Ugly Web Sites: Is Ugly the New Black?

Mark Daoust has an interesting idea in his article The Surprising Truth About Ugly Web Sites. In short, he argues, ugly sells.

In the article, Mark references Plenty of Fish, a low-rent dating site that supposedly makes $10,000/day in Google Adsense. (I personally have a hard time believing this figure, especially for a Web site with a PageRank of 0. Who's finding this site?)

He also talks about the success of eBay, Craig's List and Google. Personally, I'll agree that eBay and Craig's List aren't beautiful, but either is a garage sale.

Google, on the other hand, is beautiful. There's nothing there that isn't relevant to the task at hand. White space is beautiful.

I'd also argue that maybe the reason why Plenty of Fish is making so much money on Adsense is because it's so fugly people can't wait to leave the site, and the Google Ads seem to be the quickest way out.

Ultimately, Mark's argument is more about function over form than creating Web sites that are ugly. And of course, you need to align your designs with what your customers' expectations are.

Thanks to Patsi Krakoff who fed me this link.

Rich Brooks
Ugly Web Site Designer

Tags: Ugly Web Sites

Comments

[Tim]

Thanks for bringing this up! I had a draft started about this same topic, but you beat me to it. Just to add to the list of ugly sites that are known to make lots of money.

www.engadget.com
www.camcorderinfo.com
www.livingroom.org.au/photolog/

I think you are correct though, in many cases people probably click on the ads because they don't realize they are an ad and they become the more attractive part of the site.

I also wonder if the popularity of these sites can partially be attributed to "root for the underdog" attitudes. Possibly why blogs have been so hot lately and things like craigslist where more people want to stop supporting the "big brother" sites.

This prompted me to try to find a list of websites I felt had a stunning design, and also were profitable with advertising... Not much luck so far.