

Increase conversion rate by making your site ugly - aresant
http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/04/increase-your-conversion-rate-by-making-your-site-uglier/

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btilly
In my A/B testing experience I've never seen aesthetics be a major factor, and
only rarely have I heard of it mattering for anyone else. That experience has
been echoed by other people I know who do A/B tests. Instead messaging,
usability, clear calls to action, etc win consistently.

But if you build a site with those goals and without worrying about
aesthetics, you're going to wind up with an ugly site.

However that said, there are a couple of amusing cases I know about where
deliberately making something ugly was an A/B testing win. Photoshop found
that by setting ugly default fonts they push people to poke around the
application to change the defaults, which results in a lot more usage of other
features. Similarly Freshbooks redid their invoicing some time ago, and found
that people overwhelmingly preferred the new version, yet conversions to
paying customer were better when people were given the old version and forced
to figure out that they could change it on their own. (And yes, most of the
paying customers actually did change it.)

But in general aesthetics simply don't matter. And any theory based on the
assumption that they do is wrong.

------
ebiester
My favorite usability story was at my expense. I was watching a demo for a
tool crib software - essentially, it allows people to gain access to tools
like a library. The one that impressed everyone the most

* was in Visual Basic 6

* was ugly as anything I had ever seen

* had an incredibly cluttered screen

but everyone raved about it when they left. Why? It was far and away the most
_usable_ software we had seen. Instead of thinking about the pleasantness of
the screen, they were thinking about workflow. Every time we asked, "can it do
X", it did so, and with far greater elegance than we had hoped.

Even with the clutter, it was easy to use. Now, when I look at designing a
user interface, I think of it with completely different eyes.

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danielmason
Coming from a user interface design background, I thought this article posited
a couple of false dichotomies which were perplexingly echoed in the comments
here. Their suggestions appeared to be targeted at either amateurs, ad
professionals, or flash jockeys, because a good designer would likely be
taking this advice already. The gist of the article is summed up nicely by a
commenter here: "Usability trumps design every time." I find that perplexing,
because my goal as a designer was always to find the most usable solution
through design.

1\. Value -- a good designer will take the time to understand the the target
audiences. Many target audiences aren't looking for value, they're looking for
status or something just as intangible. Implementing a visual design which
communicates something the target audience isn't searching for is closely akin
to pricing your product incorrectly. In fact, design approach is almost
completely analogous to retail product price stratification.

2\. Trust -- this again depends on audience. Sometimes "labor of love" is the
most relevant trust mark, but in other cases it's "well-established" or
"industry leader."

3\. Accessibility -- this is kind of a 'duh' for any experienced web
developer. Most design-oriented site you go to are built for modern browsers
only, but that's because all their visitors are using Firefox. Any good web
designer still knows how to fix an IE6 margin-doubling bug, for example.

4\. Flexibility -- um, it really is possible to design sites with good UI and
flexible content. Would anyone here make the argument that Craigslist would
have failed with proper whitespacing, appropriate font selections, and logical
visual hierarchies? Those can all be accomplished with a single stylesheet.

5\. Function -- this really is the point of design. Most good designers would
tell you that. Design without utility is bad art. I love user interface design
because I can build things that look good and work well. The two go hand-in-
hand.

I may be reading too much into the comment that "in general, aesthetics simply
don't matter." If that's really true, do you have a good explanation for
Apple's success? How about Nike?

~~~
FleursDuMal
"Would anyone here make the argument that Craigslist would have failed with
proper whitespacing, appropriate font selections, and logical visual
hierarchies? Those can all be accomplished with a single stylesheet."

Many successful websites (Google, craigslist, ebay, wikipedia, myspace etc)
are both highly functional and divergent from "good design practices".

What I find troubling is that I don't believe any of those sites would have
been constructed in their successful form by a design professional. We don't
fully understand how people's perceptions are shaped by the presentation of
information.

Having appropriate whitespace/fonts etc produces a clean looking site which
conforms to a very particular aesthetic which has no proven connection to the
success of a site and may substantially harm it.

~~~
danielmason
There's no doubt that some of the most successful sites have been pretty ugly.
But to imitate the ugliness smacks of cargo cultism -- reproducing side
effects in hopes of receiving a similar result. To me, the commonality shared
by the sites you mentioned isn't their aesthetics, but rather that they
represented either a radical innovation or a radical improvement over existing
services. I DO believe this was a result of their engineering focus in the
early stages, a side effect of which was poor aesthetics, but I don't think
it's a clear indicator that an engineer-driven product cannot also benefit
from smart design. Google's move to break the Altavista portal mode of
thinking and present the user with a large, isolated search box was first and
foremost a design decision.

I think Mint is a good example of design driving success. Mint is largely
built on the Yodlee platform, but they made the interface their primary focus.
I don't get any information from Mint that I can't get on my bank's website.
But since signing up for Mint, I check my accounts twice as frequently,
classify all of my purchases, track my financial history, and set budgets. I
didn't have to wrestle myself into these habits, either -- they came naturally
because Mint made them easy and available. And honestly, I would never have
trusted my bank account information to a site that looked like early-days
eBay.

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teye
The takeaway from the email study is not that ugliness converts.

Versions A and C have other navigation/messaging in the spotlight. Version B
has the fewest distractions.

Poor illustration of the point, if you ask me.

This is like assuming your users are stupid. Strive for accessibility and ease
of use, not ugliness.

~~~
datasink
<http://www.mrgreen.am/affiliate-marketing/the-ugly-truth/>

I found this article to have better examples. In particular, the
ChristianMingle ad -- same wording, different treatment, different results.

~~~
dagw
What many of those examples really shows is that people will put up with
amazing amount of shit to save money. Take the Ryan air site for example.
Everybody I know hates that site with a passion and do everything they can to
avoid both the site and the airline. Most people check every other available
option before reconciling themselves to dealing with Ryan air.

However since they offer a competitive product at very competitive prices
people put up with horrible usability and service. So no, ugly design doesn't
sell, cheap sells, and if you're cheap enough people are willing to overlook
ugly.

------
jacquesm
Usability trumps design every time.

HN is a nice example. Imagine if you let a designer loose on it, the disaster
that would ensue. It would be eye candy for sure, but we'd all be leaving in a
hurry.

Especially for stuff that is used frequently less design is usually better,
'b(l)ing' is for kids with too much money to spend on their cars. Tools have
to be functional first.

They can aesthetically pleasing, but only if the form follows from the
function they have. Once you can't remove stuff any more the design is
optimal.

~~~
alsomike
That's only because you're created a straw-man definition of design. Don't buy
the hype: design is about influencing the subjective state of the audience.
Sure, beauty is one kind of experience, and maybe it gets a lot of attention,
but it's certainly not the only thing designers care about.

I think the main skill that designers bring to the table is empathy. Unlike
traditional artists, who can safely ignore what other people think, designers
have to be interested in how something feels to their audience. This is
important if you're building things for people who aren't like you and don't
think like you, and you want to get their attention, get them to think what
they're buying is useful and usable and yes, maybe beautiful if that matters,
and the people who made it are trustworthy and reliable.

Design is about communication--it's a kind of language. Who could argue that
words don't matter, only function matters?

~~~
tokenadult
_I think the main skill that designers bring to the table is empathy._

How do business results show the benefits of empathy?

~~~
alsomike
This seems kind of obvious, but OK. How do you know what a customer needs? How
do you know whether your idea meets that need? You have to look at the world
from their perspective begin to answer those questions.

~~~
tokenadult
Follow-up question here, as I have just come from attending a focus group this
evening. Is what you describe a typical part of the job description of a Web
designer (what prompted my question above) or is it really the job of, say, a
focus group facilitator?

~~~
alsomike
A focus group facilitator doesn't try to influence the audience. And focus
groups usually don't even empathize with the customer, they simply write down
what the customer wants, if they prefer blue or red, not why they prefer it
and what that says about their overall goals.

------
CodeMage
Excellent article. The only thing I would quibble about is the word "ugly".
I'm not a designer or a visual artist of any kind, but I don't find Amazon
ugly. It simply doesn't approach either extreme of the beauty spectrum.

------
neovive
Excellent article. I agree that distracting elements on a website impact
conversions and should be avoided. However, there is definitely a difference
between a well planned "clean" website and an unprofessional "cluttered"
website. The product being sold (if retail) is also a major factor in the
design.

A more professional-looking (clean) website is also more important for a
services business (accountant, health care, restaurant, etc.), where your
website is a representation of your business.

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someplacecold
How a site's look affects traffic patterns and revenue is an incredibly
complex and well-researched nebula. For example, Marissa Mayer talks about how
a couple pixels of whitespace and subtle differences in color shades
drastically affect traffic on Google.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x0cAzQ7PVs> <<= (I think that's the talk)

I don't buy that un-categorically "if your website looks BMW-fancy your
visitor is going to assume BMW-pricing". Rather than opining one way or
another about what look is "right" for sites, I'd be interested in the process
of finding that look.

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tpark
About time web designers are realizing this. I'm so glad 'pretty' but totally
unusable flash designs are going away.

Although now I think the same 'pretty' process is happening with the Ajax
realm...

Just because you can have a nice looking mouse over or cool looking dynamic
(but confusing and useless) navigation bar doesn't mean you should.

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lukeqsee
I think he means, "Keep your site simple." He even alludes to that in the last
paragraph.

Clean and simple _is_ beautiful.

~~~
aresant
Absolutely right on the simple.

But my favorite example - plentyoffish.com - isn't exactly "clean" IMO.

It's amazingly ugly and crowded with colors and text, but the usability
remains true to user's expectations.

I think that factors into the genuine feel of it - feels like one guy did it
because he wanted to help people find a love connection . . .

~~~
lukeqsee
You're right about "clean." It doesn't have to be there. The key is definitely
simple.

Google (my favorite example, although they are morphing from this in the last
year or so), Craigslist, and Twitter all kept it clean and simple.

------
hernan7
I loved this typo: keeping your site flexible [...] may not be ascetically
appealing"

Those darned designers and their ascetic ways...

------
mathewgj
independent of this article making a very good point, i appreciated the
grouping of 'java applets' with html5 as an example of 'cutting edge' tech on
the web!

~~~
ed
JavaFX _is_ cutting edge! (Released in 2008)

------
wesley
Might want to fix your rss feed (the one defined in the <head> section). I was
about to give up until I noticed your on site rss icon.

------
barrkel
I found the quote from Scoble ironic - "We trust things more when they look
like they were done for the love of it rather than the sheer commercial value
of it." - meanwhile, Scoble has gone quite stylized, what with his new logo
and all.

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jmtame
aesthetics aren't meant and shouldn't be expected to improve your usability.
aesthetics have a role in cases where appearance is important (the example
used was bmw).

"We’ve battled designers and CMO’s day in and day out for nearly a decade but
overwhelmingly following the 5-rules laid out above drive results that simply
win."

aesthetics are not bad, although the tone of the article makes it seem like ui
designers are bashed when they shouldn't be. both practices serve their own
purposes, and usability should not be confused with ui design.

------
kixxauth
And, don't forget that simple and ugly is not arrived at by _not_ designing.
It is _designed_ to convert, _designed_ to elicit a certain visceral response.
The definition of design is not "beautiful."

For some situations maybe you want to say "this is really expensive" and in
others you want to say "this is really useful." In either case you are
designing.

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callmeed
Despite the title, there's not much here about "ugly" sites ... perhaps it a
bad choice of words. In the examples he gives, I wouldn't consider all of them
ugly.

Plus, some of them (Drudge and MySpace) don't have ecommerce "conversions"
which is what the rest of the article appears to talk about.

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pxlpshr
their example with the 3 variations for ordering flowers is pretty biased. the
other two have the "order now" button likely below the fold of most email
clients. consequently it has little to do with the overall design, and more so
about the placement of _one button_ which should have been obvious if the
email was actually designed by a seasoned designer. some things are
elementary.

bad way to close a biased post that doesn't acknowledge the value of design;
design is form AND function. the real problem here is that designers have been
shelved by inexperienced (read: affordable) i-downloaded-photoshop-and-forget-
to-learn-the-fundamentals.

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ohashi
From my experience with PPC landers, this is almost certainly the case.
Getting someone to click an ad works better if the site is ugly. I am not sure
on why but my guess is less distractions and perhaps 'get me the hell out of
here.'

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benashkan
This article proved to me that Hacker News is truly invaluable.

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Raphael_Amiard
Wow this article is incredibly stupid. My favorite moment is this :

"They scaled to huge numbers of visitors with tiny staffs – keeping your site
flexible enough so the CEO can change the homepage content may not be
ascetically appealing, but it sure does beat a static beautiful website.

A website that’s easy to change, update, and experiment on is better than one
that relies heavily on advanced CSS, Flash, images etc that you can’t change
quickly. "

Since when are good design and flexibility exclusive ? Where do you see any
sign of such a trend on the internet ?

------
alsomike
And sometimes bad usability is what sells too. That's why you have TVs that
come with remotes with a million buttons on them, it makes the buyer feel like
he's got something powerful, and by extension, makes him feel powerful. If
your target audience is interested in feeling powerful and achieving a sense
of mastery, there's a way to design for that. If you want the audience to feel
like they're getting something for cheap (Amazon, Craigslist, Ebay), there's a
design for that.

Ugly design is still design though, it works in one context and fails in
another. But that doesn't mean you've freed yourself from the tyranny of
aesthetics, you're just using the aesthetic that works.

There's a great temptation for programmers to conclude that if they can't do
something by themselves, it must not matter, and anyone who claims otherwise
is probably a corporate drone or something. Maybe this works in some cases,
but that doesn't mean it's not also a mistake.

It's like that joke about the guy who lost his keys in the alley behind a bar
one night. His friend finds him on the sidewalk looking under a street light,
and asks him why he's not looking in the alley. The guy says "It's too dark in
the alley, I can't see a thing!" The moral of the story: when faced with a
difficult real-world problem that you don't know how to solve with your
current skillset, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to try to change the
problem into a different one that you do know how to solve. Maybe you don't
need good design, but if you do, you should get a designer, and ignore blog
posts about how pretty things are for girls.

~~~
kadavy
"That's why you have TVs that come with remotes with a million buttons on
them, it makes the buyer feel like he's got something powerful"

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AyVh1_vWYQ>

