Most marketing managers choose their web partner using old scoring criteria. They usually ask for a beauty parade of previous work and select the web agency that can make their company look good as well as having a really good Content Management System (CMS).
The problem is, the marketing managers customers don’t care so much for how pretty their website is. In fact none of her customers visit the website to admire it. They all come to find answer to their questions and over 95% of the time those answers come in the form of words.
Profitable websites are usually functional and ugly. The web team works relentlessly to give the customer the information they desire ahead of information the organisation would like to promote. They understand that form and function trumps beauty. They craft words and navigation like sculptors hug marble.
So why are the scoring criteria for selecting a web agency not based upon journalism skills, analysis abilities and an agency that knows the marketing managers competitive landscape? Surly these are far more important than a good CMS and lavish photography. I’m not saying the aesthetic design is irrelevant, it’s just that creative writing and researching exactly what the customer wants from your web presence is much more important.
2 Examples of massively profitable yet aesthetically ugly websites
Booking.com It's no Mona Lisa yet functionally brilliant
Part of Priceline.com, they announce 9 month sales in November 2011 of $3,3 Billion up from $2.3 Billion a year earlier.
As pretty as a building site but simple to navigate
Amazon, king of customer journey, relevance and leveraging social relationships with the customers by way of user ratings.
3 Examples mattress websites: Pretty, Average & Ugly
Pretty or Pretty Useless? The mattress and bed site doesn't list availability and price
The Vi-Spring website doesn’t offer the customer any information on price or availability. They want the customer to call them. No doubt the orginisation doesn’t want to upset its retailers, but doesn’t mind upsetting its eventual consumers by failing to handle the consumers core tasks.
A much better effort but fails on function
The Feather & Black website at least gives availability and price but then it over complicates the sale by asking the customer to choose their favourite bed tension. Oh, I’ll have a 6.5 please! My guess says 75% shopping cart abandonment at this point. Few consumers know or wish to learn the meaning of the world bed tension scale.
Probably the most ugly yet successful and profitable mattress website out of the three
If I was a betting man, I would put my money on Beds.ie as being the most profitable website from the three mattress examples, yet it is by far the ‘most ugly’. It gives the customer everything they need to make a decision.