Exactly, the first design mockup is the easiest part of the process.
From my experience, getting feedback from a small team in 20 person startup can drastically change the site from the designers original vision.
At the bigs companies there are many different stakeholders who need to be appeased. Some of the changes may seem illogical to the average consumer, but they might be well justified by management. For example trying to keep a few big corporate clients happy by including a large cheesy marketing message on the homepage.
Edit: But I admit, DHL is in desperate need for a redesign. Their website is awful.
I absolutely agree that big companies would dramatically slow down the development process. And that's why I put a disclaimer on each page saying it takes consulting and understanding of the problem domain to produce a final result. Mockup is definitely just a first step, but I figured it's the step that attracts an attention.
And it is interesting how different, huge, departments own various pieces of the web page--menu bar, right margin, left links, and so on. And fight for changes of any sort to their piece of real estate.
From my experience, getting feedback from a small team in 20 person startup can drastically change the site from the designers original vision.
At the bigs companies there are many different stakeholders who need to be appeased. Some of the changes may seem illogical to the average consumer, but they might be well justified by management. For example trying to keep a few big corporate clients happy by including a large cheesy marketing message on the homepage.
Edit: But I admit, DHL is in desperate need for a redesign. Their website is awful.