

“Ugly” Sites that Make Millions (and What We Can Learn from Them) - dmix
http://blog.kissmetrics.com/ugly-websites/

======
PaulJoslin
It's worth noting, that all of the sites shown share another thing in common.

They were all established / founded in the early web. I'm not saying that
there was not competition, or that their success was because they were first -
they still gave superior products which beat any rivals at the time.

However, trying to draw parallels with these site's design and success today
is not totally relevant. If you launched either of them today as they were /
are, they may not succeed (despite as we know, the core product / service /
functionality being great).

Rob Walling writes in his book that these days: 'It's Market(ing) First,
aesthetics second and functionality third'.

Firstly you need to have a market for your product and hopefully be able to
market it well enough to get people to 'want your product' / know you exist.

Then when they look at your site, you need the aesthetics to give a first
impression of your product and gain trust from your customers in your product.
It doesn't matter if your service / functionality is brilliant. If you can't
get the user to even try you over any competitor, then you've wasted your
time.

Then thirdly, if you're lucky to achieve the top two - give your customers a
good user experience / functionality they want, so hopefully they pay / keep
coming back.

The reason the sites given in the example can happily remain ugly, is because
they already have the user's trust and are a known 'experience'. Therefore the
aesthetics don't need to work as hard to make an impression as say a newly
formed start up today.

\- EDIT... I'm not saying that a site which is kept basic in design can't be
successful. Infact, I agree quite heavily with the principle of keeping things
simple and have blogged about it in the past.

Perhaps the original author should've done the article on one of the many
great sites over the last few years, which have embraced this 'Keep it simple
and clean' attitude. Hacker news being a perfect example.

~~~
ajscherer
You're using a site right now that wasn't established early in the web,
doesn't have great aesthetics or marketing, and seems to be doing okay.

~~~
rokhayakebe
But it isn't making millions.

~~~
ajscherer
You got me there, but I am not sure it matters. Like hacker news, Google and
craigslist (and to some extent the other two) make their money from having a
large number of users who don't directly pay anything for the service. Are you
arguing that if hacker news were somehow monetizing it's traffic people would
no longer be willing to tolerate the design?

In other words, do you think a free service that was created recently and
isn't especially pretty can be successful, but if the site is generating
revenue from those users the design becomes problematic?

(btw I think ebay is the only truly ugly site in that article, and I think hn
looks just fine).

------
jacquesm
You don't have to make millions either, if you make 100's of thousands or 10's
of thousands with an 'ugly' site (tarnsap not all that long ago was a nice
example of an 'ugly' but money making website, my own site is another one).

Why limit the lesson to an arbitrary monetary cut-off. Ugly does not mean that
you're going to be burning cash without a return, and the fact that there are
such sites that make millions make it perfectly clear that there need not be
an upper limit to what you can achieve with an 'ugly' website.

Design is important, but you can overcome a bad design with a customer need.

The question to ask then becomes, what could you do if your site looked good
_and_ you had a customer need?

------
mkramlich
Amazon has one of the most cluttered web UI's I've seen and yet they succeed
because they deliver something real that people want: you can buy stuff there
and they mail it to you, and the web functionality at least allows you to do
that. Ugly and busy as heck UI though.

~~~
minouye
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I've been impressed with Amazon. What eCommerce
sites are doing a better job? If you are looking at the US you have Amazon,
eBay, Walmart, and Target (based on Quantcast traffic). Throw in Overstock and
a handful of others, but Amazon still seems to be way ahead of everyone else.

~~~
mkramlich
I'm also impressed with Amazon. They kick ass. They innovate. They execute.
They provide something that people actually want. Etc. The only thing I don't
really like is that their website design is very cluttered, like cognitive
vomit, very distracting. I'd love to see a more simplified, use case-oriented
UI wrapper around what they do. Make all the side noise go away.

------
sz
People who use Craigslist and eBay are usually looking for cheap deals, and a
site that's too slick and colorful probably wouldn't give the same "bargain
hunting" feel.

------
rumpelstiltskin
Anyone consider the idea that they might be successful _despite_ their 'ugly'
design?

~~~
j_baker
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that was the point of the blog post, was it not?

~~~
powrtoch
It's sort of however you want to look at it. The post is suggesting it's
"because of" not "despite" the ugliness. I take the above comment to mean that
these sites could perhaps be even more successful if designed more
aesthetically. Dunno how much I agree with the sentiment (although I don't
think it would kill craigslist to use a splash of color), but that's how I
take it.

------
nhebb
Google is simple. That's not the same as ugly.

~~~
moolave
I prefer Google's simplicity. Doesn't make my life complicated. Simplicity
isn't ugly either.

------
DrJokepu
It's important to understand that the minimalistic design of Google was a
response to AltaVista, Excite and other search engines of the time. I mean,
those were really ugly and cluttered, and Google's minimalism made it really
feel different from the others.

------
betterlabs
This is something you end up discussing every so often. But I think its not
about the fact they have ugly interfaces or that they are successful inspite
of the ugly interface. I think its about the fact that they were a certain way
then they gain critical mass of users, who got used to using these sites in a
particular way, knew what to find where and the familiarity with the interface
- however it was - grew stronger and stronger. When this happens, if you
decide to suddenly change the interface to make it better/sexier/etc, you
might be shooting yourself in the foot. I think its important to understand
this aspect when you consider such case studies.

------
Tiomaidh
I'd nominate reddit as a fifth, more recently-made one.

I actually don't think it's ugly--but I'd argue that it's as spartan as Google
(considering its different functions), which did make the list.

~~~
notahacker
Reddit is somewhat different from the others in that it's not insanely
profitable. That itself is largely down to the deliberate design decision not
to clutter it with ugly ads.

------
brc
Everyone is forgetting that each of the example sites is also fast, even eBay.
That counts for a lot in return-ability. One of the amazing things about
Google in the early days was how damn fast it returned results. It was easily
2-3x faster than the competition at first, or at least appeared to be so.

------
plemer
So design follows function and function follows the needs of your customer. A
bit obvious, but true.

------
vl
This article forgot to mention ugliest of all - Facebook.

~~~
prs
I wonder how you define ugly? To my eyes, Facebook ranks relatively well
amongst the major sites on the Internet.

~~~
vl
Well, I'm using it for few years now and UI is confusing, it got better, but
still confusing. Conceptually, it's a mess: wall-to-wall, message, feed,
notification, boxes. Visually, well, it's just doesn't look that nice. And why
or why do they show events that I already declined?

------
ThomPete
Design matters when there is great competition.

~~~
dedward
Design always matters - but good design does not necessarily equate to
"pretty"

------
afterburner
Most of these aren't ugly, just minimalist.

------
ohsheeshyall
Stupid fucking article with no concept of design or what makes websites
successful.

------
aresant
Wrote in some detail on this subject a few months back (and wound up in HN
Monthly thanks to you guys upvoting!):

[http://conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/04/increase-your-
conve...](http://conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/04/increase-your-conversion-
rate-by-making-your-site-uglier/)

------
ddemchuk
anyone with even an elementary understanding of conversion testing and
optimization knows that "great" design != great conversions/sales/success

------
nato1138
<http://www.jeopardytickets.tv/>

