Websites for companies owned by funds, built to outlast the next owner. Industrial designer. Clients incl. Floris Capital & SIMPLY.
Joined October 2023
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Almost every client I've built a website for tells me the same thing:
They never managed to update it regularly.
They're business people. The business comes first, and the website waits.
I see two reasons for it.
I often see the same thing. The hosting belongs to the company, but only the agency has the login.
If the agency is gone, getting it back from the provider depends on the old email address and 2FA.
That's why everything I set up runs in the company's name.
Congrats on your record month.
502 visits in one day.
It was a bot.
ALT Leonardo DiCaprio raising a glass, caption: Congrats on your record month.
On Monday another agency emailed me. They want to give my site "a more modern look".
I was annoyed, because they keep sending me these emails and never even checked my site. Several agencies send the same format.
So I checked theirs.
ALT Two website homepages side by side. Left, designernils.com. Right, grovedesigners.com with a banner reading "Email marketing communication. Upon positive response, our sales team will connect with you."
The banner on Grove's homepage says "Upon positive response, our sales team will connect with you."
That already tells me they get a lot of negative responses, and they only react to the positive ones.
In 2024 a client asked me:
"If one day you no longer do this, who can do it then, and how does he get to all the data?"
I told him I would keep looking after his sites, and could hand him to a good web designer from my network.
That answered the first half.
This month I went through a site of mine before handover.
The handover document was a build log with 16 sections.
A developer new to it would not quickly find how the site runs day to day.
So I wrote a second document.
It's ok if your website is old.
It's ok if it's simple.
It's ok if it runs on WordPress.
It's not ok that nobody in your company knows the login.
Back in early September I stopped at the Teufelstisch in the Palatinate on my way home from France. Wind and rain took away everything soft and left only what holds.
I do the same with a consultant's website, until only what carries your message remains.
ALT Nils Enders-Brenner, Foto
I never landed a design job.
Today I work with consultants, VC and PE firms and HR advisors on their websites.
2017, master's done, still no design job. I went freelance and was shocked. It works completely differently, and nobody told me how. So I taught myself to sell.
A cheap website builder doesn't cost a few euros a month.
It costs a full rebuild the day you want to leave.
ALT Trade offer meme. I receive: your website. You receive: a full rebuild the day you leave.
An investor forwarded me his hosting company's warning. His site was "not adequately protected against hacking and malware", and a protection package would fix it.
He asked: "Do I need this, or do they just want to sell something?"
It was the third one he had sent me in a year.