Undesign or Is The Question Really Ugly vs. Simple
Scoble talks about plentyoffish.com.
What’s the secret to his success? Ugly design. I call it “anti-marketing design.”
Huh?
He says that sites that have ugly designs are well known to pull more revenue, be more sticky, build better brands, and generally be more fun to participate in, than sites with beautiful designs.
I wonder if it really is the poorly designed sites, or the sites that are designed to be quick and simple. As far as I would understand it, simple and quick would generally win. People don’t want to go to a site often that takes minutes to load (an irony this guy with a splash image on his front page does accept), but do the want to go to one that has clashing colors, poor text choices, and other design mistakes.
Web design should follow a number of different paths: visually appealing, quick loading, and easy to use. Each of these is important. A look at plentyoffish shows that the site is not truly ugly; it looks amateurish but acceptable. Another important detail is the fact that it is a free dating site. Those generally have good traffic despite quirks. I would love his eyeballs and revenue on some of my work, but I’m fairly sure it is not due to any amazingly good poor design decisions.
It’s due to having a service people want at the right price.