Site Reference Forums

Hey all, I am new to here as well.

I thought this article was interesting as I have recently done a few websites for people.  Their initial response was to do my best to emulate their brochures and publications.

Which honestly didn't look the greatest.

What I found myself doing, was taking the original idea and syntax (from their publications and paper advertising) and cleaning it up and forming it to a well constructed CSS made website.. While not beautiful it had good functionality.

The End result, is a webpage that surfs well.  Looks the way the client wants and sells.

I wouldn't go as far to say its an UGLY page, but definetely not what I would have done.

I think this topic simply is another iteration of the age-old argument.. "Functionalty Vs. Beauty"

The trick is the same as always, try to marry the two as much as possible. But remember in most cases (not all the time) its not YOUR site.. Its your clients (customer) and we all know what the customer always is...

Right?

-TheRiddler

To my thinking it is less important to be "pretty" than to deliver timely content quickly.

Or, to twist on Marshall Macluhan's famous "the medium is the message" -- which I think out of date -- I would say on the web, 'the message is the message.'  In other words, load your page quickly, get to the point, and grab the eye before even an ADHD afflicted surfer can lose interest and head someplace else. 

To many designers try to make things as elegant as possible and make decisions that are in my view suicidal to their customers mission.  For example, all of those wonderful Flash sites that have a little intro page that has a nice little "loading" bar that delivers dancing whatevers that have zero value add other than to add to the designer's Flash portfolio.  I see it like this: unless you are designing an adult-only website that has a legal requirement for a statement of age (be it for skin, alcohol, cigarettes or whatever) then it simply doesn't need to be there.  And having it loses viewers.

That's why my design philosophy boils down to two simple sentences:

1. The KISS Principle of Web Design: "Keeping It Simple Saves."

2. Concerning Design and Content: "Keeping the main thing the main thing is the main thing."

Do those two things and you will have happy customers with effective web sites.   A third thing, one that may not be so popular with many designers is this:

3. ,If the wheel has been invented, do not waste the customer's money inventing it again.

That means for a lot of customers, their sites fit nicely into canned designs that can be bought for less than $100 and implemented cheaper than it costs to re-work or write code to accomplish the same mission, especially when the first two tenants are involved.

I realize that this runs contrary to the mentality of an inventive designer, but at the end of the day, keeping our customers happy is what keeps our customers our customers.  That keeps us happy, because we are well fed.  And that, my friends, is keeping the main thing the main thing.

beatledave wrote:

If ugly sells I'm posting a picture of me right at the top of my page :o

Didn't work. Lost 1,000 visitors in one hour. Taking pic down.

But seriously, I think ugly is the wrong word here. Successful sites have something people want, period.

I think a lot of "designers" have there heads up their preverbal buts.  There is a reason that Times Roman is used all the time… It's one of the easiest fonts to read. Sure you can use things that have more style but they won't be more readable.  As a designer, ease of use and readability are paramount.  Far too many people get caught up in making something look super slick and forget that nobody wants spend the time to figure what your content is about.  Use tables and use Times Roman if you care about your content being easy to read.

Last edited by carson (2006-03-20 17:43:52)

It's interesting that you say that Eric.

The point with my essentially one page Monaco property site (not yourmonaco, another one) is that it is one page for a purpose - any other pages are simply for links and the occasional article. I occasionly add some new properties to the front page for 'fresh copy' as I have read so often that's what you're meant to do.

Most Monaco estate agents have a big internet site - lots of properties, full descriptions, photographs and floor plans. We have none of that. We simply say we do Monaco property - if you want to see what we have fill in the form and we'll e-mail you the details (they then get a description of 40 current properties e-mailed to them). Still no photos.

If they want photos they have to e-mail us back and ask for them, and we send them. Then we know they're pretty serious.

We win because we then have the potential buyer's name, e-mail address, often a phone number, when they plan to visit and crucially how much money they intend to spend on a property and what type of property they want. Compared to a big site where they get all the info but no incentive really to ask anything more and contacting the realtor whose site it is.

So we then work on the clients via e-mail and telephone and get them to the Monaco office first before they see any other agent, and give the guys in the Monaco office first chance to sell the client a property. Doesn't always work but often does. And often buyers who fill in the form aren't visiting for another six months, in which time we would have e-mailed them six x monthly updates and built a relationship with them before they even step on to a plane to visit Monaco.

Given a choice between a big site with all the property details and our one page with next to nothing I'll take our current one any day of the week - it works.

The only reason I am going to change the page is because it does look pretty unprofessional and ugly and that bothers me personally, and although it works fine (top businessmen and women are happy to fill in the form and disclose their budget is xxx million Euros) by making it look better we might get more visitors filling in the form, perhaps a better conversion rate.

But ask most people who design internet sites for a living and my money's on the advice being the big internet site with loads of details because it's more work and repeat custom for updates as properties sell and new ones come in. The purpose of a real estate site is surely to get people to contact the realtor so the realtor can follow up and get that buyer viewing properties in real life rather than just on-line?

Perhaps I'm being too cynical beacuse I am essentially saying less is better!

Roger

Having read the majority of these posts, I've just found myself confused. But then, that happens often enough every day anyway....

One thing your article has achieved, Mark, is a number of new members!!

My personal belief, although I have no specific personal past experience to quote in order to verify my ideas, is that the large majority of Internet users are still very much 'new' to the whole thing and are simply looking for waht they want and are pleased when they find it.

They know what they think is ugly and what is visual appealing. However, more importantly, they NEED what is easily navigated and understood, otherwise they will become lost or confused and move on.

So if your average Joe Internet is your major source of traffic and custom, as long as the website is clear, concise, conveys the message well and can be handled (navigation wise) by a simpletion, then it will be successful given the traffic.

Thanks

So how come I'm not getting the traffic to get such a good Alexa ranking and Google ASdsense income? I'm incredibly handsome, extremely nice and independently rich (my Internet exercises are just a distraction...)

I kill me....

Wiz...

jamble wrote:

That is plain old bad design and a lack of usability on a specific site and has little to with the original point of the article.

I think there's substance there that pertains to the gist of the article. After all, TerryMicha writes of an aesthetically pleasing site that he was prepared to purchase from, yet it lacked the simple navigation attributes that an 'ugly' site may have.

At the risk of speaking for him, I believe his point was "Forget the marvellous and visually astounding websites and just give me something I can use to get what I want"... However, I may be wrong...

Thanks,
Wiz

Wizard of Oz wrote:

jamble wrote:

That is plain old bad design and a lack of usability on a specific site and has little to with the original point of the article.

I think there's substance there that pertains to the gist of the article. After all, TerryMicha writes of an aesthetically pleasing site that he was prepared to purchase from, yet it lacked the simple navigation attributes that an 'ugly' site may have.

At the risk of speaking for him, I believe his point was "Forget the marvellous and visually astounding websites and just give me something I can use to get what I want"... However, I may be wrong...

Thanks,
Wiz

Hi Wiz,

I knew what the gist of what he was saying was, I just feel it's incorrect.

I read it as saying that the "pretty" site he used but couldn't find the info he wanted was difficult to find the info purely because it was pretty and by assumption, an "ugly" site would not have encountered these problems.

What I was trying to say was that the aesthetics of the site make no difference here, not putting things like prices in prominent positions if that's what your visitor wants is simply bad design, not pretty or ugly.

I'll give two examples here of nice design easily beating "ugly" design in terms of functionality and ease of use.

Nice Design: Best-Plots
Ugly Design: Land For Sale

As we can see here, both offer a similar service in the UK (plots of land for sale). The nice design is one I had bookmarked as it's standards compliant and very nicely designed (to my design eye at least). The other one came up in a search engine result.

In the case of Best Plots, it's clearly laid out, inspires confidence (for me at least) that you're dealing with professionals who if you're going to buy land could be dealing with £10,000+ for a plot.

The second, ugly, site doesn't inspire confidence. It's difficult to read the very small times new roman text, it's even got all sorts of counties listed at the bottom of the page (it's the blue links on the blue background) which you could easily miss.

I'd suggest this is a pretty clear cut case of a well planned and designed site being superior as a user experience based on both sites offering the same product rather than a strong USP like Ebay.

I'd also like to add myspace.com to the list of seriously ugly popular sites but again, it's just another example of offering something that didn't exist hence its pulling power, not its nasty design.

Thanks again for the welcome on the boards, I've found some good other topics to bookmark

Wizard of Oz wrote:

Perhaps Mark's point about 'ugly websites inspiring confidence because of their more personal appeal' (appearing to have been built by an individual rather than a large organization), may not apply so much in this 'high stakes' market of land sales (where I imagine lawyers are also involved for conveyancing etc). The 'bargain basement' feel - a la ebay, would probably not be as successful in this area of business. . At least I wouldn't think so - but then, I'm not familiar with the business or the clientelle, so.....

Bingo!  Give the man a cigar!  That was the point.