Do Ugly Sites Sell More?

I came across Plenty of Fish, a dating site making its owner Web Pages That Suck for a few examples. You might be aksing why someone who designs websites for a living claims the above sites aren't ugly. I'm not saying I would offer any of those designs to a client, but ugly might be too strong a word to describe them. Let's just say none of them offends me and in truth I've always liked the simple look of the Google site. For the sake of this post though let's accept that they are not only ugly, but completely hideous sites. I'll still argue they are successful in spite of their ugliness and not in any way because of it. Success In Spite Of An Ugly Design Ignoring the Plenty of Fish site for a moment, the others mentioned have some very good functionality behind them. I've argued many times that a website's ultimate success is based on it's content and functionality. We search at Google, because it provides good results. eBay gives us a chance to buy and sell some things we might not find elsewhere. Craig's List is the king of online classifieds. Adding some aesthetic fine tuning to them isn't going to change the sites behind the look and certainly isn't going to hurt any of them at all. Would you use any of these sites less if it had an award winning design? I'm guessing you would use them just as much as you currently do, which is why their lack of beauty is hardly what makes them what they are. The sites are successful, because they each provide something very useful and all are relatively easy to use. And in all fairness to the article I linked to at the start, it too argues that the functionality of these sites and not their lack of beauty is what makes them successful. The sites have become so a part of the general consciousness that they probably don't need it now, but had they started life with more attractive designs it would only have helped them. If you don't believe me have a read of Aaron Wall's post on why simple design principles, which is enough to achieve a minimum level of professionalism in their design. You can convey trust by riding the coat tails of other trusted companies. But being ugly is not something that will lead to trust. It will only lead to being ugly and perhaps being characterized as lazy and apathetic about your business and website. Where Ugly Can Lead To Success There is one place where having an ugly site can lead to more revenue and it brings me back to the Plenty of Fish site. Using the site is free and all revenue comes from AdSense. To profit with AdSense you need people to leave your site. Having an ugly site can be helpful in getting someone to leave, ideally through one of the links that will bring revenue. If you need someone to leave your site before you can make money then yes an ugly site can be beneficial. From what I understand about the Plenty of Fish site the main reason for the money it earns is the amount of traffic it gets. Get a few million people to see your ads and even if only a small percentage click on them it's still a lot of clicks. And again I'll argue that this particular dating site while hardly beautiful is far from ugly. Still uglify a site enough so people will want to leave and they may just leave through that ad that pays you. Sadly an ugly site is not the only Comments Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl Bookmark Murdok: Steven Bradley is a search engine optimization specialist. Known to many in the webmaster/seo community by the username vangogh, he is the author of