20 Mar 2006 @ 21:20
The Surprising Truth about Ugly Websites:Ugliness has never looked better. I have spent the last few days examining a surprising trend in web design that has made ugly websites look absolutely irresistible. No, its not the bolded, 18 point Times New Roman font shouting at me as I access the page that has me excited, nor is it the harsh colors that have actually managed to make my eyes hurt and distort my vision. In fact, its not even that logo which is so pixelated from being processed, resized, saved, and edited so many times that it appears to be blurred to protect the identity of the company who owns the website that has me singing the praises of ugly websites. What is it?
Ugly sells.
That's right – ugly websites are surprisingly effective in making money. As a person who puts business before technology, a profitable website is a website is an unbelievably attractive website to me.
The Case of Plenty of Fish
I was struck by an example of just how effective ugly websites can be this past week as I was browsing through some web related news. I stumbled across the story of Plenty of Fish. This is a very plain looking website that offers a free online dating service much like Match.com (but without the subscription fee). There was nothing specifically impressive about the website that stood out to me, in fact the site was actually rather ugly.
What caused me (and I am sure several other people) to take a second look at the website was its reported earnings. It is reported that this website brings in over $10,000 from Adsense – in one day. Yes, you did read that correctly. For those of you counting, that is $300,000 per month and nearly one million dollars in just three months.
The example of Plenty of Fish lead me to consider how an ugly website could be so successful. As I looked around, I suddenly realized that this was not the only successful ugly website. Ebay is unbelievably ugly, Craigslist has never won an award for innovative design, and IMDB has never even bothered to format their text out of the default Times New Roman. What is it about ugly websites that makes them so successful? Ugly is maybe not the right word. Look at Plenty of Fish, which he talks about. It is not fancy, it is not exactly beautiful. But it is ok, and it is simple and straightforward. The function is more important than the form. If you can find what you're looking for quickly, it doesn't need to be fancy. And, as the author of the article points out, that a site isn't super-professional might give you the feeling that it is some ordinary people who made it, and that might make you trust them. I.e. it is some real guy, or a small family-owned business. And you might instinctively like that better and be more responsive to it than those fancy corporate sites with great graphics but absolutely no soul. Good lesson there.
$10,000 per day!?! Damn, I'm jealous. Guess I should stop worrying about not being a great graphic designer and not having the CSS quite right, and just look for stuff that's simple and useful.
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