Our new website went live recently. It is very simple, and we're all very happy with it.
However, we almost ended up with a website that no-one really liked. Main lesson learned? Don't design by committee.
Design is one of those professional areas where it always strikes me that there are low barriers to entry - everyone has an opinion. People who wouldn't presume to tell a brain surgeon how to do her job will expound at length on their ideas on web design.
Hannah, our excellent web designer, was pulling her hair out with contradictory guidance from everyone involved. Hannah came up with an initial version of the website that responded to everyone's every design input, and it met every requirement. When I discussed it with Hannah I found it had a subtle flaw - she didn't like it.
An hour of scribbling later and we'd come up with a functional structure we liked, and a week later Hannah produced a prototype of the new site which everyone thought was a knockout. I then spent a day editing all the text into digestable chunks (someone had to do it) and you can see the results.