The Economic Logic of (some) Amazingly Awful Websites

If nothing else, Ling's Cars is remarkable. The car leasing market is interminably bland, full of hundreds of players offering the same deals on the same cars. There aren't many ways to stand out in that market, but Ling has done it by being absolutely bonkers.

That remarkability may also act as a form of social proof. On some level, we instinctively recognise that if Advantage Motor Leasing Ltd screw over a bunch of their customers, they could just rebrand as Premier Motor Leasing Ltd and carry on regardless. A faceless company with a Wordpress template website can easily shake off a bad reputation. Ling's business is deeply personal and highly distinctive, representing a significant investment in her reputation.

I was in the market for a car last year - nearly leased rather than buying - and nearly went with Ling. Here's why

1. I'd heard of them - marginally important, they had received coverage because of the design.

2. While the graphical design may make your eyes bleed, the site is supremely good at making the business of leasing a car simple. There are nice bits of text, written in colloquial breezy English, that explain exactly how leasing works and what the pros and cons are of different kinds of deals

3. It's wonderfully easy to compare the different cars and deals on the site and get an idea of the total cost of leasing.

4. The whole vibe of the site gives you the feeling that the conpany is quirky, human, but very straightforward and honest - not something you necessarily associate with leasing a car.

Ling is pretty active on Facebook, and responds to questions and comments.

She has said that her target market is 30-ish year old men, mostly - the Top Gear demographic if you like - and that is mostly who she targets. She does lots of green-screen videos - she made her own Desposito video in Mandarin and has started a series based on Wakaliwood films. She had a competition to win a Lings Cars mug on her website. Mine arrived with a cock drawn on the bottom.

Ling's Cars is not bad design. It applies a eastern design aesthetic to a western business. It's jarring because people in the west aren't used to it. Just have a look at any typical Japanese or Chinese ecommerce site eg https://www.dmm.com/ ... there's a lot going on. It's not bad; it's just different.

I guess that this type of "optimization" happens naturally when someone accidentally commits to a particular way of business deeply. I don't think it is done with the goal of lead qualification in mind.

Why do I think so? It's because you're pretty much _never_ going to make a site like this if you're optimizing for immediately qualifying leads. All of this knowledge would be a result of trial & error.

"Nigerian 419 scammers (and other fraudsters) employ similar tactics -- their methods are intensive on the scammer's time, so the pitches they make are so obviously bogus that anyone with half a brain (or more) realizes they're bogus. Automatically selecting for those with less than half a brain."

Someone should create an scam responder bot tied to an email address that people can forward their spam emails to. The AI would then attempt to engage with the scammers in a human like manner, the intention being to increase their engagement cost. Anything like this exist already?

EDIT: Yup. Google threw this up: https://www.rescam.org/

The design of Hacker News operates on a similar principle. It looks vaguely like an error page. Non-developers look at a think something is wrong, but technical people stick around and self-select into the community.

To be honest, I thought that website was great. It's very close to the aesthetic of a lot of contemporary internet art.

I think there's something to be said for this argument, but I'd like it to see the argument fleshed out.