Always tricky dealing with more than one contact within a company, that is why we always request that we have one single point of contact within a company and that all direction / questions / updates are directed throught that person, take a look at this example exchange between a website design company and a website owner to see that there is an importance of defining goals and timelines as well as having one point of countact within an organisation.
[Thurrock Website Designers] Following on from our conversation the other day. Would be happy to move your website (with news section / blog and database) to another domain. If you want to discuss further I am available for the rest of the day
[Website Client] If I send you some money this week, could we then make an appointment for next week to come down to see you with details of trade company? Today we had the Thompson Directory sales rep in, he was giving us all sorts of facts and figures that were well beyond me. One point he made that I need to confirm with you is why we have “54 Unique domain back links” means nothing to me, but could you throw some light on it. He was using a company called SpyderMate. Also could you also confirm the reason for the domain name to be registered to yourself?
[Website Designers] Ok thanks and look forward to receiving the outstanding website payment, this will enable us to continue with your website promotion and happy to meet up again to get your trade company sorted.
Relevant backlinks are important in indicating to the search engines that your site is ‘relevant’ and ‘important’ and has ‘authority’. Confirming with me ‘why you have unique backlinks’ is both irrelevant and impossible but if you want I can go through this in more detail when we meet. Thompson Directory (as well as Yell aka HIBU) are both dying companies that have come to the ‘marketing on the web’ party too late and are making a mess of it with their sales people confusing business people. Every week I get a call from a client telling me they have been called by Thompson and Yell with their special offers, that are simply a method of making their company richer and yours poorer. In general I believe these companies ‘offers’ have limited value for you and a free entry into their books / directories is all I recommend as marketing time / effort / money is better spent elsewhere.
Thompson Directory (as well as Yell) are both dying companies that have come to the ‘marketing on the web’ party too late and are making a mess of it with their sales people confusing business people. Every week I get a call from a client telling me they have been called by Thompson and Yell with their special offers, that are simply a method of making their company richer and yours poorer. In general I believe these companies ‘offers’ have limited value for you and a free entry into their books / directories is all I recommend as marketing time / effort / money is better spent elsewhere.
Remember that I talk about ‘holistic’ in regard your place on the Internet? This encompasses all aspects of website design / usability / website promotion / accessibility and gives your site the very best chance of working and ranking highly while bringing in a stream of enquires overtime. Concentrating on one aspect of one part (links as part of your website promotion) is naïve and a tool used by salesmen that is used to ‘concern’ website owners about things they largely cannot positively affect in the short term. Additionally this part of the website promotion is traditionally done by us once the website is finalised / paid for and the links we provide you will benefit you positively long term.
Ref Domain registration
Previously we registered all domain names to customers but after one transferred them away after we completed our development work as a way to delay paying us we then had to take legal action to reclaim the money (final invoice). Now in keeping with our Terms and Conditions as well as the ‘standard practise’ of other website design companies we register Domains in our name until the final payment is made. Once the final payment is made the domain name will then be transferred to your company. Remind me to show you the previous customer’s directorships as they have had 10 dissolved companies!
If you have paid your invoice your trade company website will be registered in your name initially giving you full ownership from day 1
[Additional Comment] Yep what he says about back links is true ‘relevant’, ‘important’ and has authority. Confirming with him why you have back links is totally relevant and definitely not impossible, he must know what the links are otherwise how does he know you have links from other websties. He is right that some links are good and relevant link and they are hard to get. That is why I am suspicious that there are 52 (this is verified by the independent site SpyderMate not Thompsons), these links do exist and it is important that we know where all of them come from, he should be able to provide a printout of them.
Now he is an expert on all things web, he can’t even build a decent website and he is an expert on on-line marketing. I think we had already decided Thompsons was a waste of time for ourselves. Again he is right to a degree though, reps from Thompsons and Yell do spout a load of rubbish to people that don’t have a clue what they are on about. The pay per click campaign via them is so limited it is a waste of time, almost a third of what you pay is going on management fees for very little work. I don’t think people in glass houses should throw stones though.
He is still talking about getting paid before he properly optimises the site, nobody said we were only concentrating on links, it just happens to be something that was highlighted today and it wasn’t the Thompsons guy who was concerned about it, it is me. He has now actually said that “links we provide you with will benefit you long term”, the only links we want are ones that we can generate from relevant sites not spurious links for the sake of it as these are the type which might give us shot term gain (i.e. until he gets paid) but will get punished by Google in the long term.
I have worked with several web development companies, none of them have insisted that the domain name belongs to them until final invoice is paid, this would indicate that he has had problems getting paid in the past, I wonder why? Why would you give control of a 4 year old and valuable domain name to a stranger you have never dealt with before. If you knew this was part of his terms and conditions you would walk away and employ someone who was confident that their end product was good enough that you would be glad to pay and continue to work with for your mutual benefit. If we knew that his terms and conditions included him taking control of the domain name (which after the conversation I had with him the other night, he probably did) he should have discussed it with you before agreeing to it.
It doesn’t make sense what he says about taking ownership of the domain If the customer owned it, why would they need to transfer it away? As you are probably aware he is talking rubbish in an attempt to get paid the money he says you owe
[Website Owner] Thanks for the advice re Yell and Thompsons, it seems we all agree on one thing at least. We pulled out of Yell a few years ago and last year gave Thompsons an ultimatum that we would stop using them if we had little or no result, this was easy to monitor as we had special numbers for their ads only. I am still concerned about the back links, this was pointed out when we read the SEO report and not by the sales person confusing me. I also understand new domain names being put in your name, but I have owned mine for about 4 years and it appears to be a major factor with Google. This is something that I am not happy with. Basically it seems that you are not keen to explain the links, want to control the domain and also want to finish any work after full payment. Seems a bit one sided to me! By the way, these are my words.
[Website Designers] Sorry I really am ‘happy to explain the links’ but thought the email before explained links as I mentioned that there isn’t much value concentrating on one aspect of one part of website design / development / marketing / SEO but very happy to spend time explaining your links to you if you want but I don’t think it will benefit you at all – you can have 10000 links that are worthless or even worse can do you harm. Needless to say I will evaluate these for you and take appropriate action if needed as well as giving you a full SEO report.
Without being cheeky I would urge you to trust in our abilities and knowledge here a bit, you were unsure about if people would use the ecommerce facility (after it was designed and developed and put on your site) and we have proved that in a short amount of time it has amassed over 180 ‘real’ enquiries. Now when it comes to SEO we have a good track record nationally and internationally (currently have 7 of our client’s websites in the same business sector the top ten for the search terms you are aiming to be ranked for) we are also unable to take on any more SEO projects for the next 9 months due to the success we have been having as we have been attracting a lot of attention / enquiries due to our websites high positions. We also boast a website that ranks 2nd worldwide (google.com and google.co.uk) for an ‘ultra-competitive’ search term, this website was built from scratch and has gone from a monthly visitor count of 30 to over 15,000 within 3 years.
So in summary happy to explain links to you but it’s like me asking you about the technical aspects of one type of material over another instead of taking your opinion that one type is in my best interest. I don’t want to control your domain and will gladly transfer it solely to you once the outstanding payment is received. I can and will complete your project’s SEO to benefit you and your site you have my word on this.
As soon as payment is received we will
1, transfer domain to yourself
2, Complete SEO work / including reporting
3, Get the trade website and put it in your name immediately.
4, Do any outstanding work you require
Am in all day tomorrow if you want a quick reply / chat / visit and I hope we can move forward with the payment and SEO work quickly. You need not be ‘concerned’ or worried about your backlinks and actually confused why you would be worried?
Depending on what tools you use you can get different reports of your links and see that the spyder tool gives you 52, I have now run two reports and one reports 915 backlines and one reports 425 backlinks , will send these to you as part of the post live SEO report once payment received but you have nothing to worry about as these links are the same / similar to the lists I normally see for domains like yours.
[Website Owner] I’m not sure if your reading all of my email? Not happy with link explanation or lack of, not happy with my domain being transferred to you and not happy that I have to pay you all of the money before you do the work. I think since our last conversation on the phone things have not improved, we can’t get you to agree on anything and you think we are holding you to ransom. If we paid in full, how do we then get anything done? It’s difficult enough now.
[Website Designers] The invoice was presented in August its now March and we have been emailing a lot – I think its in your interest to get your website fully paid for and let us continue work on it to get it ‘the best it can be’ for the search engines.
Really thought I had gone out of my way to explain the link situation and can guarantee you that the moment you pay the money they site gets transferred to yourself and I will send you two link reports plus within 2 days I will send you a full SEO report (after completing the SEO work ) The majority of the on-site SEO work is done so its just a case of ‘uploading’ the updated pages to your live website.
So to restate your links are nothing to worry about and two full reports will be sent to you after you make the payment, there is some aspects of your SEO project that are much more important than giving you a list of your links (which are ‘normal’) and will go over all this with you in a simple list
I simply want to get this project done and complete and cant state it any clearer that the final SEO changes are 95% complete and will be put live the moment the payment gets presented, these changes will be all positive for your website / ranking / visitor numbers etc.
Since this last report I have been updating / optimising the site and preparing the final reports for you. We would really appreciate the payment you said would be coming. Once received will continue the SEO / update all the changes and give you the reports which give you full details of your links as well as hundreds of other ranking factors
[Website Owner] As you know I am not any good at all with the websites and am relying on other peoples opinions. You tell me one thing and others say different. I am not happy with you taking the domain and I am not happy with the site. Another manager will be dealing with this from now on.
[Website Designers] Ok I did get that email and responded to it obviously I am not happy with having payment withheld after all the time / effort we have put into this and also though I explained everything about this link report that has been introduced. I cant state this any clearer but you have ‘nothing to worry about’ concerning this link report from a 3rd party company. Focussing on one aspect of one part of the project is pointless and not going to benefit you at all. We have now got 3 link reports (all much more comprehensive that a spydermate report and these will be given to you on project completion will advise you on this fully.
I really need to know if the site is going to be paid for and have gone out of my way to explain about link reports / seo work etc. If the money isn’t going to be paid then we go down the legal route that will cost us both a lot in terms of time / effort / money and disruption to our businesses and will disrupt yours if we decide to withdraw our services. I really don’t want to do that but you really are leaving us no choice especially after these ‘protracted negotiations’ that have now been going on for some time. Unless I hear from you we will check the bank at the close of play today and reserve the right to remove our services and initiate legal action.
[Website Client] I will save you you the time in checking the bank, money will not be paid today. You state “nothing to worry about” you also say “We have 3 link reports which will be given on project completion” I take it that means after payment? Why should I pay you before? Why cant you send these link reports to prove your doubters wrong? How can you say you have gone out of your way to explain about the reports and seo? All you have said is you will send details and seo will be completed after we pay. How do I know that this is the case? As I said in my last email, I am now passing this on to another manager who deals with this sort of thing for us.
[Website Designers] Ok we are willing to compromise if we send the link reports will we be paid ? I cant believe you are risking all our hard work and effort here, I am on your side and want this to be a success. Really I don’t think that is reasonable or acceptable after all that I have said and promised and the discount offered so please can you answer the questions:
1 do you intend to pay your invoice?
2 if so please can you tell me when
3 do you acknowledge removal of your web services and the inevitable legal claim against your company will be our only option once you ‘officially refuse payment’
Really cant believe you are turning your victory into defeat here and urge you to evaluate your companies / websites position and would recommend another talk on the phone as possibly emails are not the best way to communicate here. Additionally I am happy to meet you personally to resolve this.
I will state now that 100% of the SEO on-site changes have been made and these will be uploaded the instant you pay the invoice, additionally the same day you will get a comprehensive SEO report and 3-4 link reports. I will also have some SEO related questions for you regarding your site’s promotion to enable me to proceed efficiently.
If I was you I would pay the invoice let us complete your SEO work and then review the many reports I can send you and will give you an easy to follow list with choices with my recommendations for you.
[Website Owner’s Manager] I have been asked to communicate with you regarding you demand for final payment for the web site. I don’t know the exact figures without referring to files which I can do tomorrow but I know the total approximately which includes the ecommerce function and we have already paid you 50% We have been going around in circles for some time now and I feel it is time to bring things to a conclusion. You claim the web site is finished in terms of the remit you were given with the exception of the additional information you requested i.e. pictures, testimonials and text content for some pages.
We accept that we have not provided pictures, testimonials and some text content you requested at our meeting several months ago. The reason we haven’t been motivated to provide you with this information is that we were not happy with the wire frame and design of the site, an objection we expressed in our meeting earlier in the year. Our grievance isn’t that you didn’t update the site with information you were waiting for from us, it is that the site in general isn’t to the standard we expected in general.
We gave you the remit for the site to be based on the example website, I believe that anyone with a semblance of creativity and/or experience in building quality websites would agree that your attempt to build a site which comes anywhere close to these sites would agree, our site doesn’t come close. If having been given the brief, you felt that you were either not capable of providing a site like the ones cited or that you would require a much larger budget, we would have appreciated you honesty in telling us. Instead every time we challenged you on the subject you argued that you had fulfilled the brief with the exception of the information you required from us to add extra content.
There are several concerns we have which you have attempted to address in the various e-mails sent between yourselves and ourselves over the past few months, your response to our concerns have been to say the least nebulous and evasive. Let me list a few of the concerns in order that you have a chance to address them.
- Our website has a very low ranking, particularly on Google. In fact I have searched down to page 15 and can’t find it on the generic listings, given that my computer should be biased towards finding the site as I have Googled it many times, leads us to believe that little or no Search Engine Optimisation has been initiated.
- You told us on an e-mail that you were concerned that Google may have punished our Domain Name as it had been previously hacked, you allegedly sent an e-mail to Google asking for the site to be reconsidered for ranking, we have not had any correspondence from you regarding the outcome of this in several months.
- You tell us that our site has 52 unique back links but when asked for a list of them you are unwilling to provide it. Our concern here is that you have employed Black Hat SEO and we may be further punished by Google in the future. We would be obliged if you would provide us with a list of these links which you seem reticent to do.
- You have taken ownership of our domain, according to you this is a practice you have initiated since you were in dispute with a previous client over payment. You also claim you do this within your terms and conditions of business. We would appreciate if you would supply us with a copy of your terms and conditions and evidence that we accepted them before entering into a contract with you.
- We have told you on many occasions we are not happy with the site. We have canvassed the opinions of many customers as well as a highly experienced usability engineer, the public don’t like the site and tell us they think it is amateurish, the usability engineer accepts it has some merits in terms of usability but falls far short of what would be acceptable from a quality website designer.
- Given that every time we question the quality and usability of the site, you only want to argue your corner and claim you believe it is a quality site, we don’t believe we can work with you on an on-going basis.
You seem to think you have some hold over the company in that a) You own our domain b) You can suspend our services.
Let me put things as succinctly as I can:
- We will not be paying you anymore money until you release our Domain Name. If you agree to release it, once it is released we will pay 25% immediately
- If necessary we will contact Nominet regarding you taking control of our domain without express permission
- We will defend any action taken by you vigorously and with every resource at our disposal
- Our Domain is over 4 years old and therefore has some merit to search engines. We have recently rebranded and will shortly have new headed paper, contracts etc produced, we can also make all of our customers and suppliers aware of a new e-mail address without too much hassle. As we work in a relatively small geographical location, I am confident that we can use a new domain name and have it appear on the first page of search engines within a few weeks. Given that our only presence is currently based on our Google places listing, we have very little to lose.
In short, we will not be paying the balance you request as we believe you have fallen very short of providing a website based on the remit you were given. We are willing to pay 25% provided you provide the relevant password and user name which will allow us to transfer the domain back to ourselves. If you accept and we pay you 25% it will be in full and final settlement of the alleged outstanding account.
[Website Designers to Company Owners] Have you read this? Its so full of untruths its ridiculous. I simply cannot believe it has come to this, in general terms you employed us to create a website which was approved and completed then two different people decided you didn’t ‘like it’ and refused to pay.
We was dealing with a previous manager then yourself and now this other salesman who knows a little about website design / seo but that little bit is making everything sound bad (if you listen to the untruths he is saying). The website design and SEO is full and complete and beneficial to your business, we even spotted that you had been hacked previously and removed all the hacked code and ensured the site was made more secure to avoid this and now you are accusing us of ‘black hat SEO’ (cheating the search engines) this is pretty dire. I will reinstate that legal action will commence tomorrow morning and the removal of web services will be taking place over today / tomorrow
[Website Client] If you suspend our services without an independent resolution to this dispute, you will have a detrimental effect on our business. We will be taking legal advice and if necessary counter claim for any financial losses we suffer due to the services being suspended. As I said in my last e-mail, are you prepared to supply us with a list of the links we asked for? Will you provide us with a copy of your terms and conditions we are supposed to have agreed to in order that you could take over our domain name? And by the way we are not saying you definitely used black hat, we just want to see a list of the links and understand how they got onto the site.
[Website Designers] Even though your project isn’t performance based I am happy to answer this again. For a newly redesigned site you are ranking higher than expected and appears to be ranked competitively for a variety of related / relevant keywords including the ones below
Google.co.uk (without personalised results) [list of search terms]
To explain the fact that you believe you cant find yourself (even though you didn’t specify the search term or search engine) This is probably due to the way Google has integrated its google local / google natural listings. With this recent change in mind I believe this google local integration has benefitted you. Please refer to attachment. Traditionally we complete the SEO project once the payment is complete and the website is completed and if you proceed with this project the full SEO reports will be produced for you.
Regarding your previous hacked website We spotted a serious problem and fixed it, I find it ironic that you are now doubting us about this. By default Google doesn’t respond to these requests unless there is a problem, the site is clean / cleared and secured and the current report is.
Regarding the link report and suggesting that we have done anything underhand this is ridiculous to say this and its totally untrue. You told me that you had 52 links though a tool. We are a leading Essex website design / seo company and have never employed black-hat seo – your link reports will be discussed in the resolution. The design of the site is obviously a sticking point, you (as a company) has approved the design so the fact remains the site was approved and people’s opinions on design vary. We are positive its not amateurish and I very much doubt an experienced usability engineer would say the site is amateurish. Believe you are simply making this up but would welcome them to contact us as would be very interested to hear this directly from them.
here is our Proposed Settlement
If we receive the final ‘discounted’ invoice payment we agree to do the following
1, If required the current website / price engine / news section (website code and databases) are transferred to a new domain of your choice (trade company) – This domain is registered in your name and you have your own nominet account to maintain this.*
2, SEO project completed (onsite and offsite updates)
3, The Full SEO changes are documented and reported to you
4, All link reports created will be forwarded to you as part of the SEO reporting
5, domain transferred to yourself
6, support and updates provided during and after this process.
*its important to stress the value of this website now as there are 98 highly optimised relevant and unique webpages indexed in Google (110 in total) Its quite new and already has attracted approximately 195 ‘real’ leads via the ecommerce function alone (emails and emailed stats from contact form not recorded here) and the site has had 12438 visitors (10986 unique visitors) that spent an average of 4 minutes 53 seconds on your website and on average looked at 5.21 pages since we created and put the site live.
As a gesture of good faith all SEO onsite initial changes are now live but more ‘tweaking / updating’ will be made over the first month of the website being paid for and live. Am willing to sign this if you want to get this agreement drafted up but would hope you could ‘trust’ us here to do the work as all the above would have been done if requested / automatically once payment received.
Google have now indexed 99 pages of your site (see attached diagram) from the previously reported number. Additionally I attach one link report showing the links Google is reporting. I hope this further reassures you of the impact of the work done so far and our intention to complete this project for you once payment received.
[Company Manager] My experience of launching a new website with a brand new domain name in a relatively small geographical location, is that with quality and ongoing SEO the site can rank on page 1 of Google within a few weeks. Our site doesn’t rank in the first 20 pages and I don’t actually know where it does rank without checking further. This goes against everything you have intimated regarding the SEO you have undertaken on the site. If you did indeed detect serious problems and asked Google to reconsider the site, you should be aware as a webmaster that it can take months if not years for a domain to recover, at this point you should have informed us giving us the option to use a new domain or continue with the old one.
I asked you to provide us with details of the alleged 52 unique back links, as you were reticent to do so despite several requests, I became suspicious as to your motivation. I accept you may not have employed Black hat SEO, if you had responded to my request for a copy of the list of unique back links that would have allayed my suspicions. You either couldn’t or wouldn’t supply the list, you can therefore understand my suspicions.
[Website Design Company] To address the concerns about SEO I shall re-iterate that the project is not performance based and the SEO work is not completed, regardless of that you clearly have doubts about our ability to deliver SEO and webmaster services even these are not the crux of your reason for objecting to pay the final invoice.
These doubts are misplaced and without spending hours educating yourself about the points raised I shall reassure you on both fronts, I hope (by attaching some recent ranking reports of websites we built and promoted). I have included one example within this report as it is relevant to your own sector.
Regarding your doubts about our webmaster knowledge and abilities you need to remember that ‘we’ identified that you had been hacked and took corrective / immediate action, you seem to suggest that as a webmaster we should know if a domain had been hacked and then cleaned that it may take months or years to recover. The fact is that Google can take weeks to respond to reconsideration request but typically they take only days (for you they took 2 days which is about average in my experience). Have no idea where you get your knowledge from but from ‘real’ life website design / seo / webmaster experience and research I don’t think querying and doubting our webmaster knowledge on a problem we identified and remedied is useful or a good use of either of our time. I do believe you were strongly opposed to having a price calculator (after it was agreed upon / developed and implemented) and see that it has been bringing in leads over the last months and has now brought in nearly 200 ‘real’ leads.
Regarding your experience of new websites and Google+ / Google Local I am not here to educate yourself but to suggest that a google local listing is not affected the website / website ranking factors is incorrect and very naïve to say the least.
I totally refuse your ‘offer’ of 25% in response to the presented invoice that was send in August but re-iterate that we reserve the right to commence legal action / debt collection process and to remove your website services (website / email / database / price calculator) if they are not fully paid for. Design is subjective I acknowledge but you had previously approved the design and function of the website and to then object to the acknowledged final payment is unprofessional and a business mistake I really hope that is not made as it will only lead to legal problems for yourselves in defending your refusal to pay the acknowledged fees for our work. I attach our terms and conditions that were previously given to your representative and agreed upon verbally.
Feel nothing is being resolved over email and would like to know your intentions regarding your new website and your current website so we can work to ensure we both get the best resolution. Your idea from the conversation we had about using the current website on another domain would be the best solution for you I think and welcome your thoughts.
[Company Manager] Thank you for your proposal, as your solicitor says it would be much better if we can come to a mutually beneficial resolution to this unfortunate situation.
I am pleased that Google have now indexed our site in the way that you say, I am concerned however that our site doesn’t show on the first 20 pages of Google. If as you say, we have all of these unique back links which are supposed to help our site on Google, why doesn’t our site show up after all these months except on the place where local businesses can get a listing free of charge.
You said in previous e-mails that you had asked Google to look at our site again after it had been hacked, you said you think they might have punished the domain so it could affect how it showed up on Google. Have they come back to you on this? If they have, what have they said? I will be happy to negotiate a settlement with you so we can both move on, before I do that I would like you to answer a couple of things on our e-mails to you. Can you send me a copy of your terms and conditions and proof that we agreed that you could take ownership of our domain name. As you said we are both wasting so much time and effort on this and I would like to move on, I look forward to receiving details as I have requested above and coming to a mutually beneficial settlement.
