After 7 months, our "new" website we contracted to be built by DesignThis! is a shell of its potential and what I was lead to believe was possible. Very little work was done on it, and even less thought put into its design, flow and concept. It's as if a high school intern with no wine industry experience pulled content from our existing website and haphazardly inserted it into a Wordpress template. There was no original content, they leveraged photography which we paid for out of pocket, and the site map and flow of the site are pitiful. Kim said to give her the keys to the car and to trust her 100%. I did that, now we are 7 months from the date the first payment was made when targeted completion was 3 months. I had been told Kim did not like to show the website under development to clients because clients don't understand anything but a finished product. When I insisted, after seeing nothing for 6 months, it seemed they hastily threw together content pulled from our old website on a template. From there, virtually nothing improved for another month, all while they kept telling me it was "custom", that we're "getting a good deal", and that they have many other clients who pay double what we are paying. As for the printed material and templates for tech sheets and email newsletters, they simply pulled existing logos, photography and content to "create" these pieces on Adobe Suite and charged a fortune for work that should have taken no less than 30 minutes per. There was virtually no thought into the pieces, for example, her Tasting Room insert only had space for 3 bottles when we do not offer memberships with 3 bottles. We would have been better off buying the Adobe software and creating them in-house. I have not worked with a company whose fees were as out of line with output as DesignThis!. They are long on lip-service about how they are experts in the wine industry, that they have worked with 80% of wineries in Napa and Sonoma and how great they are. I was disappointed at the level of unprofessionalism within the company, there always seemed to be calamity. There was employee turnover from the very beginning (the person who onboarded us quit) and personal excuses abounded as deadlines were continuously missed. My biggest regret is that I trusted Kim. My second regret is that I paid upfront for poor work that was not completed. Here is a sample of a typical correspondence - after not seeing our website 6 months after initial payment, when estimated completion was 3 months: From: Kim
[email protected] Sent: Friday, May 3, 2019 5:22 PM Subject: Re: RE: FW: Re: Omg. Please please forgive me. I've have a weird few weeks. But everyone of my clients will say DT and me are the most amazing. And we def are. Sent: Thursday, May 2, 2019 10:15 AM To: Kim
[email protected] Subject: RE: FW: Re: Did you want to share website stuff with me? Can I review what you have so far? Over promise and under deliver should be their motto.
