GRAPHIC DESIGN QUESTION: Does butt UGLY sell?

27 replies
Quoting Eugene Schwartz now...

I specialize in "ugly." I'm the lousiest layout man in the world. I do ugly layouts. Why do I do ugly layouts? Because beauty looks much the same. It has a very narrow definition. Ugliness is randomness, which means that it's spread out. So there are a hundred different ways to be ugly and only two or three ways to be beautiful. So, the ugly thing in a world of beauty stands out. Estee Lauder discovered that. Twenty years ago, when Revlon was just knocking them dead with this four-color printing and then everybody else came in, Helena Rubenstein, etc., Estee herself said, "Well, if we run four-color, we're gonna look like everybody else. Nobody's going to be able to tell us. How about sepia?" And she got a series of sepia ads that were stunningly beautiful but completely different. And when you open the magazines there, wham! There is Lauder...
I believe Eugene Schwartz said above more than 25 years ago...

My question for you:

In the year 2013... does UGLY still sell?

What about with web landing pages? Video sales lettetrs? Videos?

"The ugly thing in a world of beauty stands out" - does this still apply in our Internet age?
#butt #design #graphic #question #sell #ugly
  • Profile picture of the author Tinkerbell
    Yep. I have a "butt ugly" website that does, indeed, sell things. While I can't speak for everyone else, for me, it "still sells".
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  • Profile picture of the author directmaildude
    I would say the key point is to make your ads "disruptive." Which often means ugly, but not always.

    An ugly ad in a print magazine will stand out because in a swarm of pretty print ads, ugly is disruptive.

    The reason the white-board sales videos are working now is because it's disruptive -- not because they are ugly.
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  • Profile picture of the author Curtis2011
    Ugly can sometimes achieve a desired result more than beautiful.

    When I first started out in SEO I was using Adsense on the very first website that I had hand-coded while learning html.

    In retrospect, the website was horendously ugly. But at the time, it got around a 7% CTR with the Adsense ads on it.

    Why so high? Probably because the page was so ugly that people wanted to leave it immediately by clicking the ads.

    Then I paid for a "professional" template that looked much nicer, but my CTR dropped from 7% to like 1.5% overnight.

    Since then, I have done more optimization and gotten closer to 4% CTR with my own custom ad layouts and templates. But still, it's not as high as my old butt-ugly layout had gotten.
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  • Profile picture of the author 100k
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author Mark Pescetti
      Originally Posted by 100k View Post

      Does butt ugly get laid? No.

      Of course there are exceptions...
      Hey, it worked for me buddy!
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  • Profile picture of the author DustonMcGroarty
    In this forum for sure, we know the right message to the right person is all you really need. Doesn't matter if the color of background is lime green or electric blue. If the offer is compelling enough, you're golden.

    My Dad's site is 14 years old now and hasn't been changed since the day he started it. It's not pretty but it pays the bills and some.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mr. Subtle
      Originally Posted by ryanmcgee View Post

      Quoting Eugene Schwartz now...

      ...

      I believe Eugene Schwartz said above more than 25 years ago...

      My question for you:

      In the year 2013... does UGLY still sell?
      Define "ugly."

      Eugene Schwartz PIKED "ugly" as being his advertorial-like ads. They weren't "ugly" ... just different from all the other ads in the magazine.

      If your definition of "ugly" is an advertorial-like ad, then YES "ugly" sells.

      Originally Posted by DustonMcGroarty View Post

      My Dad's site is 14 years old now and hasn't been changed since the day he started it. It's not pretty but it pays the bills and some.
      This is the saddest comment I've read here in a long time... not testing anything on a web page in 14 years. And the sadder part is that you haven't convinced your dad to ABT or at least every now and then.
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  • Profile picture of the author Raydal
    It's not a matter that "ugly sells" but the DIFFERENT stands out
    and the first step in selling (AIDA) is attention. It's the purple cow
    principle.

    -Ray Edwards
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  • Profile picture of the author mpluto
    I have what some would say "ugly", one page website and it had conversions of 15%, now dropped to like 13%. It gets low traffic though.

    My other semi-ugly site gets about 700 visits a month in general and makes around $20,000/annually on autopilot.

    Those are just two of my "ugliest" websites.
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    • Profile picture of the author Curtis2011
      Originally Posted by mpluto View Post

      I have what some would say "ugly", one page website and it had conversions of 15%, now dropped to like 13%. It gets low traffic though.

      My other semi-ugly site gets about 700 visits a month in general and makes around $20,000/annually on autopilot.

      Those are just two of my "ugliest" websites.


      What kind of niche makes $20k a year off 700 visits a month?
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      • Profile picture of the author mpluto
        Originally Posted by Curtis2011 View Post



        What kind of niche makes $20k a year off 700 visits a month?
        Specialized technology equipment sales. If people search for them, they are pretty much ready to buy.
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  • Profile picture of the author sethczerepak
    Depends on what you mean by "butt ugly." Simple designs can still sell very well if the message is good, but not unprofessional ones. I've seen some damn attractive pages with lame copy that didn't sell a lick too. The message is always going to be the most important thing.
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  • Profile picture of the author David Maschke
    The distinction in this line of thinking is don't confuse "cheap" with "ugly." Two very different animals.
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  • Profile picture of the author derricks4
    The only place that "Butt ugly" doesn't sell is the strip club.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dennis Gaskill
    Ugly, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
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    Just when you think you've got it all figured out, someone changes the rules.

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  • Profile picture of the author Jennie Heckel
    Hi All,

    My 2 cents.

    I always suggest clients split test a PLAIN JANE PAGE = i.e. with no header and just plain text on white with navy blue subheads and no photos and just product images versus a more high end site with fancy graphics.

    Why?

    Because depending on the niche, the visitor, the offer and the price point - a less fancy design will sell BETTER in some cases.

    I see a lot of sites and sales letters which are way over done, and take too long to load and with a 65+ bounce rate wonder "why don't I have sales?"

    That's a no brainer to me.

    The attention span of a visitor these days is getting shorter and shorter.

    So before you spend that wad of time and money on a super fancy high end design at will be sure to load super slow (unless you spend the money to host it and upload all the graphics and video to Amazon3)... you might want to rethink that.

    I am finding higher conversion rates with simplified banners and with what I would call a "more article style" copy in some niches.

    And you have to TEST to know.

    Good luck to all!

    Jennie Heckel
    Sales Letter Copywriter
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  • Profile picture of the author Jarvis Edwards
    Perhaps in the days of eye-candy graphics and neck-turning, glittery sales pages,
    UGLY really stands out.

    A visitor on an ugly site may as well be thinking: "wow, this is a pretty ugly website...they better have something incredible to get away with this nonsense..this site looks terrible..Let me check this out for a bit and see what their talking about...."

    Imagine a visitor on a site with the same content/product but a "fancy" design/layout:
    "there's nothing special about this website.,,,,


    Maybe some websites, though ugly, appeal to a certain visitor for reasons based on their unique personalities, mood, etc. While other sites appeal to a person's eye and a decision to stay/buy/signup is dependent on aesthetics more than anything else.
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  • Profile picture of the author ReferralCandy
    Two of my favourite sites are Ling's Cars and UNDZ.org, both of them "ugly" as heck but still pretty damn awesome. Also see Nassim Taleb's fooledbyrandomness.com and of course, Maddox's The Best Page In The Universe.

    Enjoy.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jeremey
      Doesn't it boil down to your market?

      Would you sell a photography marketing planner to a bunch of photographers on an "ugly" site?

      I do think there needs to be a distinction between "ugly" and "poorly designed." An "ugly" site that is well designed is still going to be more effective than a poorly designed ugly site ... designed for conversion, that is ... Flow, ease of use, understanding of what you want prospects to do on your page ... those are all elements of a design optimized for conversion.

      Bottom line is - know your audience, and make it easy for them to buy.
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  • Profile picture of the author The Copy Warriors
    Yeah, the principle of what he's saying is correct, but the thing is, in the world of internet marketing, where 90% of the sales letters are ugly as ****, the beautiful is going to stand out more. This isn't prime time television advertising. I mean look at these samples from the WSO forum:

    http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...ior-forum.html

    http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...-warriors.html

    http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...orth-98-a.html

    Do you think ugly design will make you stand out against these internet Picassos?

    Hardly!

    Internet marketing design in general tends to suffer from an extreme lack of imagination. To stand out, you need to do something different, and in this community, "ugly" is not different.
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  • Profile picture of the author JustinDT
    Banned
    It depends on what you define selling as.
    If you define selling as does it catch attention, then the answer is yes.
    Ugly will almost always catch attention. It's then up to the copy to keep that attention and convert it into a buying mindset.

    So in a sense ugly could end up selling very well
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    I think a lot of people confuse ugly with simplicity, usually it's the simplicity of a page that's leading traffic down the sales path.
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    • Profile picture of the author mrdomains
      Sure it works - as long as you hit the right demographic with it.

      Ugly (as in simplified, garish, loud, tacky, etc) works extremely well with certain social groups.
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  • Profile picture of the author marc@clickbitz
    It's not a question of "ugly vs. beautiful" so much as "slick vs. earnest" or "phony vs. genuine". It just so happens that ugly conveys "earnest and genuine" more often than a beautiful, highly-sophisticated website that has had every detail fussed over for weeks.

    An ugly, amateur-looking website only works with certain people. Know your market!
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  • Profile picture of the author Wadud Peterson
    Not sure if people care so much about ugly or pretty when it comes down to getting the best info. I think I get past the way a page looks once I've read the first paragraph of the sales page.

    If the information seems genuine, I may give it a try. On the other hand, if it's the most attractive page around and the content sucks... I'll go for ugly every time!

    That's my 2 cents
    Wadud
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  • Profile picture of the author website design
    Depends on target market, stage of sales process and industry - if the customer is browsing and somehow gets on a weight loss site then ugly works - if the customer is a ceo looking to purchase professional services then ugly doesn't work as well - either way it's all about grabbing attention and that has more to do with your unique selling position and headline more than anything else.
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    no sig needed.
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