Spamming and lying plain and simple.
Ripe claim to be “Ireland’s Leading Web Design Company”…. Ok. By what measure?
Their >own website is a template Monster one.
They haven’t won any awards.
Although they claim their site is XHTML 1.0 Transitional it isn’t. If you’re going to claim to be a leading web design company I’d have thought validating your site would be a good start.. But what would I know ….
From an SEO perspective a quick glance at the page titles tells you how expert they really are.
Now don’t get me wrong.. I have no issue with competition, but selling yourself as something that you obviously aren’t is a bit much.
When you couple that with the forum spam that they’ve been posting all over the place over the last few days you would have to ask yourself…
So what have other people being saying?
Over on boards.ie they spammed a couple of threads, while on IWF they came up a couple of times
Tom Doyle ripped into them, however, and did some digging into their spurious claims… They’re making the same kind of claims that I see in our sector regularly.
“You’re all being ripped off”
“You shouldn’t pay more than X” (where X is probably below cost if you have staff to pay)
But what really gets me is the claim to be “Ireland’s leading web design company”.
I know a lot of web designers and developers who run rings around these guys, but they’d never dream of making that kind of claim
I guess time will tell, but if past experience is anything to go by, they won’t last
Michele Neylon :: Pensieri
Technology, Marketing, Domains, Thoughts
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I totally agree. Claiming they are designers is an outright lie. We’ll see how they do when their PPC budget runs out.
Look at this page ->
http://www.ripe.ie/iframe_1.html
Just before the text “Warren explains…” there are a load of wwwwwwwwwwwwwwww’s to try and keep the text/image aligned. 😀
In fairness to Ripe, they are not claiming to be standards compliant or tout their semantic markup.
Thanks guys for the links,this is what the web industry needed.Discussion on pricing and standards for all design companies.
Customers now have a choice,Do they want to pay 3k for a five page standard website or €595 from ripe for the same project using personalised templates.
Our website could not be more clear for our customers.instead of you guys posting venomours remarks about us,,why not post your own web sites and let consumers decide.
Ripe
Thanks for your comments.
To start with I am NOT a designer, so I have no direct interest in how you dupe people with your claims, however, as I said in my post it’s your claims that bother me. You are NOT Ireland’s leading anything unless “chancer” is your preferred label
Michele
we lead by example michele
OK, Michele, forgive me for posting this here. IM me if it’s not appropriate.
Ripe, I have a problem also with your claims. Not your service. You mention on your site the following. (Forgive the limited formatting)
“The average site on the internet has about five pages of content and will only take two days to complete.”
That is absolutely bogus. Where are you getting that statistic?
“At ripe our prices are around 60 % cheaper than our competitors”
Where are you getting that information? WHO exactly are your competitors?
“unlike ripe many of our competitors like to charge thousands of Euros for these standard projects”
Taking the high and mighty road here? How do you know that? How would you define a standard project? We charge on a per project basis, never hourly. If its a templatemonster template they require, We certainly would not charge such an extortionate markup. I think it should be more along the lines of:
“Unlike ripe…our competitors charge based on individual needs analysis, project management, unique branding and other technical and accessibility things we don’t feel the need to explain to you (If indeed we can). Ripe buy your design from somewhere else called templatemonster.com for about 40 Euros. Many other websites will look exactly the same as yours, but you don’t care do you? Good, just send us 12-15 times the price of the template and we’ll add your photos and opening hours for you even though the instructions on templatemonster detail this exactly”.
“The second option is building your website from scratch. This option will allow you greater flexibility in design and format but the process will take slightly longer and cost more.”
Hmmm, how much more?
And “Irelands Leading Web Design Company”…. that’s the lie that’s getting everyone stirred up.
Unlike Michele, I DO have a direct interest in how you dupe customers. And trust me, this is NOT what the web industry needs.
“Ireland’s leading web design company” is, of course, a flat-out lie, but then they don’t really say what metric they’re using. They could pass it off as a non-lie by saying that they meant leading in terms of made-up clients, or something.
The thing that mystifies me, really, is the name. It’s hardly searchable; searching for ‘ripe’ will, of course, get you RIPE.
And I made sure to use “nofollow” on all links in the body of my post, so they won’t get any link love
michele (no web site address given)
Robert Synnott (no web site address given)
Dave Davis (no web site address given)
steviewdr (no web site address given)
Could all the above web design guru’s post their own design companies address when posting remarks.This will enable everyone to compare their outstanding comments with their work.
Ripe
I already told you categorically that I wasn’t a designer. Maybe you are having difficulty understanding my post or followup comments. The main issue everyone has with you is your spurious claims.
Michele
taken from the site
“Ripe will then launch your new site for free on Irelands Internet” – so where is it?
Also
“The reason ripe can guarantee unbeatable prices to all our customers is due to the structures we have in place to speed up the entire design procedure” – yeah modifying templates does not take that long either 🙂 Therefore I wonder – are the templates they use “unique” or are you going to see clones of sites springing up all over the place.
Ok, ive been reading this discussion across some blogs, and the responses that ripe is providing seem exactly the same across all blogs:
From Tom Doyle’s blog:
Anthony (no web site address given)
Robert Synnott (no web site address given)
Dave Davis (no web site address given)
Darren(no web site address given)
Tom Doyle(no web site address given)
Could all the above web design guru’s post their own design companies address when posting remarks.This will enable everyone to compare their outstanding comments with their work.
From the above blog
michele (no web site address given)
Robert Synnott (no web site address given)
Dave Davis (no web site address given)
steviewdr (no web site address given)
Could all the above web design guru’s post their own design companies address when posting remarks.This will enable everyone to compare their outstanding comments with their work.
Perchance is the person attempting to raise awareness of their dodgy product via all of the commentary going on, it seems so…
BTW Im not a designer by profession, im a tech guy with a personal interest in design and general fairness, and my website is http://www.faolain.net, have a look if you want, if you (ripe) sign up to anything on it you will receive donkey porn 🙂
With all due respect, there is a field in the comment form clearly marked for this.
Ok guys its getting a bit nasty on the boards now,so ripe will sign out now.
Final Comment
What we find astonishing is the rubbish that you guys are posting.
As well as personalising templates for customers, ripe also design projects from scratch.Also available are e-commerce websites for only XXX.
“All ripe customers have a choice of two design options. The first is choosing a generic template to suit your companies’ requirements. This method is fast and cost efficient. The second option is building your website from scratch. This option will allow you greater flexibility in design and format but the process will take slightly longer and cost more.”
Now if their is any part of this parargraph that you are having difficulty with
in relation to our design options for our customers email us.
So stop your whimpering and paddywacking and maybe one day invest in having your own web design site where customers can put a face to the venomous comments.
EDITED TO REMOVE LINKS AND ADS. WANT AN AD HERE? YOU’LL NEED TO PAY FOR IT
Ripe
I’ve removed pricing etc., from your last comment,as per my comment policy you should pay me if you want to advertise your services.
Regarding your comments – don’t forget you were the one who started spamming forums…
Michele
REMOVED AS YOU OBVIOUSLY CAN’T READ
Oh no. No, you didn’t. A blatant disregard for Micheles request.
“michele (no web site address given)
Robert Synnott (no web site address given)
Dave Davis (no web site address given)
steviewdr (no web site address given)
Could all the above web design guru’s post their own design companies address when posting remarks.This will enable everyone to compare their outstanding comments with their work. ”
I’m not a web designer. I don’t have or work for a web design company.
Now, in all seriousness, why would anyone hire a ‘web designer’ who apparently doesn’t know how apostrophes work? You wanted to say “gurus”.
Ripe,
I’ve probably seen more websites that you ever will and there is very little to distinguish yours from the millions of brochureware sites on the web. What is your company’s unique selling proposition? Would a prospective client be dealing with a fully fledged web development company or a single individual who is doing everything from graphics to css? There are many such webdev firms targeting the brochureware end of the market. There was even a thread about it on the Enterprise Ireland mailing list a while ago.
For the record, I am not a web design guru but I have a few books on it.
He’s a gas man. Writes like he’s 13. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. In fairness to him though, he’s just filling an obvious gap in the market. He’s the web equivalent of the guys who call to my door offering to “do the driveway”.