In my business I continually come across cases where businesses try to get websites developed on the cheap. The following true story shows what can happen. The business owner concerned ended up considerably out of pocket….
I was recently studying some web statistics on behalf of a client who we developed a website for a couple of years ago. He had asked me to analyze current performance for him with a view to upgrading the site.
To my surprise and puzzlement, I noticed that the stats were reporting traffic from a page with a completely different domain name.
I immediately typed the domain name into my browser and was presented with a website that looked remarkably similar to that of my client. By now you’ve probably guessed what happened. My client’s site had been cloned and then the look of it changed slightly to make it look like a new site. To add insult to injury, they’d even left my client’s stats code embedded in it!
When I finally tracked down the owner of the site, he was most apologetic and took the site down immediately. It transpired that it had been written by a friend of a friend and he had no idea what had been done.
The moral of this story is clear. If you need a website, go to a reputable web designer. I may cost a little bit more but you won’t get ripped off like the site owner in this story. He paid for a website that had to be scrapped.
