On today’s episode of the Engaging Marketeer podcast, I’m afraid I’ve got a bit of a rant. It’s something that has massively annoyed me this week and it’s something that I do see happening a lot within my industry, unfortunately.
I spoke to a potential client this week who had an issue with a website that they had designed by a professional agency a few years ago, which then got them into a legal battle with a competitor. What happened was: this client paid for a design agency to design them a website, and then a competitor of theirs claimed that the website they’d had designed was a stolen copy of their website – the design, the images, the layout and even some of the content was copied from theirs. They sent them a solicitors letter saying that they needed to get their new website redesigned, otherwise they were effectively going to be taking legal action against them.
Naturally, this is something that, as a business, if you received this you would be quite worried. When I heard this story, I knew instantly what the problem was, and I really wished I’d known this business back then. What had happened was, rather than do the website from scratch, which you would expect web designers to do, they’d used what’s called a premium website theme – basically a paid theme that you buy from a website. Now there’s nothing wrong with that. I am not slating anybody that does that, but you could be open that that’s what you’re doing. The most important thing is, if you do that, then there is a very strong likelihood that other people within your industry will have a website that looks very similar to yours, because it is an off-the-shelf theme.
Now, where this has gone horrifically wrong is: the other company that sent this guy a solicitor’s letter threatening legal action if he didn’t get his website changed, had also had a web designer that had done this same thing. They obviously weren’t aware of it and the solicitor they used wasn’t aware of it. So, you’ve got company A being threatened by company B, saying you’ve copied our website, we’re going to sue you. Whereas company B, just like company A, used a web designer that downloaded a premium theme online and customized it a little bit to make their website! Had I known this guy at the time, I could have told him quite frankly to go back to that solicitor and say “Your client doesn’t own this design, it’s off the shelf. Who the hell do you think you are?”
There’s no case to answer here. The thing that really annoys me is that this guy then ended up paying to have his website redesigned because he thought that his web designer had copied this other client’s website, when they hadn’t they both used the same theme and, if they actually looked around, they probably would have find probably would have found 10, 20, 30, 100, maybe even a thousand other businesses in their industry with this exact same design. What are you going to do, sue all of them? So, this poor guy paid for a web design, thinking it was going to be bespoke and unique to his business. He then got a solicitors letter from somebody else saying you’ve copied our web design, you need to change it or we’re going to sue you. He then had to pay to get it redesigned, even though he didn’t really have to.
That is the problem here. If, as a web designer, you’re going to use these downloadable themes, there’s nothing wrong with that at all. But tell the client that’s what you’re doing. That’s why the website’s a bit cheaper than it perhaps otherwise would be. Whatever you do, don’t allow your client to think it’s bespoke or unique to them, so that they then go and have to send a solicitors letter to someone and let them look foolish. It’s a whole mess that comes out of our industry because people are doing things that they’re not telling the clients, and the clients think they’ve got something unique, when they haven’t. I like arguing with solicitors because, quite frankly, solicitors don’t know this industry, they just think they do. I would love to have got involved in that argument at the time, but unfortunately, they didn’t know me then.
If you’re seeing this and you’re looking for help on this subject – maybe somebody has sent you a solicitors letter saying that you you’ve copied their website or your web designers copied their website – then maybe this is the reason. Maybe you haven’t copied their website. Maybe you are both using the same premium theme that has been downloaded and installed and customized. If that is the case, then please reach out to me. I love to get involved in arguments with solicitors, it’s a hobby. Let’s not have another business struggling because they’ve had to pay to get a website redesigned that they otherwise shouldn’t have had to do because a solicitor has just acted overly aggressively.
Thank you for your time. It was slightly less rant-y than I was expecting. For more of this content, make sure you subscribe to the Engaging Marketeer podcast on YouTube and the relevant podcast platforms.
