The beautifully profitable case for horrifyingly fugly websites
Published: Wed, 03/20/19
— A woman at a poetry reading speaking to the late Charles Bukowski
A while back on a podcast interview about copywriting, I got to talking about how ugly so very often (not always, obviously, many factors at play) beats out pretty online.
Ugly layouts.
Ugly fonts.
Ugly links (i.e. putting the full http: //... in instead of a pretty hyper link)
Ugly colors.
Ugly images.
Ugly language.
And so on, and so forth.
In Yours Unruly’s experience (I have yet to see pretty beat ugly in any of my projects)… and in the experience of many people who have been doing this much longer and have seen a gazillion more tests than I have (like the late copywriter Gene Schwartz, the late marketing genius Jim Straw, and even the Drudge Report — which looks like it was created with Netscape Composer and hasn’t changed in over 20 years…) ugly often works better.
Why?
I don’t know.
My *guess* is because it’s like Mr. Schwartz said:
“In a world of beauty
the ugly thing stands out”
Case in point:
Holly (the chick who interviewed me) was saying how her designer is always disappointed at how ugly wins, and how she once knew the owner of an art gallery who purposely hung the pictures up slightly crooked because it got people’s attention.
Anyway, am I saying ugly always wins?
That'd be silly.
But to me, it’s all about standing out, especially in emails.
Thus — ugly, plain text, the occasional mangled word, and the list goes on.
More:
A couple easily-irritated blokes have asked why on God’s blue earth I would use such a butt-fugly web page for the elBenbo’s Bargain Bin of Bonuses sale this week, which is black text, on a yellow background (Gary Halbert said it was the easiest color combo on the eyes…), with no table or mobile-friendly format, etc.
The answer?
Speed, for one thing.
And for another:
It amuses me to irk the easily-irked.
But, I suspect even the most irritated of these guys and ghouls who bought anyway are finding the massive amount of value for a mere $20 worth it.
This sale wraps up Friday at midnight EST.
Get your lovin’ here:
http://www.EmailPlayers.com/bargain
Ben Settle