[thelist] customer relationship advices

[Zhang Weiwu]

On 2010年08月25日 15:20, Kevin Mulvihill wrote:
> To help make the determination, Weiwu, I think you need to give us a link so
> we can see the site in question for ourselves.
>   

Well, because only a few of the change request in this month have not
been implemented, and we are in argument of the fee/changes that will
happen, I can show you what it is like before the changes going to be
done, a.k.a. what is it like before our customer contact person joins
the organization. The pilot website (non-production) is here:

http://houyhnhnms.realss.cn/
Note that the front-page slideshow is in the progress of modifying,
others are kept still.

There are much change requests (more than 30), translating all takes too
much time. But I try to pick a few by trying as much randomly as
possible to prevent my personal "favorite".

    * page too boring, no picture. need add more colors and design:
      http://houyhnhnms.realss.cn/major_initiatives/
    * publications should be one column instead of two columns. Current
      look is too crowded:
      http://houyhnhnms.realss.cn/publications/
    * all tables should fold by default, and unfold after user clicks.
      This is one table that should be folded (look at the bottom to see
      the table):
      http://houyhnhnms.realss.cn/publications/
      http://houyhnhnms.realss.cn/members_and_partners/members
    * most tables should be changed to lists by removing some columns
      and moving column content in a bracket in the list, so that the
      look is neat and luxury, instead of tables which look crowded. An
      example of the table that should be changed (look at the bottom to
      see the table):
      http://houyhnhnms.realss.cn/publications/
    * the list of all news in the past (appears after user click "more"
      in news block) is too long, it should be decided into 3 pages:
      past news in 2010, past news in 2009, past news in 2008:
      http://houyhnhnms.realss.cn/news_and_events/tcg_news/
    * font too ugly (she refuse to say which font is too ugly, stating
      it as obvious, thus we assume she means all fonts for <h1> to <h6>)
    * wording change of page names (also apply to navigation), about 10
      places.
    * the page "chronicle" should be a designed work instead of plain
      list. As explain what is a "designed work", she argue we should
      know what it is, and after we explain our stupidity of not knowing
      what she wants to have, she managed to find an example "that is
      what I call good": go to http://www.saab.com.cn -> skip the
      entering movie -> on the top navigation bar click the second item.
      (I am sorry I cannot give you a direct link of this example
      because the URI never changes when you navigate on this site). The
      bad "chronicle" she refer to is
      http://houyhnhnms.realss.cn/news_and_events/tcg_greater_ch/

I have to say that non of her change ideas can be said to be worse than
before, or, I should say I would agree with all of the changes except
unclear ones which she doesn't have patience to describe in detail. But
not for free, because they might be "better", but not because we have
fault in the first place.

The amount we plan to charge for the modifications is around 6000 RMB,
close to 700 Euros. In China web service companies averagely charge
(IMHO) 18% of the price compare to if Chinese company decide to
outsource to european based web service companies. What we change is in
my rough impression 35% to 40% of the price compare to if Chinese
company decide to outsource to European based web service companies. So
we are more expensive than average, at least by 2 times.