A couple of years ago a, now former, client finally agreed that his business needed a new website.

We’d been nagging him from the outset – as website development is one of the services we offer – because the one he had was a very basic static site built in-house many years ago. It also had 36 pages – not bad for a business with only seven products.

As a consumer brand it made sense that the business should have a content rich site that mirrored the messages being sent via the PR campaign – along with professionally taken pictures not ones taken on a very old phone camera.

We explained that people (potential customers) would Google the business after reading about its products either in the press or online – quite often in blogs and forums as part of the PR campaign – or after seeing the merchandise on a supermarket shelf.

We added that we’d be able to get people (potential customers) to sign up to a newsletter or email alerts as a way of helping to boost brand loyalty, and that with compelling content they would return on a regular basis to keep up to date with what was happening at the company.

Importantly, these potential customers would also be able to buy directly from the new website, a great way of boosting his income.

Because the client didn’t understand the web (particularly the spending money bit), he ended up getting a grant from Business Link for a new site meaning he’d have to use one of their suppliers instead of us. We agreed to supply the copy, relevant images, style guide and, importantly, details of the pagination and a timetable for the eight-week project.

So while we got busy with the copywriting, the web company worked on the design. Or so we thought. After four weeks, we hadn’t seen anything. We nagged for two weeks, hearing an array of excuses such as staff being ill and, bizarrely, the design proving difficult. Finally a design was sent though that bore no relevance to the brand guidelines; in fact, it was an image of green field with a blue sky and lots of product logos stuck on – but more of that later.

We spoke to the client, then to the web company – to sack them, although they couldn’t see what the problem was. Web company number two; again via Business Link. They moved faster – although by now the timetable had become irrelevant.

The design was decent enough, but somehow the copy we had written got ripped to pieces. Fine, we’d raise that issue at the critique stage – but this never happened because the client decided to let them do it in their own time.

Soon after that the credit crunch struck and PR got the boot. The client is now left with a badly-written website with a variety of fonts, and an e-commerce section that only works if you telephone them; meaning it’s not an online shop.

It’s a real shame that the site was never finished; and I’m glad the Blue Sky name is not associated with it. It’s an even bigger shame that Business Link got involved; because neither of the web companies was really up to the job. It’s almost as though they treated it as money for old rope.

And the original web design? I knew I’d seen it somewhere before, eventually it clicked – it was the Windows XP wallpaper.