[rglullis]

Paying a premium for "luxury" makes sense for people looking status signaling or an unique experience. Software is (most of the time) an utility. People would be willing to pay for a premium when there is tangible performance improvement. No one is going to pay more for a run-of-the-mill SaaS offering because the website was handcrafted.

[DrewADesign]

> People would be willing to pay for a premium when there is tangible performance improvement.

Developers like to assume this because it’s something they value in their own software usage, and something they know how to address. That’s not something you can generalize to non-developers. Look, feel, and features are the main difference users see between FOSS and most commercial software— not performance. In fact, FOSS performance is obviously better in many/most cases. That’s why almost the only FOSS software projects with a significant number of non-dev users are run by organizations that employ designers — Mozilla, Blender, Signal, Android, etc.

Unless you’re making a tool for developers or gamers, or the competition is intolerably bad, people rarely pay for increased performance.

[rglullis]

> people rarely pay for increased performance.

I wasn't using "Performance" in the sense of "how fast does it go?", but it the sense of "how well does it do what I need to do?"

> Mozilla, Blender, Signal, Android, etc.

First, this is selection bias. I'm sure we can find plenty of cases of software that failed even when designers were around, and I can certainly point to software/services that have horrendous "UI" but were still incredibly useful/valuable: Craigslist and Bloomberg Terminal come to mind.

Second, you are confusing cause and effect. The examples you gave only employ designers now because they were valuable even without designers working on it.

Anyway, you did not address the core point of my argument: no one is going to pay more for a run-of-the-mill SaaS offering because the website was handcrafted.