Unethical Web Designers
January 28, 2004
Oh you can tell the upturn has started! One of the web design companies that I have used for a number of projects has just let me down. The Managing Director of this company quoted for a job at the end of 2003. A sales person sent an email yesterday to tell me they were upping the price. Not by a couple of hundred I can tell you. But by €1275 on the design component alone!!! They've also added thousands more euro to the price of other components of the job, and really it's not acceptable, nor is it possible for my client to afford that fee.
My client is a small business owner who gave work to the web design company back in 2002, when times were tough. The web design company was glad of her business back when it was struggling to push out new product and win new business. My client delivers training for many government departments, her site is very public, and she is very generous in her praise of work well done. The designer has probably benefited in its pursuit of more lucrative public sector jobs.
Fast forward to 2004. The long awaited pick-up is showing signs of beginning. The web design company is applying its excellent designs to lots of government and other public sector jobs. Its prices are high, possibly the highest in the city, but the quality of design is second to none.
But it needs to address how it treats existing clients. Or more speficially, how it treats clients that are worth less than €10,000. Or maybe my client is part of a cull of smaller clients? I read in a book about how to successfully grow your business, that the best way to handle removing small clients is to introduce them to a competitor. That way you're keeping them happy and you're building bridges amongst the smaller players in your industry.
If this is a sign of how certain Irish businesses intend to treat their clients while on the rise, things are not looking good. I won't name the design firm in this blog, but if you are reading this and would really like to know because you don't want this to happen to you, then just hit the contact button on the top navigation and send us an email . . .