Please tell me how so many people (million in fact) have web sites. My experience with putting up a web site has been truly awful. I hope I don’t offend my web designers because it’s not really their fault but when you hire someone to put up a web site for you, you don’t think that you’ll be doing most of the work, right? Ok, I come with a little bit of a chip on my shoulder so I’m sure I’m exaggerating because I know that they to in fact have a tone to due. Last year I hired a company out of California (first mistake) to build a website for my new jewelry business. They came highly recommended by my dear friend who I consider very computer/web literate. He told me they were great and he himself was thinking about using them. That was enough of an endorsement for me to jump. I paid my money on line and this company really was great. They sent me pages and pages of reference material, tutorials, examples, training sessions… on and on. They assigned me a “web designer” and we set up a conference call to discuss my project. I wanted a fully operational site that allowed for a shopping cart. Seemed easy enough, I certainly have seen hundreds, know there are thousands and personally have purchased from more then I’ll ever tell my husband. I was a bit apprehensive with the first call as I didn’t know anything about building a site. However, I consider myself a people person and I can talk to the best of them. Well, my web designer was Jenny and I didn’t ask but I’m sure she was 22 and right out of some great school like Berkley. I’m sure she graduated Suma Cum Laude with a degree in Computer Engineering and this was her first real job. After an hour on the phone I hung up and my head was spinning. The whole conversation was essentially in Japanese. I didn’t get any of it. Sweet Jenny threw acronyms throughout our conversation like it was candy and talked to me about things I didn’t even know how to respond to. The worst part is that every time I asked Jenny to explain, back up, give examples I felt like I was 10 and I was asking my sister if I could borrow that new sweater she just got. “Duh” no! Nothing like feeling like your stupid at the age of 40 from a 22yr old. So, this is how it went for 1yr (I’m not kidding, 1yr). Every month I paid the hosting fee and other fees and we made some progress but the truth is Jenny really never got it. I hired their company so they would build the site for me. I just wanted to have some veto in the art direction and be invited to the kickoff party. That’s why I paid all that money! Right?
Well, to make a long story long I met my current marketing company Freckelfoot Creative (small plug) and Faith really seemed to get my pain. Not only was she local but she understood what I didn’t, which in this case was most of it. She felt like we could build a site and it would tie to my branding we were working so hard to bring together. So, I made a decision to dump dear Jenny and hire Faith and start from scratch. I hope someday I’ll look back on this as a rookie mistake. One of the many new business mistakes you make when starting out. Chalk it up to inexperience and move on. Well, Faith and her team have been great and the new site will be up for the New York show (Keep your fingers crossed). www.laurensigmanjewelry.com has still been a tone of work!! Hours and hours in fact of collaboration, content writing, items, pictures, descriptions……UGGGGG. I’m not sorry I jumped ship, I know that this was right decision for me and my company and the pain has been a growing experience. If however you plan to put up a site and you’re also not an HTML groupie I’m thinking of starting a support group. Let me know if you’re interested. You’ll need it.
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