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My mother has a psychology practice and wanted to update her 20 year old website. I did the first few prompts (single static page, basically a brochure, don’t

My mother has a psychology practice and wanted to update her 20 year old website. I did the first few prompts (single static page, basically a brochure, don’t worry about hosting) into ChatGPT to get her started and a few days later she sent me a .zip which I uploaded. Only took a while because she wasn’t paying for ChatGPT so had to wait for the free limit to reset quite a few times. But overall it was super empowering for her.

Wowfunhappy 13d ago
Not that I'm in favor of spending money unnecessarily, but I find it kind of surprising she didn't just spend the $20, given this was a website for her professional money-making business.
- thaumasiotes 13d ago
  Does updating the website bring in additional money?
  - jonathanlydall 13d ago
    Only minimally, after 20 years of practicing word of mouth does 99% of the work.
  - Wowfunhappy 13d ago
    Presumably a nicer website could lead to more customers. Otherwise why update the website at all?
    - thaumasiotes 13d ago
      > Otherwise why update the website at all? Because you have it.
    - bayindirh 13d ago
      Changing office address? New qualifications? Better copy?
      - bryanrasmussen 13d ago
        so. if website does not lead to customers - why do any of that? actually why have website? Once you say yes to website you imply having one is somehow valuable, so in that case why not spend 20 dollars.
        bayindirh 13d ago
        Just because websites can exist. Sometimes things are done for fun, or just for the sake of it. This perspective declares all the personal websites of people worthless, however, they are priceless. Because people's curiosity and creativity is priceless as well. Similarly, why create art and share it around if it doesn't bring in customers? Why make music, take photos, dance? Do we live to serve customers, or do customers' existence serve us to live a better life? Questions, questions...
        Wowfunhappy 13d ago
        Of course, those are all great reasons to make a website. But this website was for a woman's psychology practice. I don't imagine she made it for fun or to express her creativity. The purpose of a psychology practice's website is to tell people about your psychology practice, so they will either sign up ($) or find information they need more easily (higher satisfaction → $). If OP's mother runs a donation-funded pro-bono psychology practice then you can translate the dollar signs to units of happiness or whatever (which I would imagine is her real goal regardless). This person is spending her time to create the website (with ChatGPT's help). How much is that time worth? Of course when it's your business hourly pay is tricky, but I imagine she values her time highly enough that $20 is not worth very much of it.
        bayindirh 13d ago
        I know an accountant, who has a respectable amount of customers and enough income to live comfortably. Their company has a website which only provides a logo, address and contact information, in a 23 line HTML file, complete with all the white space. If their company can do well with this website, her psychology practice can do as well. Some of the best services I got was from professionals with no or mundane online presence. Instead, their abilities and expertise moved them to the top in their respective fields, and the whole community knows how and when to reach them. So, maybe a shiny website is not a hard-requirement for a good psychology practice, IDK. So, the thing is, maybe this was her way to explore new things and decompress while doing some mundane thing from her perspective for free. Sometimes it's not that $20 which you can pay without any negative side-effects, but the desire to see how far the thing goes without the token, or just because you don't feel any urgency to do the task, so that $20 looks like an unnecessary waste. I have been in both places.
    - ElProlactin 13d ago
      > Presumably a nicer website could lead to more customers. It depends what "nicer" means. Paying a web designer/developer to create a bespoke website doesn't guarantee that said website will have a better UI/UX and, most importantly, "convert" at a higher rate. Not every web designer/developer understands IA, content, performance optimization, etc. The popular AI tools produce websites that are clearly AI-produced if you know the patterns, but that doesn't mean they can't be usable and quite effective at converting. And if you have a bit of skill with prompting, AI can be really good at working through performance bottlenecks, etc.
    - jonathanlydall 13d ago
      She had no shortage of patients from word of mouth, but old website was minor liability in its datedness potentially putting off prospective patients. People already knew about her and website is essentially just “this is what I do, where I am and how you can contact me”.
      - the_other 13d ago
        > but old website was minor liability in its datedness potentially putting off prospective patients. Anecdata: I’d be more likely to use the services of a company with a good, old-style site than a bad, new style site. Things like pop-overs, text that animates in as you scroll, banner images that take up most of the “abive the fold” are all red flags for me. Oh, and the most common one: “Read more”. A modern site that avoids all those can be great. But those are rare, IMO.
        jonathanlydall 13d ago
        The new web page (since it's a single page website now) is also mobile friendly and intentionally not "flashy". Another goal with the website I didn't note before is that its "quality" or "style" should generally not be consciously noticed, it shouldn't stand out for any bad reasons, people see it, get a good impression, do what they were looking to do with ease, success. I got this philosophy from my interior designer (not to be confused with decorator) brother who told me how when he's done a good job, no one notices, but when he's done a bad job then people either almost instantly notice or simply feel uncomfortable without necessarily being able to exactly identify why, e.g. first impression of your hotel room should instantly be "feels nice" (and same with a public space in a building) and then you remain feeling comfortable throughout because the space is actually big enough for its purpose and laid out practically.
    - archagon 12d ago
      Speaking for myself, I would not touch any professional practice sporting a slopcoded website with a ten-foot pole.
  - King-Aaron 13d ago
    There is an entire industry built around this premise, yes.
  - deleted 13d ago
    [deleted]
- georgemcbay 13d ago
  > I find it kind of surprising she didn't just spend the $20 If it because the poster's mother dislikes the idea of subscriptions, then I totally get it. (Though I admit I have no idea if this has anything to do with the poster's mother's decision.) I'll go out of my way as much as I can to avoid signing up for anything that is a subscription because of how horrible the entire corporate world has abused subscription dark patterns over the past couple of decades. These days just the packaging of anything into a subscription makes me assume there is intent to screw people out of money. While signing up for LLM usage is fairly low risk as far as subscription lock-in goes, someone non-technical might not be aware of that fact.
  - jonathanlydall 13d ago
    See my more detailed sibling comment, but was more that the scope and urgency were so small that it wasn’t worth the hassle to set up the subscription and have to cancel it after.
  - cheesecakegood 13d ago
    I do get the sentiment for sure. Personally though? I’ve made peace with the fact that I might have a 20/month subscription indefinitely. It’s slowly working its way towards being like a cell phone or Internet bill, although there’s reason to hope that the amount might decrease over time eventually.
- deleted 13d ago
  [deleted]
- jonathanlydall 13d ago
  Wow, it’s fascinating after waking up to see all this conjecture here on why she didn’t pay for the subscription. The short version, wasn’t for wanting to save money, but simply a matter of it not being worth the hassle to any of us to subscribe and then later cancel for such a small scope of work. If it was too frustrating I would have let her use my Claude sub. Also, she’d been meaning to have it updated for years, a few extra days was nothing. She did short sessions in spare time between other things, the wait between was maybe a little frustrating, but also gave the benefit that she would have had better clarity develop between sessions. Website is not key to her business where it’s mostly word of mouth at this point (she’s been practicing for >20 years). Goals of website were: - Findable in Google by “psychologist/therapist <area name>” (she also has a Google. Business profile so is findable on Google Maps). - Minimal copy. A comforting sentence or two to state philosophy, qualifications, therapy types offered, where located, how to contact. - Doesn’t feel dated. Essentially it’s meant to complement the word of mouth aspect and maybe bring in the occasional completely new patient.
  - Wowfunhappy 12d ago
    Not that it matters for anything—she got the work done on the free plan and was happy—but my strategy in this situation is always to subscribe and immediately cancel. The cancellation does not actually take effect until the end of your billing period. (Otherwise they'd have to refund you.) In my head, I'm not really buying a subscription, I'm just buying one month of access. I can always decide to buy another month if I want to, but it will never be automatic.
- kakacik 13d ago
  There is an ocean sized gap for free stuff and something costing something, anything (not that this had to be the case). Person not understanding this should not work in marketing, or even claim they understand human psychology.

Wowfunhappy 13d ago

Not that I'm in favor of spending money unnecessarily, but I find it kind of surprising she didn't just spend the $20, given this was a website for her professional money-making business.

thaumasiotes 13d ago
Does updating the website bring in additional money?
- jonathanlydall 13d ago
  Only minimally, after 20 years of practicing word of mouth does 99% of the work.
- Wowfunhappy 13d ago
  Presumably a nicer website could lead to more customers. Otherwise why update the website at all?
  - thaumasiotes 13d ago
    > Otherwise why update the website at all? Because you have it.
  - bayindirh 13d ago
    Changing office address? New qualifications? Better copy?
    - bryanrasmussen 13d ago
      so. if website does not lead to customers - why do any of that? actually why have website? Once you say yes to website you imply having one is somehow valuable, so in that case why not spend 20 dollars.
      - bayindirh 13d ago
        Just because websites can exist. Sometimes things are done for fun, or just for the sake of it. This perspective declares all the personal websites of people worthless, however, they are priceless. Because people's curiosity and creativity is priceless as well. Similarly, why create art and share it around if it doesn't bring in customers? Why make music, take photos, dance? Do we live to serve customers, or do customers' existence serve us to live a better life? Questions, questions...
        Wowfunhappy 13d ago
        Of course, those are all great reasons to make a website. But this website was for a woman's psychology practice. I don't imagine she made it for fun or to express her creativity. The purpose of a psychology practice's website is to tell people about your psychology practice, so they will either sign up ($) or find information they need more easily (higher satisfaction → $). If OP's mother runs a donation-funded pro-bono psychology practice then you can translate the dollar signs to units of happiness or whatever (which I would imagine is her real goal regardless). This person is spending her time to create the website (with ChatGPT's help). How much is that time worth? Of course when it's your business hourly pay is tricky, but I imagine she values her time highly enough that $20 is not worth very much of it.
        bayindirh 13d ago
        I know an accountant, who has a respectable amount of customers and enough income to live comfortably. Their company has a website which only provides a logo, address and contact information, in a 23 line HTML file, complete with all the white space. If their company can do well with this website, her psychology practice can do as well. Some of the best services I got was from professionals with no or mundane online presence. Instead, their abilities and expertise moved them to the top in their respective fields, and the whole community knows how and when to reach them. So, maybe a shiny website is not a hard-requirement for a good psychology practice, IDK. So, the thing is, maybe this was her way to explore new things and decompress while doing some mundane thing from her perspective for free. Sometimes it's not that $20 which you can pay without any negative side-effects, but the desire to see how far the thing goes without the token, or just because you don't feel any urgency to do the task, so that $20 looks like an unnecessary waste. I have been in both places.
  - ElProlactin 13d ago
    > Presumably a nicer website could lead to more customers. It depends what "nicer" means. Paying a web designer/developer to create a bespoke website doesn't guarantee that said website will have a better UI/UX and, most importantly, "convert" at a higher rate. Not every web designer/developer understands IA, content, performance optimization, etc. The popular AI tools produce websites that are clearly AI-produced if you know the patterns, but that doesn't mean they can't be usable and quite effective at converting. And if you have a bit of skill with prompting, AI can be really good at working through performance bottlenecks, etc.
  - jonathanlydall 13d ago
    She had no shortage of patients from word of mouth, but old website was minor liability in its datedness potentially putting off prospective patients. People already knew about her and website is essentially just “this is what I do, where I am and how you can contact me”.
    - the_other 13d ago
      > but old website was minor liability in its datedness potentially putting off prospective patients. Anecdata: I’d be more likely to use the services of a company with a good, old-style site than a bad, new style site. Things like pop-overs, text that animates in as you scroll, banner images that take up most of the “abive the fold” are all red flags for me. Oh, and the most common one: “Read more”. A modern site that avoids all those can be great. But those are rare, IMO.
      - jonathanlydall 13d ago
        The new web page (since it's a single page website now) is also mobile friendly and intentionally not "flashy". Another goal with the website I didn't note before is that its "quality" or "style" should generally not be consciously noticed, it shouldn't stand out for any bad reasons, people see it, get a good impression, do what they were looking to do with ease, success. I got this philosophy from my interior designer (not to be confused with decorator) brother who told me how when he's done a good job, no one notices, but when he's done a bad job then people either almost instantly notice or simply feel uncomfortable without necessarily being able to exactly identify why, e.g. first impression of your hotel room should instantly be "feels nice" (and same with a public space in a building) and then you remain feeling comfortable throughout because the space is actually big enough for its purpose and laid out practically.
  - archagon 12d ago
    Speaking for myself, I would not touch any professional practice sporting a slopcoded website with a ten-foot pole.
- King-Aaron 13d ago
  There is an entire industry built around this premise, yes.
- deleted 13d ago
  [deleted]
georgemcbay 13d ago
> I find it kind of surprising she didn't just spend the $20 If it because the poster's mother dislikes the idea of subscriptions, then I totally get it. (Though I admit I have no idea if this has anything to do with the poster's mother's decision.) I'll go out of my way as much as I can to avoid signing up for anything that is a subscription because of how horrible the entire corporate world has abused subscription dark patterns over the past couple of decades. These days just the packaging of anything into a subscription makes me assume there is intent to screw people out of money. While signing up for LLM usage is fairly low risk as far as subscription lock-in goes, someone non-technical might not be aware of that fact.
- jonathanlydall 13d ago
  See my more detailed sibling comment, but was more that the scope and urgency were so small that it wasn’t worth the hassle to set up the subscription and have to cancel it after.
- cheesecakegood 13d ago
  I do get the sentiment for sure. Personally though? I’ve made peace with the fact that I might have a 20/month subscription indefinitely. It’s slowly working its way towards being like a cell phone or Internet bill, although there’s reason to hope that the amount might decrease over time eventually.
deleted 13d ago
[deleted]
jonathanlydall 13d ago
Wow, it’s fascinating after waking up to see all this conjecture here on why she didn’t pay for the subscription. The short version, wasn’t for wanting to save money, but simply a matter of it not being worth the hassle to any of us to subscribe and then later cancel for such a small scope of work. If it was too frustrating I would have let her use my Claude sub. Also, she’d been meaning to have it updated for years, a few extra days was nothing. She did short sessions in spare time between other things, the wait between was maybe a little frustrating, but also gave the benefit that she would have had better clarity develop between sessions. Website is not key to her business where it’s mostly word of mouth at this point (she’s been practicing for >20 years). Goals of website were: - Findable in Google by “psychologist/therapist <area name>” (she also has a Google. Business profile so is findable on Google Maps). - Minimal copy. A comforting sentence or two to state philosophy, qualifications, therapy types offered, where located, how to contact. - Doesn’t feel dated. Essentially it’s meant to complement the word of mouth aspect and maybe bring in the occasional completely new patient.
- Wowfunhappy 12d ago
  Not that it matters for anything—she got the work done on the free plan and was happy—but my strategy in this situation is always to subscribe and immediately cancel. The cancellation does not actually take effect until the end of your billing period. (Otherwise they'd have to refund you.) In my head, I'm not really buying a subscription, I'm just buying one month of access. I can always decide to buy another month if I want to, but it will never be automatic.
kakacik 13d ago
There is an ocean sized gap for free stuff and something costing something, anything (not that this had to be the case). Person not understanding this should not work in marketing, or even claim they understand human psychology.