Protecting Your Configurator Site
- Elaine Andersen
We occasionally hear of companies or individuals who use a client’s site to generate designs or pricing to undersell our client or take advantage of our software without paying for their own IdeaRoom subscription. We take these violations of our intellectual property very seriously, and we are continually evaluating ways to help our clients protect their investment in IdeaRoom while still providing an effective buying experience for their customers.
Using software without a proper license constitutes copyright infringement and can result in costly penalties. Under U.S. law, a company that has willfully infringed upon software copyrights can incur up to a $150,000 penalty (per incident) in damages, plus attorney fees. Businesses or individuals who violate the terms and conditions of your website unlawfully are subject to these penalties. As a business owner, you are allowed to report violations of these laws and pursue legal remedies.
In addition to pursing legal remedies, you are encouraged to take advantage of several client protection features available with IdeaRoom. To enable these on your IdeaRoom Professional site, email support@idearoominc.com.
The Client Protection Features below require an IdeaRoom Professional subscription.
Explicit Terms and Conditions
Making IdeaRoom visible and easily accessible on your website is important to generate the best possible engagement of all potential customers. This also means it is available for those who would use your site in violation of your terms and conditions.
To help ensure those who are using IdeaRoom intend to work with you, we recommend that you require an explicit acknowledgement of your terms and conditions prior to using the site or saving a design:
This feature requires the customer to click the checkbox prior to designing a building or if you prefer, prior to saving or submitting a quote.
We recommend that as a companion to this checkbox, you include on your website detailed Terms and Conditions that expressly prohibit using any parts of your website and your IdeaRoom site for any other purpose than designing and buying a building from your company.
Having both the checkbox and the Terms and Conditions on your website gives you a clear legal foundation upon which to build a copyright infringement case, if you decide to pursue legal damages.
Often the mere presence of strong legal language is enough to deter someone from putting themself in legal jeopardy, achieving your objective with no further action required.
Watermarks
In addition to requiring explicit acknowledgement of your terms and conditions, you can add a visual watermark to your configurator to deter unlawful usage. A watermark places your logo visibly within the frame of the building, making your copyright ownership clear.
In IdeaRoom, watermarks are designed to be a deterrent for unlawful usage of your sites, while not degrading the overall customer experience and visuals of your buildings. However, the ability of watermarks to prevent someone from using your site or assets illegally is naturally limited.
The IdeaRoom watermark feature can be added to the left, right, or bottom plane of the building, as shown:
Right Watermark | Left Watermark | Ground Plane |
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It may also be centered horizontally across the front of the building. When watermarks are visible on your IdeaRoom site, they will also be included on the images in your emails and quotes:
Detecting IP Addresses
All saved designs are available using SalesView, the administrative tool for your IdeaRoom site. Included in the properties of a saved design is the IP address of the computer where the design was saved:
In SalesView, you can search on IP Address to find all saves that originated from that computer.
If you find that many saves are coming from a single unidentified IP address, you can investigate the company or business that owns that computer using some basic Google searches. If you can identify the individual and verify that they are using it in a way that violates your terms and conditions, you may choose to pursue a legal remedy.
Sending a clear cease and desist letter may resolve the issue without any further action. You do not need an attorney to write or send the cease and desist letter.
Adjust the Visibility of your Pricing
The most effective way to sell on the internet is to give your potential customers access to all the information they need to make a decision without requiring them to disclose personal information (such as an email address or phone number). As soon as you require personal information, you will lose a percentage of prospective customers that might otherwise choose to buy.
How much something costs is a critical piece to the decision making process, so making pricing available on your IdeaRoom site is the most effective use of our service. However, just like any content on your website, this also means your pricing is available to your competitors. If you find that the number of customers you gain by having full transparency of pricing is fewer than the customers you lose to your competitors because pricing is available on your site, you may consider adjusting the visibility of pricing within IdeaRoom.
We have the following options for adjusting the pricing visibility on your site using the SalesView Sites tab:
Detailed. Full pricing visibility (default).
Summarized. Only the totals are shown in the Your Estimate tab and email. Line items are shown without individual prices.
Summarized Range. The estimate is a range, not an explicit price. Line items are shown without individual prices. If this option is selected, you will be prompted for a range percentage.
Summarized (hide line items). Only totals are shown in the Your Estimate tab and emails. No line items are shown.
Summarized Range (hide line items). Only an estimate is shown in the Your Estimate tab and emails. No line items are shown. If this option is selected, you will be prompted for a range percentage.
Summarized (protected line items). Estimated pricing with line items are shown only when a dealer or sales rep is logged into Sales Tools. Emails sent when logged in will include the pricing information.
Protected. Full details and pricing are shown only when a dealer or sales rep is logged into Sales Tools. Emails sent when logged in will include the pricing information.
Protected Range. An estimate is shown only when a dealer or sales rep is logged into Sales Tools. Emails sent when logged in will include the estimate. If this option is selected, you will be prompted for a range percentage.
Hidden. No pricing information will be shown online or in emails.
Hidden (site summarized emails) - Pricing is completely hidden on the website. But totals and line items without pricing are shown on the email and the total estimate is shown in SalesView.
Hidden (site summarized hide line items email) - Pricing is completely hidden on the website. But totals only (no line items) are shown in the email. The total estimate is shown in SalesView.
Summarized | Summarized w/o Line Items | Protected | Hidden |
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Other Approaches to Protecting Your Site
The nature of e-commerce makes it nearly impossible to lock down usage of your website and IdeaRoom site to only real customers with real intent to buy. Of course, your competitive advantage is not limited to your IdeaRoom site. Your competitive advantage is also your product, your sales team, your practices, your reputation, and your customer service.
If you find that the only way to ensure your ROI for IdeaRoom is to deter any competitive exposure, you can set up a password-protected site that prevents any customer from using IdeaRoom until they have registered and received approval. This will require work by you and your website site developer. IdeaRoom must be set up in embedded mode on a page on your website. Then, all access to this page must be restricted behind a secure log-in that you manage.
Links within emails should then also require a log-in, so we can work with you to ensure that links within emails are directed to your website, rather than to IdeaRoom directly. Creating this architecture may require additional setup fees, depending on how much work is required by the IdeaRoom Dev Support team. We would also recommend that you remove any capabilities for printing from IdeaRoom, as printed copies of any document is the most likely source for compromised security.
While we understand clients desire protect to their IdeaRoom investment, this level of security would dramatically reduce the effectiveness of IdeaRoom as an e-commerce platform, so we would rarely recommend this approach.