Forum Moderators: phranque
I've always been a fan of web usability, following Nielsens guidelines etc, always looking to improve the usability of my site, and maintaining a nice clean design.
It's difficult to watch an 'ugly' site come from nowhere, climbing it's way up the search engine results. While my own site appears to stagnate, despite constantly adding new content, and tweaking site design. What are the reasons?
Let's say we have an ugly site and a usable site. Both have good unique content and a nice collection of backlinks, and both employ some kind of basic seo techniques.
Which one does the user prefer?
I am seriously wondering whether to 'uglify' my site...
However, many users, especially those stuck with dial-ups, like slim sites. Craig's List does well in that category.
Instead, you should be focusing on what those other sites do well, if not design. Perhaps it's that they have solid search engine optimization or that they have great advertising campaigns or that they have generated some buzz in the journalism and blogger community.
Or that "ugly" sites represent poor design skills. Rather than being accidental, "ugly" design may be the well paying result of considerable effort and knowledge.
I guess retro is the thing here... content is still king IMHO, and after doing some more investigation I see that there was some serious link exchanging going on with some of these sites.
I still do wonder what the average user's perception is - with regards to various site designs.
Do they make judgements on credibility based on design? I'm sure the average user does (consciously or not).
"don't clap ..throw money" ....
Bear in mind that "ugly" has no sense from a search-engine bot point of view, and that successful in the SERPS does not mean successful with visitors. What does "successful" mean to you? Top position in the SERPs, popularity with your users, or just high CTR on your Adsense panels?
I wouldn't uglify your site, but I would simplify it as much as practicable. Retro is cool, and from a usability view, clear text and underlined links work best.
"ugly" works because most webmasters and their targets ..."surfers" have very little taste if any ...
This is always going to be a subjective thing, you can't please everyone. When you want to sell a house you make it as bland as possible to appeal to the maximum number of buyers. Maybe the success of ugly sites is because they have something of this blandness, which is inoffensive and doesn't draw attention to itself.
The question for me is: if you 'beautifed' the eyesore would it attract more users?
A non-designer has no qualms about making a Buy Now button too big as they don't really care how it works in the design. As a matter of fact, their lack of thought into how a design works probably means that they are thinking more on a "primal" level about where they would look for something, rather than where it "should" go.
The garish colors may work because garish colors draw more attention than the more tasteful downplayed colors.
I don't think that all ugly sites work, but I think that many do because of the fact that very little went into the thought of the design which means that there is less for the user to think about as well.
If it serves a purpose it will attract visitors, if it contains what they want then it doesn't matter how it looks.
No disrespect intended here, but I entirely disagree. I know many people with many varied interests whose first comments about sites are how "cool" they are. These people will visit a pretty site rather than an informative one - "Sure it has a lot of information, but it's so ugly I can't read it . . . "
The question for me is: if you 'beautifed' the eyesore would it attract more users?
Almost always the answer would be yes, in my experience. At the very least, it would provide people more motivation to share your site with friends.
My amazement has been growing at how user-hostile some sites are, even though they're clearly trying hard to be beautiful. Aside from pointless Flash intros, the biggest problems are mystery (or broken) navigation, and insanely slow download times. Visual elegance means little if the only way the user can figure out to navigate further is to chop the URL in the address bar (which takes you back to the home page where the Flash intro holds you hostage again). Many sites seem to have given zero thought to how a real human visitor might move around the site to look at their products.
<rant> I'm fed up with waiting for pointless Flash intros (likely very expensive) that block entrance to a lot of sites. I lost count of how many times the "Skip Intro" button didn't appear until the Flash was finished. It was bad enough on cable access; on dial-up many sites would utterly impossible to visit.
If someone's ego demands an artsy-fartsy Flash presentation, it would be better to figure out a way to give users the CHOICE to "See our great movie!" as a (1) positive (2) option. Don't make it an endurance event that is inflicted upon them and think that because you provided a button to Skip Intro that makes it okay. </rant>
And then there's the sites that say something like, "Our products are available at better stores across the country ..." but nowhere in the site is the country named. I've had to resort to phoning some companies to find out what country they're in ... grrrr ...
Okay, I feel better now ...
What’s about Yahoo? It sure does not look like an art project but it delivers!
Keep in mind that the position in the serps has nothing to do with an aesthetic judgement, when a search engine spider comes through a site, it really only pays attention to these tags:
<title>
<b>
<h1-h6>
<a href>
<font size=large>
and a few others.
If you look at any site in a search engine emulator, you'll see that the html markup is absolutely irrelevant, unless there is an actual physical error such as an unclosed <p as tedster noted elsewhere, or an unclosed <a.
Barring these types of catastrophic rendering errors, search spiders could care less what type of markup or colors you used on your page, with the one exception of hidden type css, font/background color identity, and a tiny number of other factors.
The amount of html on the page may also be a factor, so an old, simply coded html page may get some preferential treatment since the content starts closer to the top, but that's open to debate, I choose to assume it does matter to be on the safe side.
To find out why a page is doing well, find out how old the site is, find out how many links to it there are, using on google allinurl:, not link:, which doesn't work.
Then visit the sites that link to it, check them out, are they authority sites, well established? Are there signs of pro seo's at work?, well, not good pros, but typical pros.
Look at the incoming link text too.
What does "successful" mean to you? Top position in the SERPs, popularity with your users, or just high CTR on your Adsense panels?
Organic links...
When people start linking to you (spontaneously) - I consider the website to be a success. It could be joe user linking in a forum, or another webmaster.
Unfortunately to get people to see your site in the first place, there has to be some promotion/SEM going on.
As for 'ugliness' - yeah I know the SE doesn't care, but the user does. Do they come back to an ugly site or a pretty site? I honestly think it depends on the niche. You would not expect to see an ugly site for a company/commercial operation yeah? But on the the other hand you might expect some ugliness on a homebuilt site about some personal experience.
Does joe user feel some kind of affinity with the second site - rather than the 'corporate' looking site? Despite the fact that they could have very similar content?
What is ugliness? Perhaps a poor choice of word - but maybe retro is a little better?
- Font choice with little readability (e.g. Times New Roman is great printed, but awful on the screen).
- Lots of mixing of fonts - both style and face
- Color scheme - colors that clash
- Poor grammar
Hmmmm... I guess its all a matter of personal opinion. I still think there is a correlation between credibility and design - and in some niches, the more ugly - maybe the more credibility.
I'd second the mark of real success coming through organic links, that's the best sign, and of course income, successful outcome for whatever your site is pushing, whether ctr, sales etc.
ugliness is inexcusable nowadays, all you need is some nice css styling
Hmmm... This is a line from a internet elitist if I ever saw one. ;) Nice CSS styling requires that you know CSS. The internet is still the world of the common man, where anyone with a WYSIWYG, $8 to register a domain and $4 to pay for hosting can have their very own site. As long as it is just that easy, ugly sites will still exist and have every right and reason to exist.
I'm talking more on the pro level sites, that's where ugliness is less excusable than it was before, the css required to make a page look nice is very basic, just simple css 1 stuff, not complicated at all. But anyone is free to do anything they want to do, of course, and if it works, they can laugh all the way to the bank.
Generally their is a strong corellation between least expensive retailer and ugliest of sites. You figure - guy X put 10.49 into his entire site for selling widgets online, while brand Y must spend $100 a day in traffic alone. When I find a site that I think couldnt be designed more horrendously I know I have come across a great bargin.
From a users perspective:
UGLY = CHEAP
Sure, maybe if you have a commercial site (i.e. a site that sells something). But I'm talking about content sites here. Sites that don't necessarily sell anything. Remember that you think like a webmaster - not like the average user.
Lets say you're searching for info about widgets. When you come across an ugly site - does the info have more credibility? If you come across a professional site, do you think - this must have $$$ behind it, therefore there must be a commercial interest - therefore the information has a bias.
Maybe to the 'savvy' internet user ugly=cheap, but to many other people - ugly = old/reliable/genuine...
I'm seriously thinking of 'dumbing down' my site design. This is not meant to sound offensive, but I believe that in some niche areas, some people identify retro/ugly with credibility.
I mean, look at some of the gov sites.... old and basic web design... nothing fancy there... but they are virtually all authority sites, and the ugliness doesn't necessarily bother anyone... except web designers!
On some sites (not many?) there is really awful design and UI, but the content is good enough to keep me coming back.
I imagine it works for others the same way?
No disrespect intended here, but I entirely disagree. I know many people with many varied interests whose first comments about sites are how "cool" they are. These people will visit a pretty site rather than an informative one - "Sure it has a lot of information, but it's so ugly I can't read it . . . "
Glad I provoked a reaction ;) I understand you point of view - it is very true to say that for the really ugly ones where it does hamper viewing, but I class most sites as ugly. Most look dated or primitive; bad fonts, tables with default properties, coloured oddly, cheesy gifs etc etc etc.... but these sites infact are where I find lot of my information. And they work for that reason so I dont care. Given a choice I would agree that everyone would prefer it if all were pretty, but on the whole if it serves what you want when you want it, then look and feel doesn't have that much impact. Also I tend to think that less time is spent 'surfing' now. People know what they want and go after it - and so long as they can find it they are happy enough to return. Better looking is a bonus.
