The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites 468
nywanna writes "After seeing the example of Plenty of Fish and the reports of the site earning over $10,000/day in Adsense revenues, I quickly realized that there are a lot of ugly websites that are extremely successful. The reason for this, according to the article, is that ugly websites do a few things that beautiful websites tend to lack."
ICQ (Score:5, Insightful)
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure that an ugly porn site would probably bring in more money than a pretty site about overpriced potato chips that you can ship from Pakistan.
Slashdot is successful too... (Score:3, Insightful)
Example #1: Slashdot itself.
Google. (Score:1, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's what I call ugly!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Ugly, or Simple? (Score:4, Insightful)
Put the snob in the backseat for a moment and consider there's a difference between Ugly and Simple. Back in the early days there was a site [webpagesthatsuck.com] where I learned the fundamental difference between Form and Function, the bottom line is, as it always has been, Keep It Simple, Stupid.
My designs tend to have a very small footprint and require minimal bandwidth. While I was building light weight search engines, the clod who over-saw our website put a massive graphic on the home page. Those, like myself, still on 2400 baud modems at the time had to sit and wait for that The Bob damn thing to load.
Years later I was working with United Airlines Air Cargo and some brain at the top elected to replace a very simple, not pretty, but very simple interface with javascripts galore, whizzy graphics and image mapping, all in a kind of Black on Black, which would have Hotblack Desiato break out in a sweat, dead or not. It didn't work and they'd spent big on it.
This isn't really an ugly site. On the other hand /. ... hmm.
craigslist.org is a prime example (Score:4, Insightful)
But then I remind myself that above all else, it's functional and has enough content to trump any bad design decisions. Content will always trump design. Even bad design.
-- Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/ [runfatboy.net]
something seems 'fishy' allright... (Score:5, Insightful)
Form and functionality. (Score:3, Insightful)
It is almost like a pyramid with content and functionality being the foundation for a good website. On top of the pyramid is the "polish" or aesthetic design. I'm sure that we'll all agree that aesthetics and human computer interactions (usability, flow, etc -- the stuff that Apple is notorious for) are also very important.... but, like anything else, it is a blend of form AND functionality. What good is a website if it ONLY works on Opera? What good is a great UI if there is not functionality? You get the point.
Now what would be quite interesting is to apply these concepts to people! As we all know, looks aren't everything! But hey, that certain polish certainly makes a difference.
Matthew K. Wong http://www.themindoffmatthew.com [themindofmatthew.com]
I mostly agree (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing I really disagree with is the articles talk about trust, how people feel they can trust an ugly website more than a nice one. Here, personally, I think that if somebody can't afford nice webdesign, they can't afford good web security. That being said, this is where my rephrase comes in again - simple and clean design leads me to trust a site more than does flashy sites.
To be fair, the article does talk about simplicity a lot... I just feel that it points to ugliness instead of simplicity as the driving factor, and that's not quite correct. Simple sites may be ugly, but they don't have to be - and if they're not, simple and clean is better than simple and ugly.
MySpace... (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand that it's a 'community' site, but I honestly don't feel a part of that at all. It's difficult to build a huge online community unless users can selectively segregate themselves into groups. This is part of the reason why Facebook and Flickr are both extremely successful.
Granted, there are ugly sites with truly great content [aintitcool.com] that balances out the fact that the site's rather ugly. Likewise, there are a host of very pretty sites that are lacking in the content department.
Although I used to consider myself more of an content guy and the type of guy who uses the command line for most tasks, I find myself gravitating toward sites that although they may not offer as many features, are easier to use, and are visually appealing. Flickr is probably the best example of this. With CSS, there is no excuse to have a poorly designed site. CSS makes it ridiculously easy to propogate an attractive design across your entire site. If you already know basic HTML, you can pick up all the CSS you need to know in a few days. Likewise, CSS also means people can finally stop using Photoshop as a design tool.
With CSS, formerly ugly sites can make themselves pretty [dansdata.com] with very little effort. Slashdot went to great lengths with their stylesheet to make sure they preserved the old ugly layout.
Working for Google (Score:5, Insightful)
I think there are some very good points here. I've always valued functionality over form and beauty. (I own ten year old cars, for example.)
But it's interesting to me that he defines success as making a lot of ad revenue. My websites do not exist to get me revenue. They exist to build communities. Somebody else might have yet another definition of success for his website. I think the general principles raised are true no matter what the purpose of your site is, but I find it interesting that some people don't see a point for their site other than "make a lot of money carrying Google ads." More power to them if they can ... it means they are providing something people want, financing it through advertizing, and making a bundle along the way. It's just not my purpose in having a website.
What is an 'ugly' website? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know people who are jumping on Bandwagon 2.0 and insisting that all websites should be AJAXified (ugh), and must have flashy graphics and rounded corners, and if you don't do that then your page is all boring and ugly.
There are also art people who spend all the time making their page look nice and don't actually put their content first. Their page might not be ugly, but it's not usable either.
Then there are the people who think HTML is ugly and go with Flash. Bastards.
The point of this long post is that a page may be 'ugly' to you but 'nice' to someone else. To all those people citing Google or Maddox as examples, 'simple' != 'ugly' - you may like it, and it may not be too flashy, but there are plenty of simple and ugly websites out there. (Green text on green background anyone?)
Not to mention, that the people who spend more time offering services and writing content than caring about the design might actually have more of a clue of what they are doing.
Re:Here's two examples: (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Lack of "beauty" does not equal "ugly" (Score:5, Insightful)
A brownstone building is plain, but beautiful. Glueing an Italiante facade to it because those "architectural elements" have come into fasion does not make the building more beautiful, it makes it false and decadent, simply justifying Santayana's claim that "Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit."
Adding commercial "art" to a website to make it "beautiful" simply does the same; and I'll take Shaker furniture over baroque, thank you very much.
It has come to my attention that James Kunstler's blog (Clusterfuck Nation) has been attacked for looking "unprofessional," which rather took me aback, as I considered it one of the few truely professional looking sites left on the web. It's more than plain text, but it is simple and elegant. It gets the job done and does it in way that is graphically pleasing to the eye without being loaded up with fashionable crap. It looks professional. What it doesn't look like is commercial and pandering to whatever happens to be in vogue in commercial psuedo art on order to sell something.
YTMV, of course, but isn't that rather the point?
KFG
Re:Google. (Score:3, Insightful)
what's with the hate? (Score:4, Insightful)
It works.The design is simple, fast (most of the time), and works in any browser.
Often, I hear people say OMG DIGG IS TEH PRETTIER: I'd rather have a site which is fast and easy to navigate than a site which is all eye candy and takes an hour to load.
just my 2 cents.
You got lucky (Score:5, Insightful)
And then there's the content. Like when he accuses IMDB of having "not even bothered" to change the browser-default font.
In other news, nobody has yet bothered to hit me over the head with a pickaxe. I kinda appreciate that, just like I appreciate that imdb.com doesn't try to override the font that I have carefully selected and configured to be my browsers default.
Perhaps the reason why all these supposedly ugly websites are successful, is that the author has a messed up idea of "ugly".
Ebay (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a whole dot-com economy around making ebay easier to use. See ChannelAdvisor [channeladvisor.com] for example.
Re:So? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Zen design doesn't mean pleasant use (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lack of "beauty" does not equal "ugly" (Score:5, Insightful)
Real architects design buildings for clients, not as an exercise in ego-gratification. If anyone's ego gets gratified, its the person with the checkbook. Also, they're usually aware that actual people have to live and work in their designs. A friend of mine who is an architect likes to boast that no matter how far out his ideas are, you can always find the bathroom easily.
Re:Lack of "beauty" does not equal "ugly" (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that plain and functional can be beautiful. But so can ornamented. As counterexamples, consider the Tower of Pisa, or Notre Dame Cathedral. Which building is "better" -- the Empire State or the Chrysler?
I think the real lesson is that when your vision is screwed, trying harder doesn't help. Unless you know what you're doing, less is more.
Re:slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Design problems with the article (Score:5, Insightful)
Moving past the "The article is really ugly, it's just an error mesage" jokes, here's some issues with the article:
Getting pickier here... the header (blue on blue) is hard to read. Links are the wrong colour - as a user, brown-ish red means a link I've already been to, not a new link. It may look pretty, but it breaks user expectations.
Look at the "Rate This Article" at the bottom. It uses numbers as links. Great, I just love single character anchors.
The problem with web design is that too many companies hire people who came from advertising. The web is not an advertising medium - you can advertise as part of it, but fundamentally, if I'm reading your site, you have my attention already. Stop trying to get my attention, and focus on letting me get to the information I want as quickly and efficiently as possible. I'm am not here to drool over how many hours you spent deciding my web browser is 900 pixels wide, I am here to acquire information and move on to something more enjoyable.
Having said that, actually ugly web sites are bad. If your website looks like you just discovered the header 1-5 buttons in Dreamweaver, and would have used a blinking marquee if you knew how, I'm going to avoid it. Bright yellow 24pt text on a light blue background is going to give me a headache. Plain websites are fine (Slashdot), efficient websites are ideal (GMail), but pretty sites I have to wrestle to get anywhere on, or ugly sites that look like they were created by a colour blind five year old are bad.
Re:"Fashion is a way of standing out" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You got lucky (Score:5, Insightful)
And it wasn't such a good article, anyway. The author seems to assume that an attractive website has to be elaborate or complex. The main conclusion is that the success of the size depends highly on simplicity and delivering the right message. I may not be a professional webmaster, but simplicity is one of my primary aims when I design a website, and I believe that beauty lies in simplicity.
On the other hand, there are sites that are simple and ugly. This one is a perfect example indeed. But that's an inevitable side effect of having endless threaded discussions of variable lengths. I think the site delivers, and you eventually forget about the design and focus on what the next Soviet Russia joke should be. That's good design in my book.
Re:Lack of "beauty" does not equal "ugly" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You got lucky (Score:3, Insightful)
Sheez. I learnt this back in 1998 when I was dabbling in web design... Sure took this guy a while to catch up. Thanks for sharing your epiphany with us though.
Daniel