Perhaps you wont when you read this. The situations where a successful company entrusts their online business with a friend or family member that claims to be a webmaster or website designer or SEO expert really frustrates us as we have seen so many situations where a good website that is highly ranked and respected go down hill in terms of visitor numbers / design / function, the following example conversation demonstrates how it can go so very wrong for you if you dont knwo what you are doing:
[Website Designers] Please find enclosed your website hosting invoice. Happy to accept cash / cheque / bank transfer (details on invoice)
[Website owner] I am such an Idiot I put the cheque and your details on the sun visor in the car as I needed to get envelopes, and forgot to send. I was going to say I will drop you in the cash as I feel Terrible about it, Sorry see you tomorrow about 1pm. As you know we are just back from Spain the weekend, Can you explain this website hosting fee to me, two years in advance, why is that? can I get it cheaper?
[Website Designers] Yes that’s the way we are doing it now, if you really don’t want to then we can do one year at a time but its actually beneficial to you to do multiple years in advance as the benefits are:
1 Less admin (emails / invoices /payments)
2 Your website will be stronger (from a search perspective) by letting us renew it in advance and for all our SEO projects we recommend clients renew multiple years in advance and have at least 10 clients that have renewed 5 years in advance
3 you get today’s hosting cost locked in for two years (even at our below average hosting costs)
4 Less chance of you forgetting to renew and your website being offline.
5 Guaranteed service for the two year period from us 🙂
6 Already you have the cheapest possible option on an award winning UK based fast server with support from us supplied for the year.
[Website owner] My Daughter has offered to take over with my website as she lives here with us and can update it on a regular basis.Works better for me. Can you please forward a back-up of the website files and we would like to change the name servers over to these [name servers listed] please. I appreciate your co-operation, and the success your company has brought for us but as she lives with us and can do website stuff and has persuaded us that she can do a good job for us and I am eager to get the site updated with the new projects that she will do for us.
[Website Designers] Happy to do this for you but I will add that any changes you want / need can be made quickly and easily for you (simply email the request to us and it would be completed same day). I would also add that the few times where we have seen a website maintained by friends and family this has led to a huge amount of problems (website corruption / errors) and resulted in one having their website numbers (unique visitors) reduce by 90% within 4 months.
Regarding the domain are you saying you want to keep the registration but not the hosting? We obviously can do what you want but there is a cost for yearly registration (£25) and for providing you your website code (zipped up for download). Here is a list of our website charges. If you don’t want to pay the 2 years hosting we are also happy to do it for 1 year for you again.
[Website owner] Regarding the Contact Form which I told you about from the beginning does,t work and never has, that i have found out from contacts on the telephone!! My daughter is a Web Designer to which I have full trust In from the work she has done for me so far. Too be honest with you from the beginning your services were not without fault and Errors and I don’t need your company to carry out anymore work for me.
Regarding the the fees for registration and the website code is quite frankly ludicrous. I want to register the domain name here & Hosting without the site going down. Please let me know your thoughts.
[Website Designers] The form was just checked (positive and negative test then with a new email address) and it works perfectly (and has always done so as it hasn’t been changed) You requested your contact form messages goes to your personal email account which we confirm it does, perhaps they are going into your junk email folder?
Sorry if you don’t think we done a perfect job but you have never said anything but good things until now and I am sure we have gone out of our way to make your website the success that it is. It appears that you are trying to complain about us in a bid to avoid your outstanding payments. We do try to investigate any problem / query and if any mis-communication / problem / fault is our own then I apologise, if you look at our portfolio we have experience of a lot of essex builders so can say we know what we are doing and if you google ‘essex builder’ you will see we have built and promoted 5 of the websites in the top 20.
Regardless of that I am happy for you to move to another website designer but the costs associated with that are non-negotiable sorry.
[Website owner] No the form doesn’t work at all. People have told me and I have tried too. Never get an email and they’re not in my junk folder. My daughter wants to know what the site is built in / with currently? Then we would like to proceed with the transfer.
[Website Designers] The form 100% works and we have re-tested / checked it yet again – it sends emails to your personal account this has been working since we created the website and hasn’t been touched. If you cant see the email when it sends then it must be a problem your end with your email. Really don’t know why you are now saying now it doesnt work but can assure you it does and always has done.
The site is written in XHTML 1.0 Transitional code using javascript and css but surely if your daughter is a website designer she could see this but if you are sure you want to transfer it then we will zip up your website code and transfer to you immediately you pay the attached invoice
[Website owner] I do not appreciate you calling me a Liar or treating me like an Idiot. I have no need for this message service really anyway but I can assure you it Has Never Worked! If you tested it today, Where are the messages then? Please send through the Zip File, and when I receive it I will transfer the Monies.
[Website Designers] Not calling you a liar but it was tested when created and it worked it was tested when you questioned it the other day and it worked and tested today and it worked – so it must be your email. We have tested it completely 3 times now so we are 100% sure about this. We have over 700 websites and over 1400 email addresses and have confidence about this form. You have send me a image of your inbox but we haven’t sent you any message from the form as we changed the email address to one of our ones to test it so we know it works. We are worried that your inexperience and your Daughter’s lack of knowledge about website design will harm your website and your business so have your best interest at heart.
We will transfer website and zip up the website code on receipt of funds and that will close the account with your website.
[Website owner] Please can you send over the relevant files for the website? We also need to be able to upload the edited files to the server, we need to also transfer the domain name to our new hosting. Please can you do this. Can you please confirm your bank details are the same before I make payment?
[Website Designers] Payment received the Nameservers have been updated and website code attached. You now need to choose to keep the registration with ourselves or transfer that to yourself and if you want to transfer that to yourself you need to give me your IPS tag
[Website owner] I would like to transfer that too. The IP Address is [ip address given]
[Website Designers] Noticed your website is still down after we update the nameservers, is everything ok with it? Not sure you understand me, do you want to transfer the domain to yourself or for us to update the ip address on your domain – it can be set on your domain and you will continue to get a charge from ourselves. Your nameservers were changed the other day when we emailed you.
[Website owner] What did you update the name servers to? As I hadn’t given them to you until an hour agO? I would like you to transfer the domain to me, I have done this plenty of times and it hasn’t been this difficult. The site shouldn’t be down from your end but I cannot update it until you transfer the domain to me.
[Website Designers] Thanks for email but we were sent the nameservers previously and these were updated on the 8th when I confirmed that action via email and we send you the website code. For reference they were set to [name servers].
It’s a bit strange that that you think the website shouldn’t be down ‘my end’ after we have changed the nameservers. Changing the nameservers now makes the website under your control and you should have uploaded your code ready for this change of nameservers. It makes me question what you think / expect and want us to do now, we have done exactly what we have been asked and will continue to do what we are asked but now I still don’t understand what you want me to do with the IP address as you now have (or should have) control of the website via your hosting company. Happy to help further if needed.
[Website owner] You didn’t know the name servers until today so you wouldn’t have had anything to change them too but they are right now so that’s all that matters. So have we cleared up everything now? We will not receive any more invoices from you?
[Website Designers] We are pretty puzzled and bemused by your emails, why would you think we didn’t know the nameservers? we didn’t ‘guess them’ you send us the nameservers via email previously and they were set on the 8th October once you paid the invoice, we then confirmed this via email on the 8th October.
Cleared everything up? As I keep pointing out you have the choice to transfer or not and if you want to stay with us you will be invoiced yearly unless you transfer the website away and await your instruction on that, if you want it to happen.
[Website owner] You must have ‘guessed them’ as I only sent them to you a couple of hours ago! I’d made it very very clear that we don’t want to keep the domain with you so please can we proceed with transferring over the domain.
[Website Designers] How could I guess them? You sent them to me previously please check your email, we are good but we cant ‘guess’ your nameservers.
We have also made it very clear that we am happy to proceed with the transfer and await your instruction on this (hint: you need to give me a code called an IPS Tag as you have a .co.uk domain) But as you said you have done this ‘plenty of times’ and you are a website designer you would know that wouldn’t you?
[Website owner] Which code? I have already given you the IPS tag that you asked for?
[Website Designers] No ips tag has been received please resend
[Website Owner] The IP Address is (ip address given]
[Website Designers] Do you know the difference between IP address and IPS tag? we need the IPS tag to transfer the domain that you want transferred.
[eventually the IPS tag was provided] big sigh of relief 🙂
We have requested the IPS tag gets updated so should be updated tomorrow afternoon at the latest Good luck with the website as I think you may need it, we are always here if you need help and advice.