As someone who has worked at a content agency for a decade, let me just say: I feel really bad that this happened to you, and that scope creep is real.
I almost feel like you needed to ask for three separate things: A brand identity, a marketing strategy refresh, and then (finally) a website redesign. That all three were combined into one process likely caused this problem to drag on. The agency had its problems, but to be honest to me as someone who is familiar with this space, it sounds like they were combining a lot of disciplines into one project without considering that it would have been better to chew smaller bites.
There are times where you do need to bend the rules. At the beginning of the pandemic I sort of broke protocol to get a COVID-19 landing page on a client’s site online because I knew that it would take weeks done the normal way and possibly would have led us to charge the client for something that a skilled designer only needed a couple of hours to build in WordPress. While the landing page wasn’t perfect, it held up for nearly a year, and showed that we were taking things seriously at a time we needed to. A lot of agencies aren’t wired for doing right beyond billable hours, so be mindful of the risks.
Either way, I feel bad that you paid so much for a site that looks way better but doesn’t feel like $46k worth of work.
Don’t feel bad. The end result was positive. Sales increased enough that the cost will be made up in a few months. Person actually made out well considering the effect of the work.
It's not at all guaranteed that increase in sales was due to the redesign.
But yeah considering that revenues have only gone up, might as well just call it a cost of doing business. Learn from it and move on. (It sounds like this is exactly what he's doing.)
But imagine how much further he would be ahead if they came in at time and on budget. He arguably lost half a year of positive benefits because they dragged their feet for so long.
I almost feel like you needed to ask for three separate things: A brand identity, a marketing strategy refresh, and then (finally) a website redesign. That all three were combined into one process likely caused this problem to drag on. The agency had its problems, but to be honest to me as someone who is familiar with this space, it sounds like they were combining a lot of disciplines into one project without considering that it would have been better to chew smaller bites.
There are times where you do need to bend the rules. At the beginning of the pandemic I sort of broke protocol to get a COVID-19 landing page on a client’s site online because I knew that it would take weeks done the normal way and possibly would have led us to charge the client for something that a skilled designer only needed a couple of hours to build in WordPress. While the landing page wasn’t perfect, it held up for nearly a year, and showed that we were taking things seriously at a time we needed to. A lot of agencies aren’t wired for doing right beyond billable hours, so be mindful of the risks.
Either way, I feel bad that you paid so much for a site that looks way better but doesn’t feel like $46k worth of work.