Have you ever noticed that Ma & Pa Kettle websites that were done on geocities during the bicentennial still rank? Have you ever bought something from a really hideous website with terrible graphics that looked like a school project by a 10 year old? The site was so primitive surely thieves ran it. Maybe you were slightly nervous about using it, but you still did. Why?
Welcome to the bizarre conundrum of the ugly site. Eye and click tracking studies find people make instantaneous judgments about the quality or trustworthiness of a site in fractions of a second. For some people, it seems that ugly = trustworthy. Making a site too slick (in some instances) may interfere with a positive first impression because the user perceives sophistication as a negative.
Maybe people suspect a slick site of trying to manipulate them, or screw them. Maybe the mentality is, that’s a big corporation and I’m going to stay on guard. Maybe they are too intimidated to ask for more information because they think their business is too small for the site to be interested.
I have seen a downright fugly site just trounce a nationwide brand selling the same thing. Why?? Generally speculating….because this is much of what SEO is about, spawning ridiculous theories and then testing them….it might be that the user feels a connection to the humanness that is implied by an ugly site.
The interesting question from there is, what percentage of people might be subject to this effect….and might it be large enough to skew results toward the ugly versus glossy? If 95% of visitors don’t care, but 5% do, then measuring the preference would allow you to eke out a higher conversion rate. What if more than 5% care? Would you consider building a hideous site? If you say no, is it vanity over…sanity?
I have one very ugly site that ranks incredibly well. It’s hard to make an ugly site on purpose but it can be done with the right talent. The objective is to make it seem too homely to be untrustworthy, too pitiful to deny it a much needed sale, too openly honest with its pleadingly terrible graphics. Did you know that the number one tactic of psychopaths is an appeal to….your pity? You’re far more likely to be conned if you first feel sorry and superior to, the person doing the conning. It’s a matter of allaying fears. I believe the same principle may be operating with ugly sites. Not that they are purposely conning you. In probably 99% of transactions all is well. But phishing sites can also look homemade, the one real downside that I can see to the ugly vibe.
Most ugly sites are naturally ugly, versus intentionally so. Still I did once work on a site where our objective was to seem very bush league and fly under the radar. We had a blast sitting around coming up with ways to make it look handmade. But handmade as IF it was striving to be good. Making the graphics off kilter, mocking up old banners that invite you to hit a moving animal with a mallet, speed up your computer links, a color palette that didn’t match. And a series of other tricks I won’t go into. It was really fun.
Ugly sites work really well for ecommerce that’s niche, as well as niche information (such as conspiracy sites). A brazenly template-looking ecommerce store solution with its simple grid format and in the box fonts would be something to consider. The French have a saying, jolie-laide, meaning beautiful ugly. That about covers it.
