[thelist] Footer credits

At 01:51 19/06/00 +0930, you wrote:

>Alot of sites, in the footer information, contain a simple link to the
>developers of the site. It's almost an expected thing.

The visual characteristics may affect whether a client complains.  It may 
be bright and always coloured the same, or it might low-contrast and faint 
against the background.

Also whether it is just on the front page, or on every page.

"Good" and established site designers don't normally need to advertise in 
the conventional way, because these footers bring in more than enough work 
on their own. That means:

>How does the developer win in this situation? Just hope for word-of-mouth
>referrals, and forget about the credit?

- If you set a price difference between branded and unbranded work, the 
price difference should reflect the loss in potential customers.

- A customer who asks for the footer to be removed is a bit cheeky, 
considering their own company more than likely found you via the footer on 
some site they liked.

(I commented to a customer "Oh, there'll be a small link to me at the 
bottom - I hope you don't mind."  The response "of course we don't mind, 
that's how we found you!")

>I'm currently thinking of bumping up prices a bit, and offering discounts (to
>the previous price levels) for inclusion of the footer credit. However, even
>that (offering discounts in a written quote) feels kind of cheap, don't you
>think?

It may not be necessary to explicitly offer two pricing levels, and I'd 
rather not draw so much attention to it.  If the contract (or just 
proposal) given to the customer in the first place quietly mentioned that 
the site would be branded, then the customer should expect any request 
later on to remove the branding to be met with a response of "it'll cost 
you." Upping the price if a customer changes their requirements is pretty 
normal.

And lastly, if a customer asked me to remove my footer, I would grumble and 
make excuses as much as I could (without making them upset), to see if they 
back down.  But if they held their ground, I guess the final decision 
really does rest with them - including any consequences (such as higher rates).

Oliver.

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     v i b e   m e d i a    http://www.vibe.co.nz/
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