NADSOFT

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of an advertising and marketing online directory.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with NADSOFT?

I was trying to get a website built for my company.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

NADSOFT was tasked to build the website within a specific time frame. We had an initial meeting where I explained what I wanted in detail and provided them with drawings of how the site should have looked like.

They provided me with a detailed list of all the things that they were going to do. However, they kept pushing the objectives and deliverables during the process into further stages.

What is the team dynamic?

First, NADSOFT assigned two people to this project, and they also claimed they had a quality control person, which I never noticed — there was no quality control whatsoever.

How did you come to work with NADSOFT?

I had a lot of challenges with this project before meeting with NADSOFT. A person I was working with referred them to me and highly recommended them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from around January–March 2021. It was supposed to be a two-month engagement, but it ended up lasting for three months. I already got rid of the site and don’t have contact with NADSOFT anymore.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How did your relationship with the vendor evolve?

They didn’t hit the marks that they promised and constantly asked for more time. When I gave them more time, it represented more money spent for me because my site was still not up and running.

In the beginning, they were responsive. However, when they started to miss the marks, they started pushing the project further. They told me that they would push the incomplete assets into the next phase. Not knowing how they worked, the next phase meant more money.

They kept pushing the deliverables arguing that they were custom-coding everything, even when we were working on WordPress where they could just add plug-ins and modify them.

The website wasn’t working properly, and it took a lot of time to load. Additionally, the search functionality was a problem, and it wouldn’t load businesses — apparently, they didn’t use keywords.

A search engine is the most important aspect of a directory like mine. If a user can’t find what they’re looking for in seconds, they just move on to the next directory. When I started telling NADSOFT how to do their work and they started charging extra for fixing the issues, everything went downhill — I was really upset.

I ended up hiring another vendor, paid NADSOFT off, and stopped using the site that they built — we had to create a completely new site from scratch.

How did NADSOFT address the challenges that arose?

We had a short one-and-a-half-month deadline, and they approached it wrongly. They told me that the fastest they could achieve the project was in two months.

Even with the limited amount of time, they only assigned two developers. When I asked them to assign more developers, they agreed but didn’t compromise on time.

One of the biggest problems I had with the site was that business owners couldn’t log in to set up their profiles. People got lost after clicking the first button. When I asked NADSOFT to fix the problem, they just told me that it needed to be fixed in the next phase, which meant more investment from my side.

The most important part of building a site is the UX. If users don’t have a good experience, they’re going to bail. I got constant complaints of users not knowing how to navigate, and I ended up hiring an external developer to fix the problems.

Hiring this person was also a challenge. When other freelancers looked at the site, they told me they couldn’t change anything because everything NADSOFT had developed was custom-coded and very complex — trying to fix their code was going to mess with the whole site.

We were working on WordPress. However, they didn’t pick a theme or plugins to customize and integrate — they just started coding from scratch, which made our project really difficult. All developers code differently, but they should be able to pick up what another person develops. In our case, no one could — it was a nightmare.

Describe the impact this engagement has had on your business.

This engagement had a major negative impact on my business. I kept telling NADSOFT that I needed my website up and running, but they didn’t seem to have the urgency to finish it.

When we started our engagement, I had around 50 sales representatives under my belt ready to work. I ended up having only a handful of them because they kept quitting the project — they couldn’t see the website working, so they didn’t see value in our project.

How was project management handled?

Working with them was a challenge. I had to stay up late at night because they were based in another country. Communication was also an issue because I couldn’t understand clearly what they were saying when we were on the phone.

We started to communicate over text, which made it easier, and we also had videoconferences to understand what was going on.

Is there anything that the vendor did well or that you would consider a strength?

They didn’t do anything well. If anything, they were always on time to take my money.

In what specific areas can they improve?

The most important part is being honest. They lied about how long it was going to take them to do the project, and they also lied about what they were capable of doing.

They need to communicate better as well. They weren’t responsive at all, and it took them 1–2 days to reply to my messages. For me, communication is the most important part of doing business — I want to know what my vendor is doing and what they need from me to move forward.

What advice do you have for clients with similar needs to yours?

Maybe NADSOFT does good software development, but they don’t do web development. I wouldn’t work with them again or recommend them.