Here is a story that covers a few years of a website’s life, it covers a website owner that was ‘persuaded to move to another website design company as they offered a cheap website design and cheap website hosting option. The result of this is that they now have a cheap and nasty website that has functionality removed and the loading time and performance of the website is terrible / very below what is required. The company owner was talked into moving to a new website design company by their admin staff that were challenging in their outlook / requests and expectations on how work should be conducted on a live website.
Look at the website Stats report that demonstrate the loss of website visitors after the first years they moved away and then look at the website loading / performance speed report that shows the very poor loading times achieved by the new budget website design company after they eventually redesigned their website. The moral of this story is that your website is a precious / crucial business asset and giving it to amateurs that you are attracted to as they quoted less for a website redesign will cost you more than you expect.
Please take a look at these Before (Top) and After (Bottom) Website Performance Scores (Page Size / Loading Speeds) that show the really terrible page load times that the new website designers gave the website once they redesigned it on their budget hosting, shared server.
This is separate to the scores shown below once they moved it to their budget hosting that shows just how terrible their hosting and website design techniques are.
[Website Designers] (In response to website updates) These are very specific / individual queries and not sure we would have discussed them at the meeting but if you think it will help we can re-schedule something, what you are asking is not straight forward and actually has got us scratching our heads here but pretty sure we can come to a solution, will email regarding the query after this one
[Website Owner] This was the whole point of meeting to overcome these problems in one day. Now we’ve spent yet more time not understanding or talking to each other.
[Website Designers] Hi, we have decided to spend a couple of weeks in the new year visiting clients at their premises (or ours) to catch up on all aspects of what we have done, are doing and could do together going forward, as you suggested a meeting previously and as the amount of work we have done together already would you like to be one of the first? We have allocated any time in January as visiting times, are these dates convenient?
I would suggest the meetings could initially review all the work we have done on all the websites then focus on the website(s) as they are now / website improvements and website promotion (SEO). I would like to also discuss the PPC program you are doing and to find out a little more about that.
[Website Designers] Spoke with your admin team leader earlier today and was confused and professionally disappointed / upset by her request to move to another digital agency. This seems illogical and a strange business request on the back of the amazing success of the website we have created for you
I would welcome a chat with you to discuss if we can persuade you to change your mind here, especially as I believe the root cause is the confusion about a meeting that we believe we declined as it wasn’t required or a good use of our time, we simply informed you it wasn’t a good use of time as your requests were all easier to handle via email / phone. Clearly if I had understood the exact reason for the meeting I would have been more willing to spend time with you. I will also, if needed point out the downsides of moving away that you are possibly not aware of.
Ironically as you can see we were hoping to arrange a meeting with you in the new year to discuss anything you want.
Hopefully you can see this from our perspective, we are massively busy with hundreds of clients and spending a half day travelling and at a meeting discussing minor websites updates wouldn’t have been a good use of our time as these are better discussed via email normally. Saying that going forward we will be suggesting regular face to face meetings with clients if required.
I believe if you look at exactly what we have achieved / created with you, from the selection of your business name right up to today when we can measure the 1250 email inquiries that the website has generated, it puts a different perspective on things.
I would go as far as to say we haven’t many clients that have so many websites with so many support requests / updates and so much bespoke development work. This business relationship needs to be valued in my opinion and welcome your thoughts here.
If the decision to move is set in stone then we will obviously accept that and be happy to discuss the process of moving away, we have had so few businesses move away from us it’s not an everyday occurrence and like everything is more complicated than you probably expect, happy to discuss if needed.
[Website Owner] I have spoken with our admin ladies about this in length several times, as I was aware of the positives you have bought to the table already, and appreciate these. It’s not something I get involved with on the day to day running of the business as I don’t have time. As previously explained, I had several negative issues from the ladies. (if you require particulars feel free to ask them) It was at that point I suggested a meeting to try and resolve as I didn’t want to particularly change. As you are aware this didn’t happen. After this I had no choice but to back my staffs request.
They have since had meetings with another website design company and have agreed to their services. I will not go against my staffs requests after I have given them the green light to proceed as any further issues will constantly fall at my feet to sort out.
I understand your disappointment but the decision is made I am afraid, we will probably live to regret this decision and hope we can return back to you if required, if we hadn’t already paid the deposit I believe we would have decided to stay with you from the amount of work you have done for us which I have been made aware of since your email.
If you wish for anymore clarification your best to speak to either our our admin team as they ultimately are responsible for the running of the website and are better suited at answering your questions.
[Website Owner] I would like to know if there is anything we can do to make you change your decision to move away from ourselves as it seems illogical considering the amount of websites / projects / success that has been achieved, since we decided on your company / website name together only a few short years ago.
Would still welcome a meeting / phone chat with you as there is a lot to consider here, it appears ironic that your staff seem not 100% happy with our work / service as on review of our work / emails, that we had to do to create the invoice, it is apparent we have gone above and beyond every time something has been asked of us and have spent hundreds of hours on your websites / projects over the last few years and have been on a big journey with yourself involving hundreds (we have over 1000 emails) of communications over multiple websites and projects within those websites.
If you could see the situation from a technical / development point of view perhaps you would see it differently? The ‘disapointment’ from a member of your admin team, due to being told something they request is not cost-effective or logical, shouldn’t be used as a reason to move to a new website design company, we believe this is a mistake due to the amazing progress we have made on your behalf, your website was created by ourselves, ranks very well for its core services and has brought you in hundreds of enquiries so far.
Regardless of that to bring us up to date here are the outstanding invoices for the work / projects on the 3 domains / websites.
Once settled and if your decision is set in stone and you don’t want to talk to us about the decision to move away (as I really think you have not been informed fully or have full knowledge of the ‘communication issues’ you put at the root of this problem) we will commence the domain / account closing procedures which I intended to talk to you about but haven’t been able to talk to you on the phone as you are away.
Overview of work completed:
Communication / Work:
Increase mailbox allowance to 2GB
Email problem addressed
Change Format for inquiry forms on the local places pages
Button Text Change – Formatting
Update to text for Quote Estimator Button – formatting
Adding Editor WordPress Account / Adding Google Analytics Account Access
Wordpress Access account created / granted
Google Search Console Access created / granted
Mobile Optimised Landing Page communication
Quote Process Work / Emails
Email account alerts – size warnings
New email account – Marketing created / setup / details provided
General Outlook setup help and advice
Updating site links / Buttons
New page Areas in Essex created / uploaded / indexed in Google
Multiple Updates / Changes (faqs / services pages / quote page)
Icons Updated as missed on Spreadsheet
Text box hover queries
Website Load times / performance updates
Tracking Codes for Hotjar added
Website Load times / performance updates completed
More Website Load times / performance updates completed
Google My Business Listing Owner Updates / Login Details
Email account support
Website Updates (navigation / Gallery page update / Website Speed)
Partners pages created / updated / optimised – added to footer of all pages
Responsive Optimisation / Mobile site queries
updates to website pages / Adding Instagram social media account
Gallery update support
Meeting / website review
Noticed the faqs had been edited and corrupted by yourself, we corrected this
Added SEO element h1 title to your new pages
Updates to Home and services responsive pages
New Contact form for quote calculator with tracking and Google Analytics Goals setup
New Contact form for send us a message with tracking codes
Google Analytics access for filter view / Creating a Filtered view
PHP7 update to website / Internal Upgrade to website
Meeting Agenda Discussions
2nd Website follow up
Various Updates to Responsive Homepage layout
Updates to Request a quote tab – Coding for thank you pages (tracking codes)
Website page Margin updates / concerns / review and updates
Analytics tracking queries / updates
Responsive heading updates / load speed updates
Quote page load speed query / fix
Query about heading and analytics tracking / Load speed investigation (9 emails)
Updates for load speed / performance updates / mobile page update
Instructions to continue the improvement speed / performance work
Advised you about an incorrectly formatted email address
Tracking Codes – updates from SEO Company problems resolved
Update requests to various website pages – update requests for mobile page
Updates completed – Navigation menu / phone number / services page
Google Analytics code problem due to theme updates / hotjar code – fixed
Tracking code enquiries
Confirmation that website had updates and that tracking codes all in place
Customer email enquiries / tweaks
Tracking codes for Facebook request
Black Friday – banner update / call to action button / Facebook Pixel install
Remove Black Friday banner
Request for Meetings
Request for transfer of ownership for Search Console / Google My Business / Analytics
Could you tell us if you have had the opportunity to consider the email below? As we haven’t received a reply yet. Happy to get a reply via email or to have a chat on the phone.
I have re-read it myself and I really hope we can work something out, on reflection the website and business relationship has evolved / matured and is now a great success and with our website design / development and SEO it has become a success in terms of visitor numbers / enquiries.
On the back of the phone call from your admin team and after reviewing our full account with you there are some outstanding invoices that we would like settled and will forward those shortly also.
[Website Owner] Please would you send me through any outstanding invoices. I shall pay them
as soon as possible as we need to get the ball rolling. I await your reply with the invoices
[Website Designers] Appreciate you taking the time to reply, although I find it believable
that there has been some negatives there has been 750 emails between us covering 4 websites / redesigns and mini-projects and what we have done and achieved has been impressive in our opinion. It’s not in our nature to be negative about the instruction we have been given and believe we have done very well given our instructions / directions.
We rarely have clients leave and in the 10 years we have been operating one that left quickly returned so will leave the door open to yourselves, especially as we know and built your most specialist sections on your websites via bespoke programming, will be able to help / support that much easier / quicker than any other development company. This is one of the very many negative aspects of moving away but as the decision is made to move to a new website designer I will not labourI will not go on.
Once the outstanding invoices are settled we will confirm what you want and proceed to arrange your transition to a new website design company / host. We will assume you want the full transfer of domains / hosting / code / email of the your domains / websites.
