Ask HN: Web design a depreciating asset? High-priced web design seems like a bad investment to me. Decent designers ask a minimum of $100/hr but no designer wants to be held accountable or be compensated on the basis of driving actual business results. More often than not a company will spend $50,000 on a web design and get 0 business results. Then the design itself becomes outdated over time and is less and less valuable for "credibility" each month. Is design just another depreciating asset? |
Some companies will cash in with great (good is not enough) and distinct design, others will not - they just need a marketer and a $10 bootstrap theme. Some need both.
Everywhere we read comments like: "Ugly converts better". This really means that marketing strategies convert better than good design separately, not necessarily that ugly is better. By the other hand - normally - ugly design decreases your desirability and trustability/credibility. Imagine Stripe launching with the old Paypal design or Apple without their design.
A big (huge) problem for designers is that in all artistic careers the barriers to enter the market are very low. Give a design assignment to a random person. Most people would make it, probably with low quality but the work would be done. This lowers the value of average to good professional designers as their work is not very distinct from the hobbyist work. Only great or "lucky" designers will make a confortable living. By the other side an average technical worker will make a confortable living from it.
Another problem is that artistic work is easy to copy: very soon your great design will not be distinct anymore. Time to start from zero again..
Pursuing an artistic career is great for your soul but terrible for your pockets. Along the line most give up, the "stubborn" survive and only few "hit a lottery ticket" and make a confortable living from it.
The depreciated web designers will ignore this advice.
In that case, you're spending way too much money on consultants with no track record. You need to do a better job of choosing a team that can get you legitimate results.
I dont care for most if todays web designs. I want something thatbworks well and am less concerned with what it looks like.
Ask a web designer how they analyze their own log files. I expect most dont because they dont know what that is.