Ugly is Good?

[Stanley]

I'm sure most of you have heard this before
Have any of you actually tried this?

 

[rembrandt]

You only have to look at a lot of affiliate sites and you'll find that most of them are pretty crappy looking but that's why they probably perform better because the user just wants to get the hell out of there.

 

[J-Tag]

People always say stuff like that; however, it's more just that people who tend to focus more on the website's workings themselves and can move stuff around freely without worrying about making it ugly end up doing better and profiting more.

 

[MisterX]

The most interesting thing I've heard about it came from Markus Frind of plentyoffish.com - he mentioned in a podcast interview that visitors might think you're after their money if the site is looking too good

Obviously, this is often not the case, but there's some truth to it. In the end, it all comes back to knowing your customers.

 

[rosem]

I think the ugly sites are done by good 'coders' that don't know what they are doing design wise - but can make a very usuable and practicle site. A lot of people can design a site and make it look nice, but they don't put any thought into where things should actually be.

It would be nice to have a blend of both...

 

[NoFatChicks]

I've heard this argument plenty of times, I think people confuse Ugly with simplicity. Speaking from experience, after redesigning one of my sites traffic went up 5 times of what i used to get on average. Looks matter.

 

[dxearner]

This is kind of a muddled statement to me. If you mean Ugly then in my opinion it doesnt really matter. There are a lot of gross sites out there that do very well. I think what matters more is layout. Also going hand in hand with this is a clean layout. That is why for the most part the trend is moving to css layout. I think were you mean ugly looks less scammy is when you compare it to flash sites. They are attention grabbers and people have associated those with scam sites. I personally think flash is distracting and screws in some aspects any hopes of ranking. I think a clean easy to navigate css website with great photos will do not look scam like at all.

 

[logiik]

You only have to look at a lot of affiliate sites and you'll find that most of them are pretty crappy looking but that's why they probably perform better because the user just wants to get the hell out of there.

LMFAO.

If I buy an ugly looking site, I always have to redesign it. I don't know if that affects its performance or not but I can't stand looking at an ugly site.

Simple is not ugly btw.

 

[Juicify]

You only have to look at a lot of affiliate sites and you'll find that most of them are pretty crappy looking but that's why they probably perform better because the user just wants to get the hell out of there.

Well this is supposed to be an argument for plentyoffish. It has alot of traffic though, which probably explains a good bit of it.

 

[Jon]

It's not that ugly is good, I think it comes down to that simple is sometimes better than over the top.

 

[dxearner]

It's not that ugly is good, I think it comes down to that simple is sometimes better than over the top.

Exactly that is where I was going with my post. I call it the idiot factor. Make you site so eay to navigate an idiot could nav it. That is what really turns profits and causes people to return to your site because they understand it.