The new website is almost ready!
Natasha and I have spent a very long time working on getting a new website going. It has been quite a journey, but we are finally getting close to having a functioning website where you can actually buy an antique print, map or artwork.
It all started with the persistent requests of our loyal customers asking us to create a website with some items they could buy in between our shows. A great idea, but how do you make a website? Natasha had created a few webpages and a very nice site where one could follow our show schedule and see our happy faces.
Then we bought a book that promised to reduce our work load. It was a book about work efficiency called “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss in which it was suggested we outsource the website development. So we did and we were certainly going to spend more than 4 hours a week on this project…
We interviewed a great deal of web developers, some in Eastern Europe, a few in the Philippines and many in South Asia, mainly India and Pakistan. Ever so frugal we opted for a lad in Pakistan who promised us the world, his name was Shazad. Two months later Shazad gave us a website with an ugly presentation and a website full of bugs. We fired him.
It seemed that a bigger company was required so we tried our luck with another kind gentleman by the name of Puneet. With a twelve hour time difference we often found Puneet laying on his bed video conferencing with us about the in and outs of our future website. It was going to be a gem.
However, with every day, week and then months that passed we were very slowly coming to have a functioning website although full of bugs and a presentation that was prehistoric by web standards. Having spent a fairly large sum of money we were not ready to let Puneet and Co in India go and fire him. There was a small detail that did bring us to do just that: fire him. He could not program us a shopping cart!
We had no way to sell our products, all 2500 of them, which we took pictures of, uploaded and wrote descriptions of. We were back to square one and decided to go “local”. We hired Jim, another gentleman, this time from South Carolina. He promised us a quick fix, but disappeared with the deposit.
Never abandoning a project. Natasha and I went against all the recommendations of our famous 4-hour Workweek book and contracted a very local company: right here in Santa Fe. Within 2 months from the signature of the contract we have a new website and it works. Not a single bug. The cost was a third of our amigo in India, Puneet, and it looks professional.
Yes, it has been a long journey. A two year journey… We threw away the book and are BUYING LOCAL.