Hacker News Reader

Comment by xal | Hacker News Reader

At this point it's downright comical. It seems like a significant percentage of startups these days go to market on a design that is directly copied from Shopify.com

pricing page:

http://www.shopify.com/signup https://drchrono.com/pricing/

Or worse, look at that little badge in the top right and compare it to the one at www.shopify.com frontpage.

View on HN

That style substantially pre-dates Shopify. It's a fairly inevitable consequence of the tools available and A/B testing. Everyone is working from the same basic starting point and testing everything for conversion. Convergent evolution is remarkably powerful when you can iterate quickly. Whether people work it out for themselves or just copy it wholesale, that layout is used for a reason - because it drives conversion.

Copying the layout is one thing. Copying very specific details is another. Look at the tops of each pricing tab in both sites. The tabs with rounded corners. The subtle fades behind the pricing numbers. The 1-pixel-line-highlight above the price. The colors. (I know I'm basically describing the popular "letterpress" effect, but these examples are remarkably similar, even considering that they are both using a popular graphic style.) And clearly the corner badges are almost identical.

I'm sorry, but are you seriously implying that because Shopify uses gradients, rounded corners and shades of green that no other website can use those styles?

Look at the badges on the front page, it's kinda hard to argue that they weren't copying the design.

I mean, that's how you sell SaaS, right? Why reinvent the wheel? Good artists copy, great artists steal, etc.

If you're selling SaaS, you've probably got more pressing concerns than coming up with a unique way to present your pricing tiers.

Agree that the corner badge is a bit much, though.

I don't think there's anything wrong with taking a layout/framework... but at the very least, change the colors, button styling... make it yours instead of copying every single detail.

Out of curiousity, who was first with a design like that, 37signals or shopify? http://campfirenow.com/signup the structure is also very similar.

I seem to recall pretty much every webhosting company using a similar layout of different plans they offer since the early 2000s. I'm sure it was used other places before that as well.

And you effectively copied the way 37signals structured their pricing page.

Wow, that front page badge is a blatant copy.

If they were like shopify they would take a % of the doc's gross revenue. And fail to support basic features like having a customer/patient account on launch.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com