand both sides of the situation, and just throwing a few things out there to consider.





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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

Hi Kate,
I just want to comment from the other side of the discussion, call it the "keep the goal in mind" maybe. :-D

The site you now have is exponentially better than anything else we`ve seen! The videos are a brilliant touch, and bring out what I was thinking the first time I saw your invention.

Okay, so it`s sort of mixed poorly, the lighting is fair, and blah blah blah, but y`know what? Go back, through YouTube, and look at videos of entertainers. Choose comedians, musicians, ventriloquists, or what have you, and you`ll see a Very Important Thing: The essence of what they are comes through!

Their first videos, first appearance on Johnny Carson, or early shows, ALL look ridiculous! They`re so young their ears stick out, or their hair looks like a snowcone, or something else. It`s not polished, it`s not slick, but at that time, it was they best they could do.

Then look 10 years ahead and see the difference. :-D Imagine what you`ll be able to do in those years, with backing capital, sales volume, and interest from related businesses. But just like those early videos of entertainers, your main idea comes through loud and clear. That`s the goal to keep in mind!

So too, with this site, the essence of your idea shines! This is what`ll start the ball rolling, I think. It gets across the "cool factor," of how to use these strips and pieces to totally change how we make cakes. :-)

The only thing I got a bit confused on was the flavoring of the strips. I`d thought that if they`re clay, they would be more like a form, so I don`t quite get the flavor, but that`s like....a nothing worry. What matters is that I got engrossed in the videos (I cook and bake a lot, so maybe not yer normal guy thing). :-D

Keep your eye on the goal, which is to sell product and become visible. You want to reach your audience of parents who like to do baking things for kids, and you`re now doing it WAY better than before!

In other words, don`t let yourself sink into the frustration, worrying that "in addition" to the technical problems with the site, your product isn`t getting the right attention. It is! Technical problems can be fixed! It`s when you don`t have a product and try to gloss over that problem with technology, that there are huge problems.

Take a breath, calm down, look at the above suggestions, but don`t shoot yourself. :-D The core stuff is here, now, and the rest is all details. It`s a fascinating invention, and all that you`ll need now is a bit of content, and to make sure the shopping cart and payment transaction system works right.

This might not be the feedback you`re looking for Kate, but $1600 for an original designed, search-engine optimized, standards-compliant ecommerce site seems way cheap to me. This is just speculation on my part, obviously I don`t have all the details, but I`m guessing the company thought some minor modifications to one of their in-house templates would serve your purposes just fine and quoted you the job based on that. Since that has turned out not to be the case they have to scramble to redo it for you, which would account for the mistakes, the time lag, and (I`m assuming) no design mock-ups for you to approve before they started the build. I imagine the web design company is losing its shirt on your project at this point.

A designer worth his or her salt will hammer out the design with you before building the actual site. With my own clients that typically means I send them PDFs of what the finished site will potentially look like, and we usually go back and forth a couple of times to get the details right. Personally, I don`t start a build until I have signed approval on the design and site architecture. If the client wants to change the design after giving approval that`s fine, but I can`t do it for free.

Having said all that, the site you`re getting for only $1600 is not that bad. I`ve certainly seen far worse, and ultimately, what`s going to matter most at this stage is the search engine optimization, your marketing strategies, and whether the site will process credit cards properly. Make sure those things are in place and then down the line, when the site is making money for you, at that point you can hire a designer with the skills to deliver an original, from-scratch, professional website design.

—paula

Which web site do you need access to?  You own ShapeaCakeClay.com and Numatek owns  numatekdemo.com.  I would not expect them to give you FTP access to their web server.

Don`t even think about SEO yet, get control of the look and feel of the site first.

Site speed isn`t affected by being in a sub-directory on the server.  How many other web sites is the server handling and what size "pipe" is connecting the server to the Internet?  Large images can also slow the downloads.

I`ll save the critique of your videos for a later time.  The "Number 1" video *did* make the whole concept clear.  Now if you can translate that to your home page, I think you may have a winner here.

Re-read Craig`s post.

Steve






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Steve Mann
Internet Videographer
MannMade Digital Video
My Email

I will point out that it`s never too early to get some professional direction regarding search engine optimization and marketing - creating and managing good copy and website seo factors takes a while both to calibrate and "sink in" (to the search indexes).  Getting your message out and about from a social media perspective (for example in Yahoo Answers, Squidoo or your email list) also takes time, especially to build an interactive and contributory "following" (i.e. your fans!). Plus, as the site launches and goes live, there are going to be 10-20 items you`ll need to do/fix immediately from an SEO perspective, to avoid unnecessary delay or penalty in the search rankings - for example, the site under the current designer should be "no-index" right now, so the content doesn`t dilute whatever page ranking that`s already developing (it may show "0" now, but there`s probably some residual "juice" already developing, especially from conversations like this in SN).