Is my web design met trying to take advantage.

[Chimneychap]

Last year I paid a web designer to set up a magento website for me. It wasn't a huge amount of money (around £1k) but I didn't really feel I got a lot of value for money as all he really did was to buy and edit a template. We had to put on all of the product pages and the site is somewhere near now but has really only been helpful as an information site.

I have had sales come through the showroom that have been directed from the site but actual sales on the site itself have been less than five in a year and including the card processing fees the site is costing me better part of £100 per month to keep running.

On a couple of occasions when we were adding content to the site, I was told I needed to pay extra for certain things, such as the ability to be able to display video content and the ability to be able to take card payments directly on the site.

I had maybe stupidly assumed that these would be included in the main building of the site and the £1k fee initially paid.

Last month we were hit by hackers so the site had to be temporarily taken down while passwords and things were changed.

This month the same has happened again so my web guy is now saying that I either have to pay another £500 to have the entire site re-done on a .com address (which we bought last year), or £450 to have the magento site closed down and an identical site made on something like word press which would obviously lose the functionality to be able to take orders direct from the site. This would again involve him doing the background and logos etc and us redoing all of the content pages.

Does this sound reasonable or am I being taken for a ride? I have absolutely no idea when it comes to this sort of thing.

 

[ryedale]

Internet or E-Commerce forum surely ?

Anyway - unfortunately, it does seem as though you're onto a loser with this one. Really sorry to hear you've had a bad experience. Was he a one man band or part of an agency?

Magento is a very powerful system - depending on what your business is of course, there's a possibility it wasn't the right solution for you to start with.

Magento sites done properly also cost substantially more than £1000.

It's complete nonsense to say that putting it on a different address will make any difference to whether you get hacked again or not - that has nothing to do with it - could be anything such as out of date core code, plugins or insecure hosting.

There are lots of other E-Commerce options such as Woo-Commerce that works with Wordpress or Opencart which we use. Each has it's own merits but are generally easier to manage and work with than Magento for people starting out online.

 

[Chimneychap]

Hi rydale.

Yes it's frustrating to say the least.

He is a one man band, and it came to light during some of the problems we experienced that contrary to what he told me, he doesn't appear to know anything about magento.

Every time we asked a question he simply referred us to a YouTube link or in some cases had to pass it over to his "magento expert" in India.

My business is a wood burning stove retail. Most of my business comes through my showroom but I was hoping to be able to generate additional income by making sales on line.

I'm kind of reluctant to spend any more money with him in either direction. He suggested that if it was moved over to the dot.com it would not be possible to be hacked, and obviously if it were an info only site then there would be no incentive for any hackers to attempt to mess with it.

I see you from your sig that this sort of stuff is your industry. Would you be interested in having a look at the site and giving me an idea on costs on a better solution?

 

[ryedale]

Hi

I would certainly recommend not spending any further money with him.. especially given the advice about hacking which is ridiculous. Did you have any sort of contract or project specification with him?

A site can be hacked on any address and hackers are quite happy to target any site regardless of
whether it is E-Commerce or just a brochure site

Happy to take a look - do you want to pm me the address ?

Thanks

 

[Chimneychap]

Thanks ryedale will go to pm now. Any other advice / opinions appreciated.

 

[TLMartin]

If the site is properly hosted and built... Just adding a .com domain is technically just adding a domain alias... It's a 5 min job

I have looked after lots of sites where they've added a second, third, forth domain to view the exact same site... I charge for the domain purchase, but never charge for linking the alias as it is such a quick job

 

[mit74]

I would change developer. You've had some really bad advice.

Yes you need to pay for features that wouldn't be on the site initally eg video uploading. But there are hundreds of plugins around that can be installed in no time at all.

Firstly £1000+ for setting up Magento with a bought skin is a ripoff. For a skilled developer it would take 1 hours max to install magento with a custom skin plus 2-4 hours for setting up a payment processor and store settings/shipping. This leaves around 16-20 hours (depending on his hourly rate) to make the required changes to the skin. I could design you a completely new skin in that time.

Secondly you're paying too much for hosting/payment processing for such a low traffic site. He should have recommended shared hosting or VPS with support and pay as you go processing until the website started paying for itself. This is probably subject to personal opinion but it's what I would have suggested. Having card payments on your site will increase costs considerably.

Thirdly if your site was hacked were the critical security patches installed before turning it back on? He should have cleaned up all the code and redeployed with the patches installed. It shouldn't have been hacked again.

Fourthly redoing the site on a different domain isn't going to make the slightest bit of difference.

And lastly...

"He suggested that if it was moved over to the dot.com it would not be possible to be hacked"

This is absolute crap. This really sets alarm bells ringing.

"and obviously if it were an info only site then there would be no incentive for any hackers to attempt to mess with it."

Again crap. The reason why sites get hacked is mainly for sending out spam, backlinking or using the domain for phising attacks.

Happy to advise further in PM if required.

 

[soundengineeruk]

He is a one man band, and it came to light during some of the problems we experienced that contrary to what he told me, he doesn't appear to know anything about magento.

Every time we asked a question he simply referred us to a YouTube link or in some cases had to pass it over to his "magento expert" in India.

One man bands are good for cost effective to that of larger service; however there is always downsides when using one man bands, especially within IT:

• Keeping up with the industry
• Knowledge and experience
• Providing Support

On face value based on your comments It does sound like your one man band is fleecing and trying to hold you to ransom. I am not see how transferring to .com is going to make it any better or change from magneto to word press. In my experience both of these CMS systems are at risk being hacked rather than deploying preventive measures to avoid further intrusion.

First question I would ask is why your website is being targeted?

 

[ganah-allan]

I second WordPress with WooCommerce plug-in.

 

[Ian J]

One man bands are good for cost effective to that of larger service; however there is always downsides when using one man bands, especially within IT:

• Keeping up with the industry
• Knowledge and experience
• Providing Support

On face value based on your comments It does sound like your one man band is fleecing and trying to hold you to ransom.

I'm no website expert but I would strongly disagree with your assessment of "one man bands" as some of the most helpful and useful members of this forum are one man bands and they are second to none in providing support as well as knowing what they are doing.

Many of the rip off merchants are sizeable outfits and number of employees is no indication whatsoever that they know what they are talking about or will do a good job for you otherwise big companies like Go Daddy would have glowing recommendations instead of the complete opposite

 

[soundengineeruk]

I'm no website expert but I would strongly disagree with your assessment of "one man bands" as some of the most helpful and useful members of this forum are one man bands and they are second to none in providing support as well as knowing what they are doing.

Apologies Ian, I said this in the slighty wrong way; posting at stupid o'clock is never good; what I meant to say "there are downsides sometimes when using on man bands...."

I agree there are people who make a good living flying solo as they deliver high quality work. However in reality I assume we all know of more one man bands that are questionable than the ones we can trust.

What I do outside my normal day job is one man band, but I am upfront with my clients and tell them truth and make no illusion... Majority will wait for things as they like my quality of work.

I have limitations like next one man band, but will not do work on something I know nothing or little about.

There are too many one man bands who deliver poor quality in the IT arena as they take on something a little or nothing about.

Larger business are the side of the coin that bring whole host of other problems & issues.

 

[obscure]

.....I was told I needed to pay extra for certain things, such as the ability to be able to display video content and the ability to be able to take card payments directly on the site.

I had maybe stupidly assumed that these would be included in the main building of the site and the £1k fee initially paid.

1. You should never assume that something will be included in a job unless it is actually detailed in the specifications as part of the contract.

This month the same has happened again so my web guy is now saying that I either have to pay another £500 to have the entire site re-done on a .com address (which we bought last year), or £450 to have the magento site closed down and an identical site made on something like word press which would obviously lose the functionality to be able to take orders direct from the site. This would again involve him doing the background and logos etc and us redoing all of the content pages.

Does this sound reasonable or am I being taken for a ride? I have absolutely no idea when it comes to this sort of thing.

2. This guy clearly doesn't know what he is talking about. Putting the site on a .com address will make zero difference to how hackable it is. It is far more likely that the server is insecurely configured (which is the developers fault). Don't pay this guy any more money. You need to find someone who knows what they are doing.

3. Bad news is that getting a proper e-commerce site set up will cost considerably more than £1,000 (which is why your current site is causing so many problems).

 

[ZeroDouble]

I have had sales come through the showroom that have been directed from the site but actual sales on the site itself have been less than five in a year and including the card processing fees the site is costing me better part of £100 per month to keep running.

Aside from the issues you've had with your developer / designer, before you spend out any more money on the site you really need to address the above, as it's a separate issue.

You're also going to need to come up with a decent budget to promote the site, otherwise you'll just be throwing good money away after bad when you find that the sales still don't materialise.

 

[Paul Norman]

I do have simpathy with the opener poster, as the web designer has failed completely to point out that his budget of £1k is not sufficient for a Magento based site that will meet their requirements. Magento itself is perfectly able to do so, but if someone quotes that little for an ecommerce site that will really deliver, I would immediate want to know how.

Our E commerce retail business spends about £1000 per month on the site, in terms of marketing and promotion. Which is extrememely good value, because it generates around £150k in sales each month.

 

[kulture]

I have moved this to the Ecommerce forum because that best fits the current thread direction.

I agree that the you should not pay the current developer any more money. I suggest that you find a new developer soonest and the very first action for the new developer is to gain control of your site and move it to a secure host.

I agree with the others that Magento is probably overkill for a site such as yours with only a few products. I use Woocommerce on Wordpress and it is much better suited for a less technical person. It is also much easier to maintain and add products.

As for cost. You could get one up for less than £1,000 and run it for much less that £100 a month.

 

[domainguy]

I would suggest whomever you go with next get them to show you some basics of updating your site and your way around the control panel. Most sites will require fairly regular updates and you should be able to do a lot of these yourself. With wordpress it's usually just pressing a button or setting it to auto update.There are also security addons which are quite easy to understand. A decent developer should spend 30minutes showing you the basics or doing a 1 page word doc for you.

 

[woodss]

Doesn't sound like the guy knows what he's talking about sadly, or - equally likely - is assuming you don't know enough to question what he's saying.

Either way it does not sound like a good business relationship so I'd be inclined to tell you to find someone else - there are plenty of us!

 

[makeusvisible]

Form your point of view.... I can appreciate why it might seem you are being taken for a ride. But on face value it doesn't sound to me as through you are.

Adding a payment system to the site does cost money.... both in terms of the merchant who will require a fews, and perhaps a module which you will need to install onto the site...and the the developers time in configuring your merchant account, and installing the module.

In terms of video....it sounds as though your template need modification in order to accommodate a video. This will take time....Magento templates are not as fast to work with as something like Wordpress for example.

Both of the above probably should have been pointed out to you at the beginning.... especially the payment one.... but with all fairness for £1k you are only ever going to get a pretty basic setup/tweaked template.

Generally speaking, if we are designing and coding a Magento site, we charge around £3.5k as a starting point....and then look at what complex functionality is going to be needed alongside the core Magento functionality. Designing and coding Magento is hugely complex and hugely time consuming....even if you are doing it every day.

Don't take offence.... but if you have sought a Magento site for £1k including the cost of a template and your developers time...then you have tried to do it on the cheap. There is always going to be either compromises or additional costs involved. Similarly perhaps your developer has underquoted and feels time required has become slightly beyond what he can call 'good will'.

 

[ryedale]

To be fair though - telling him that by paying a large sum to switch his domain to .com will prevent him from hacked would suggest that this guy is one to avoid...!

 

[bharris]

Yes you are being ripped off. If you have still got the magneto programming or can access it i would stay with it as it is and will provide more than you will ever need. Most add on modules to give you cardpayments, video playing etc are availble totally free. The problem is getting you head around the way magento works. which can take quite a time.
I started using it a couple of years ago for my own sites and i certainly wouldn't downgrade. Recently i moved to a Magento hosting specialist who has been a great help in tweaking the site.
As Magento is free, most modules can be found free you shouldn't have to pay hardly anything to get someone to get your site working correctly. If traffic is low then there are very cheap hosting packages availble. I am not a designer/programmer just someone who gave it a go.
If you decide to quit magento check that the other alternatives can offer grouped products as if (going by your image) you are selling fires etc. then you may have lots of individual items you may sell separately but a customer might want then bundled together (i have been looking at fires lately)
If you want any info on the hosting then PM me and i will let you know who i now use. same if you want any other thoughts. Just seems a shame to get ride of a Rolls Royce and opt of a corsa because you have had a bad experience.

 

[kulture]

I would have to disagree with keeping Magento. It is a great cart, but a sledgehammer. It is much more expensive to host and much more expensive to manage. For a small site with a few hundred products and a inexperienced owner, there are much better alternatives.

 

[bharris]

You can get shared Magento hosting for about £15 per month. Obviously i don't know what the op sells other than personally looking at other fire/chimney installation sites and they have a mass of products a lot of which are interlinked and availble as packages. If the OP offers this or intends to offer similar then he might need the power of Magento. As for the management system its very simple for day to day running, you just need someone to show you how to do it. Oddly i struggle with wordpress more than Magneto, its just what your used too.

 

[justinaldridge]

I only tend to recommend Magento for big sites. For a novice it's far from easy.

Although I don't use it for any of my own sites, one of my clients uses Shopify and I have to say that it is very easy to use and has a lot of features. It's a great starting point for any business wanting to branch out into ecommerce. It has good support too.

Any system takes some getting used to, it just depends how much time and effort a business owner has available to put into it.

 

[soundengineeruk]

Learning new software depends can be easy as ABC or rocket science. Each person as there own way of learning.

Find your way of learning and break it down in to steps; rather to try cover everything. I do this sort of process for job at hand as things do change when updated or new versions are released.

 

[antropy]

Does this sound reasonable or am I being taken for a ride? I have absolutely no idea when it comes to this sort of thing.

Don't be that buyer who's proud of their ignorance. If you're looking to buy a second hand car, you don't turn up at the garage and say "I've got £5k to spend, I know nothing about cars, what have you got?" You need to read up on different platforms. We would have strongly advised against Magento for someone starting out, here's why:
www.antropy.co.uk/blog/the-lure-of-magento/

It sounds like in this case your "web designer" is totally clueless and just gets an Indian Magento company to build sites for him cheaper than he sells them on. It sounds like he doesn't really know anything about them himself.

Your best bet is to get the site built by a decent freelancer or company with a portfolio of similar successful ecommerce sites and good customer testimonials.

 

[TJ Bakewell]

Yes cancel with him immediately. He has over charged you for everything, sounds like he is trying to soak money out of you.

 

[Page]

I would have to disagree with keeping Magento. It is a great cart, but a sledgehammer. It is much more expensive to host and much more expensive to manage. For a small site with a few hundred products and a inexperienced owner, there are much better alternatives.

I am on this one

What you really need at the moment is not a developer of the final site but an advisor on what you should be doing in terms of the software to use.

There is no correct answer as such - it all depends - and on lots of variables

You can get lots of help for free - as you are doing on the thread but it can be slow and "random"

But I would VERY strongly advise that the best thing for you to do is spend some money on getting some advice off someone based on a bit of a conversation and exchange

If I was you I would look back over the people that have advised in a general way so far on this thread and PM a couple of them and ask if you buy 30 mins of their time to 2 hours - to discuss it and how much would it cost you

Five mins is no good and you want good but impartial advice - and an hour should be enough - maybe even 30 mins

They can then listen to you and ask you questions etc - and then with their very high looking down view - suggest the best option for you. You are in the woods with no knowledge.

It will be the best £50 - £100 spend that you will make in this area

If you are on the wrong platform then it will cost you now and/or in the longer term

 

[Chimneychap]

Wow! Lots of opinions to think about there then.

Apologies for the delay in responding. My recent staffing issues have meant me working double time to keep things moving.

It appears that the general opinion is not to continue with him, which has confirmed my concerns so thank you to everyone so far for your input.

Next I need to speak to more people which I hope to be able to do soon once my staffing issue is sorted and things start to calm down in my business.

I have already spoken with one forum member who has offered his services I will make contact with some more and see what is the best way to move forward.

Mod sorry for posting in the wrong place to begin with and thank you for moving.

 

[JD@fifty6]

Hey @Chimneychap, sorry to hear you're having massive issues. I'm assuming we're talking about cheshirestoveshop.co.uk?

This developer is clearly an amateur. I'm not a developer, but I've built a fair few Magento sites for myself over the years – on top of the main issues you're having, I think a big alarm to me would have been the fact it still says "Magento Demo Store" in your footer... Attention to detail is not this developers strong point.

The bad news is that getting something built right is not cheap. However, it is (as you're unfortunately finding out) value for money. I bought a cheap chiminea once, so I'm not immune either!

Best thing you can do is cut ties. No point bogging down with a claim or anything. Get involved with someone who knows what they're doing.

There's two recommendations I'd make in terms of platforms. EKM Powershop is super simple to get going, although I do personally hate working with it personally it has been the foundation of a couple of successful sites I've worked with over the years. Shopify is another, sitting somewhere between EKM/Wordpress and Magento, and it's what I'd be looking for if I was in your situation personally.

Good luck either way!

 

[snappyfish]

As mentioned above demo store in footer is not so good. I am not a working developer but I run my site for my current employer.

I knew how to install a default cart system, currently I use opencart. Purchased a theme and customised the CSS to my liking to make it "different" to the standard look.

Stop paying endless amounts of money get a list together and get some quotes of various company's.

£1000 for setting up a website skin with no products ... HIRE ME PLEASE

 

[Chimneychap]

Thanks people.

Already in the process of doing more research and getting in some quotes from members on here.

 

[boring-friday]

probably the designer 'hacking' the website.

You could do with learning the basics yourself or you'll constantly be getting ripped off for £2-300 every time a tiny issue pops up that takes 2 minutes to fix.

You really don't need a flashy/expensive website for a mostly local business either, it barely makes any difference anyway

 

[Costa Del Digital]

As you know by now, you're being screwed not a Cambridge based web designer is it?

I agree with others here that your own web designer is probably creating the problems. Changing domain extension to .com will make no difference to security and to me indicates pure dishonesty.

You should request your website files from your designer including sql database files and take them elsewhere to an honest company where your monthly fees will likely half and where that company takes a certain level of responsibility for security issues. Maybe ask friends or family for a recommendation, someone whom is known to be reliable otherwise many out there can't be trusted.

I hope it works out well for you.