do marketing pages need to be ugly to work?

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

The only way to know for sure is to test them against each other.

If you're going to test sales pages, it makes sense to test radically different sales pages.

If I know the same people are going to return regularly, I'll use both.

To go with the highest converting sales page only is leaving money on the table.

Because if you go with only sales page A because it converts better than B, you're leaving out the people who respond to only B.

I think it's a considerable exaggeration to say that marketing pages need to be ugly to work. But it's certainly true that they don't need to be beautiful.

Bear in mind that the entry-barriers to internet marketing are so low as to be almost non-existent, and the overall quality of the "average pages" one sees is therefore likely to be pretty bad; and one shouldn't assume that what one typically sees is being used "because it works". Typically, it's being used because it's something like what everyone assumes "must work, otherwise so many people wouldn't be using it" - it's just self-perpetuating with no indication at all that it actually works any better than anything else would. It pays to be a skepchick, in other words.

Thank goodness for tools like Google Optimizer so you can test out different things and see what works best.

I think this sums it up fairly well. How your sales page looks should be based on your market, what they expect, how you want to position your product, and the overall "brand image" you want for your business.

If you're selling an inexpensive product to a market that values "cheap", then your website should look "cheap". If your target market is looking for "underground" stuff, then again, your sales page should look like it's not trying to appeal to the masses.

However, if you're selling to an audience who are influenced by fancy graphics and all that, then use them.

It depends...

If you want a visitor just to leave your page through your affiliate link this can work

I think sometimes it helps to have a plain looking site that looks like it was made by a normal user. This often works well with review sites, where you write a little bit about it and then close of with something like ... "So anyway, if you want to, check it out here...".

Makes the reader feel like you are on his side, rather than trying to sell him something

A lot of this depends on your market--who are they and what are their expectations? Something more professional? Or something more personality driven?

It also depends on what you mean by ugly. In every test I've seen, simple beats cluttered. Anything that helps the reader get through the content faster and understand it easier is usually good.

I haven't personally, but I know some folks who have tested and found a sales page with no header outperforms one with a header. Why? Who knows. Maybe the reader felt less like they were being sold. Maybe the header was just really crappy. Maybe it didn't fit the image the target audience had of themselves. Or maybe it was just so freaking big the headline was below the fold.

So many variables.

With the guy and his ugly pages, it's probably become expected of him, you know? So if one of his customers went to a new page that was super professional, they'd wonder if they were in the right place.

I always tell clients to start simple and go from there, depending on testing.

I tend to find simple and ugly squeeze/sales page work better than professional designed ones. It just feels more personal, rather than a business trying to sell a product. I don't like the ones with big banner header graphics.

It all depends on you to test each sales page and the one that gets visitors stay for some time before leaving

Yeah, sure there are some ugly pages out
there, but at the end of the day, what are
you trying to accomplish?

Think about it for a moment...

You are trying to sell them something. One
thing you are going to learn quickly is it's
imperative to keep the distractions to
a minimum.

Jake Gray

The important thing is "effective sales pages"
It's not about ugly vs. pretty...it's about effectiveness. You also need a good sales flow. Without it, it doesn't matter if your site is pure gutter ghetto or high end fancy shmancy stuff...
Work more on sales flow, effective sales text and getting the message across. If you that, prettiness of the design will mean much less.

btw, hello WF. I'm new here

It isn't the ugliness that makes a site more successful than others. It may be the fact that the site is more simple and less distracting. People will be more encouraged to actually go through and read the content.

A site can be plain and simple and work or pretty and sexy and still work. The text and info are the most valuable parts of any website and you do not want to distract people from it.

thank you all for your reply.

just to clarify a couple of points:

1- the theory of 'ugly works better' is in training videos provided by some of the top people in the marketing business. they made millions according to business week magazine. so i am supposing they know what they are talking about

so the question was if anyone has a similar experience or split tests that confirm this.

2- the idea was not that even ugly works, the idea was that ugly works the best. so if you need result you need to use these pages. some of them even mention that flashy page dont work !

3- i know that ugly is relative, so i will explain a bit.
they meant by ugly, a page that has more then one bright colour fonts, a generic video (nothing flashy in it) and huge arrows pointing to the opt in box !!! and the whole page looks like it just came out of a cheap template.

so i was wondering if anyone out there has this same theory, or did split tests to support this.

thx all
mubb