It wasn’t too long ago that I wrote about a new self proclaimed “web design company” called Ripe. My major irk with this company was the language they used on their website. They claimed to be “Ireland’s leading web design company” and they even included a client list of well known brand names that they had no involvement in developing their websites at all. On top of that, they went on to instigate that people were being ripped off by web development companies charging exhorbitant prices.
The services Ripe offer are quite simple, they purchase ready made templates from www.templatemonster.com and then customise it with content etc for their clients. There is definitely a market out there for this type of service so I don’t have any issue with someone providing this type of service. At the time of writing the original article, they were charging €595 for a website.
Now it seems though, that they have found that even providing this simple service is not as cost effective as they would have liked to have thought. They have obviously realised that even creating the most basic website takes time, so they have increased the price for this service to €995.
But it’s not only this fact that (yet again) made me want to blog about them, it’s this……
“working together with our marketing team to ensure that your new vibrant website is optimised to the highest standard on all the major search engines to maximize your ranking“
Great, so they offer SEO services now. Have they heard about the issues surrounding duplicate content yet in terms of SEO?
Have they even heard of copyright law?
Compare these…..
http://dwikristianto.homeunix.org/
http://www.ripe.ie/webdesign.html
OR
http://www.webquestions.hit.bg/planning.html
http://www.ripe.ie/webdesign.html
This certainly isn’t something a reputable web design or SEO company would do…….
Hi Tom,
Thank you for your post, I understand that this must be an irritating time for you. Healthy competition is always a sore point for our competitors in an over priced market.
Your posts always seem to imply that we dupe customers by offering customised templates. Our content on our website is self explanatory, even by your standards.
The service we offer our clients is straight forward. Then go to the template section and select your template. Or go directly to our reseller template site http://www.LINKREMOVED.ie
Please outline in your next venomous post any part of our content on our website that you are having difficulty regarding the transparency of our service.
Irish consumers now have a choice of either paying €5,000 with part time web designers or €995 by ripe. As you can see in our portfolio our clients are more than willing to post positive testimonials about our product and services.
As always you are economic with the truth. You have forgotten to mention that we also provide Bespoke Websites and Dynamic websites for our customers.
As you correctly noted in your post our prices have recently changed. Our €595 price quoted earlier this year was a “Promotion offer” when ripe launched.
Ripe do not currently offer SEO services, but we try our best to optimize our customer’s websites depending on their needs and expectations. This is a standard procedure for our company.
Ripe are well aware of copyright laws, but you forgot to mention that in our page LINKREMOVED/webdesign.html we are always mention where the source comes from.
We would like to thank you for subscribing to our news LINKREMOVED/web-design-news/
Ripe are the only web design company in Ireland to quote prices on our website.
I wonder why this is…
Ripe.ie
Yet again Mr. Ripe, you fail to see the point that we are all trying to make. If you were in any other regulated industry, you would have been struck off the day you started. You are making statements that are created to mislead your customers are paying for the same service they would receive anywhere else.
So to come back at your post and I hope you READ it this time.
1. “Irish consumers now have a choice of either paying €5,000 with part time web designers or €995 by ripe.”
If Irish consumers were paying €5k, they wouldn’t get a templated design that could be possibly be used by hundreds of websites worldwide. Do you ever tell your clients that they can buy the rights to the design for the price of your bespoke design?
2. Ripe do not currently offer SEO services, but we try our best to optimize our customer’s websites depending on their needs and expectations. This is a standard procedure for our company.
It’s frightening that this is a standard procedure for a company that blatantly plagerises content from other websites and doesn’t know the impact this will have on their results in the search engines. Do I have to say more?
3. We would like to thank you for subscribing to our news http://www.ripe.ie/web-design-news/
Well we didn’t actually, don’t know what gave you that impression. I had a look at it there though and it looks like you’ve just been plagerising again.
3. Ripe are the only web design company in Ireland to quote prices on our website.
I wonder why this is…
Well to put simply, we know all know the busines a lot better and aren’t willing to give a service that won’t benefit the client in anyway. We can’t give a proper price on a project without knowing exactly what it is the client requires.
Oh, and you’re not the only one, there are plenty of other design companies that put their prices online, with similar prices to yours for bespoke designs…. do you see me complaining about any of them?
Tom
So they’re now into copyright theft?
How charming!
Maybe you could contact the people who wrote the orginal content and get them to initiate a DMCA?
It worked for me.
There’s nothing worse than people ripping off other people’s content
I wonder would that be a breach of their hosting provider’s terms of service?
Regards
Michele
To be honest, if we were working in an industry where every client was content to have a template customised by some obnoxious degenerate running a company out of his bedroom, then I would just go and work in a different industry altogether.
Thankfully “companies” like Ripe.ie are servicing clients that most of us wouldn’t touch. Ripe don’t know how to design or develop sites professionally, so they’re knocking out s**te for small companies that don’t know the difference. I really don’t see the likes of Eirom, Vodafone, GE Capital or AIB going near a company like Ripe in a million years. If he wants to rip-off small businesses who don’t know, then let the baby have his bottle. When those businesses grow and start looking for a professional service, they’ll contact the talented pros.
I agree with what you are saying Ken, but that’s not really my point.
It’s companies like this that give the rest of the industry a bad name. As I said, if solicitors were out making the claims these guys are making, there would be uproar.
I guess that’s the joys of working in an unregulated industry.
Ken - nicely put
Tom - so maybe it’s time that you developer / designers got together?
Yep, it’s something that’s been thrown around for a while - we’ll have to wait and see where it goes.
I haven’t missed your point, Tom… and I do agree with it. But let’s face it, what threat do they pose? Why not just sit by and wait for one of their clients to sue them? Better yet, why not commission them to develop a well-spec’ed out site yourself? Then sue them when they fail to deliver to achieve an agreed standard? Why not send in an RFP and see what they come back with? Why not see how much they charge for a bespoke design, conforming to standards (front-end and technical) with an enterprise level CMS and eCommerce engine? Why not have a little fun with them?
Ah no, I think it’s better to create awareness about these guys to stop poor buggars wasting their money… even if it is only a small amount…
wow,,,what a sad lot you all are..
Get on with it and stop moaning…you all have too much time on your hands.
Maybe stop charging customers €5,000 for mediocre website design may help your plight for survival.
P.S
Ripe are invited to exhibit by Eddie Hobbs “You and your money magazine” expo
On September 7th-9th. Please feel free to come along.
ripe
Ripe
1 You are not a web design company - You are a template agent selling templatemonster.com templates
and more than likly passing them off as your own creations.
Quote from your website
“Ripes goal is to streamline the whole concept of web design from start to finish by creating transparency in pricing and simplifying the entire web design process”
I cannot think of any better way to streamline a business than to buy web templates.
Your start is to purchase a web template that is in use by thousands of people world wide - Do your clients know this ?
Irelands Leading Web Design Company - What a joke
“Ripe are invited to exhibit by Eddie Hobbs “You and your money magazine” expo
On September 7th-9th. Please feel free to come along.”
See you there. I hope you’re capable of fielding questions about Web standards, accessibility, semantic markup and best practice. I also hope you have a spiel ready to defend your charging of €1,000 for something you bought for €50 and then added some content to.
[...] writes an article about Ripe’s new move into the SEO arena. I wrote an article about them recently, in which I noted that they have decided to offer SEO services. I gave my reasons why I thought [...]
I can see your point of view about ripe, they are offering a low cost alternative to a service that is offered by a lot of other companies for a much greater price. Granted they are using templates and not designing bespoke pages for clients, but so what?
I think that they have hit on a huge untapped market here, most small companies and one/two person operations do have the resources (whether inhouse technical expertise to do it themselves or cash to outsource it) needed to complete a website project.
Major companies with needs for bespoke services will still need your skills, Ripe do not seem to be going after this market. It’s not really that different to the Ryanair low cost model versus the BA higher service model.
Are you sure there is not some design snobbery in your objections to them?
BTW, I have absolutely no affiliation with Ripe at all.
Brendan, thanks for the comments - however, I don’t think you have read the post or other comments on this article.
I never had a problem with the industry they are targeting. It’s the language they use on their website that I have a problem with.
It’s nothing to do with deisgn snobbery or anything of the like. They are saying they are providing a similar service to other web design companies at a fraction of the cost, which is a totally fictitious claim. If they didn’t do that comparison, this article would never have existed.