The case for butt fugly websites
Published: Wed, 09/21/16
you're beautiful."
-- A woman at a poetry reading
speaking to the late Charles Bukowski
Last week I was interviewed on a video podcast about copywriting, and we 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 “founding father” of Internet marketing Ken McCarthy, 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 19 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, mangled English, and the list goes on.
More:
To see an email template for standing out like a fart in study hall on Halloween next month, high tail it over to the link below and get your ugly, scary-looking gluteus assimus on the list in time to get the October issue.
It contains a template I’ve used for years.
And, it’s easily adapted (not copied, don’t be a loser) for any kind of offer.
Here’s the fugly link again:
http://www.EmailPlayers.com
Ben Settle