Hitchhiker: Think about it. You walk into a design store, you see designfor15bucks.com sittin' there, there's designfor14bucks.com right beside it. Which one are you gonna pick, man?
Ted: I would go for the 14.
Hitchhiker: Bingo, man, bingo. designfor14bucks.com. And we guarantee just as good a design as the designfor15bucks.com folk.
Ted: You guarantee it? That's - how do you do that?
Hitchhiker: If you're not happy with the first 14 bucks of design, we're gonna send you the extra dollar of design free. You see? That's it. That's our motto. That's where we're comin' from. That's from "A" to "B".
Ted: That's right. That's - that's good. That's good. Unless, of course, somebody comes up with designfor13bucks.com. Then you're in trouble, huh?
No no, not 13. I said 14. Nobody's coming up with 13. Who makes a web design in 13 minutes?
14's the key number here. Think about it. 14 days in a fortnight. 14 - the atomic number of silicon. 14 stations of the cross. 14, man, that's the number.
but on the web, there is no street on which to see sites next to each other.
I knew a jewellery company once which had two sites. One was all red and gold and stars and flashing things, the other was all purple and white and curvy things. The items on the purple posh looking one were 15% more expensive. Same products on each - heck, it was the same database, product description and images on each site!
Point is, this is the internet, you can do that kind of thing.
that's the obvious reply, but it fails for two reasons:
1) SERPs are not fixed; they vary from month to month, and even from day to day as new sites and pages appear and are added to the mix. This is akin to the houses on a street changing order frequently, and ruins the analogy
2) SERPs differ between terms - you and I might be adjacent for "cheap widgets" but for "budget widgets" the SERP might look entirely different. This is akin to shops having a million doors, each on different streets, and ruins the analogy.
PPC advertising on said search pages fixes the analogy. As do link directories and, erm, front pages of link sharing sites such as HN (if submitted within the proper timeframe)
I'm thinking of throwing $15 his way just to see what comes out, and see if it sparks some new ideas for me -- i.e., I'm not paying him for a polished final design for my site, I'm paying him for his thoughts (in PDF form) on how my site might look different.
I might not like his idea, and it might just offer a contrast that helps me suss out what I like about my current design. But as it was only 15 bucks (not much invested from me OR him), I won't feel bad about just chucking the results.
If I were paying someone for a real site redesign, I would lay out a lot more than $15, but I would also expect to go through whatever steps necessary to come up with a finished product that I would actually use (because if I'm paying real money, it had better not be a waste).
In any case, I'm waiting until he has some example sites online... so I can tell if he's a talented designer doing rapid/rough work (useful to me), or a weak/inexperienced designer who is just making bad designs (in which case I'll pass...).
Ted: I would go for the 14.
Hitchhiker: Bingo, man, bingo. designfor14bucks.com. And we guarantee just as good a design as the designfor15bucks.com folk.
Ted: You guarantee it? That's - how do you do that?
Hitchhiker: If you're not happy with the first 14 bucks of design, we're gonna send you the extra dollar of design free. You see? That's it. That's our motto. That's where we're comin' from. That's from "A" to "B".
Ted: That's right. That's - that's good. That's good. Unless, of course, somebody comes up with designfor13bucks.com. Then you're in trouble, huh?