12-05-2006, 12:35 PM
Quote:Ugliness And Trust
What the article does say is that it's possible an ugly site can convey a sense of trust, since it clearly wasn't designed by some professional web designer or savvy marketer. The article claims an ugly site can convey a sense of trust since it more likely belongs to a family run business. I have to disagree with this idea. It may be true that an ugly site would lead you to believe it's a small mom and pop operation behind it, but that alone isn't enough to convey trust. It's far too easy today to put up a reasonably attractive site , given all the designers building a portfolio and willing to work cheap and all the free and low cost tempates you can find.
A truly ugly website says that you can't be bothered to put even a little money or work into your site. A family run business can at the very least spend $100 on a template or hire a design student. If you can't put money or time into the look of your site why should anyone believe you've put either into securing their credit card information when it travels across the web. Why should we believe you'll be willing to spend a half hour on a customer support call if you can't be bothered to spend a few minutes developing your site.
You do not need to have a beautiful website to convey trust, but you do need to meet a level of professionalism that clearly separates your site from being amateur. eBay, Craig's List, and Google may not be attractive sites, but they all adhere to some rather simple design principles, which is enough to achieve a minimum level of professionalism in their design...
full article: http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/blogt...lMore.html