Some years ago I was consulting and helping a business in Kansas. They were in a retail trade and the stores were, uh…well, you just had to make sure your tetanus booster was up-to-date. Clutter was not so much a problem as filth. Peeling paint on the outside, including the sign. Dusty displays.
I sat down with the president of the company and asked him about his overall “maintenance strategy.” I think that may have been the first, and only time, I had used that phrase. But I wanted to sound high falutin’ you know. This guy was a $@! kicker from way back. He asked me what I meant, so I told him. “Man, your stores look like crap.” When you’re face to face with a $@! kicker, you’ve got to learn to do some kickin’ yourself. He appreciated my bluntness. But his answer surprised me.
“Hey, man. I don’t want to look too fancy. Folks might think we’re too expensive.”
Price was part of his strategy. That is, LOW prices were part of his strategy. I had personally seen guys come in from the Kansas prairie, wearing overalls while shirtless with Evergreen Feed Store baseball caps on their sweat soaked heads. I knew he was right. End of discussion.
Greasy, grimy and gritty were good for his business. It defied everything I knew to be true at the time. That was over 20 years ago. It was the first time poor appearance had been formally presented to me as a purposeful business strategy.
Fast forward to the last few years and enter my interest in web design – not doing it myself necessary (I know just enough web design to know I need to hire it out). Like most, I fancy all the coolest designs. My list of favorite designs grew, and grew and grew. I cut and pasted links to all of them, or bookmarked them and stored them in a folder named, “Favorite Website Designs.” You’re not laughing because you’ve got a folder like that, too – don’t you?
I discovered that my favorites changed. What I found appealing 3 years ago, doesn’t seem so great today. Great design I discovered was like chasing a rainbow. It was nice to think about, but impossible to achieve.
Don’t get me wrong. I love great designs. But as a businessman the reality is, it does not always translate into good business. It may not even often translate into good business. In fact, there is tremendous evidence – for many enterprises – that ugly is better. That has almost always been true in direct mail campaigns and it’s also true for many online businesses. Let me be clear that there’s a distinction between good navigation and good design. Something can be easy to navigate and look like crap. Just like something can look killer, but be tough to muddle through to find anything useful.
In the past few years I’ve paid close attention to the Internet marketers. Look at them carefully. Sure, some of them have good looking websites (see Michael Fortin or Yanik Silver). Then, there are those by Jeff Walker whose last blog entry is dated February 21, 2008 (over a year ago). And I really like Jeff (yeah, we’re on a first name basis). Seriously, the dude hasn’t a clue who I am, but I still like him. He just has a ugly website. But he’s in great company because so does Frank Kern. Hey, at least Frank (also a close personal friend) has blogged in the current calendar year!
I’m sure Fortin and Silver are doing well. I’m equally certain Walker and Kern aren’t starving either. And you know what? To their respective clients and prospective customers greasy, grimy and gritty may be better for business. Why? Because it means they don’t have high dollar websites, so I shouldn’t need one either. It means I can crank out something just as crappy as them, and it won’t hurt me because it doesn’t seem to hinder them. Low overhead, low cost and making money in spite of ugly is appealing. Don’t believe me? Then you’ve not seen Tellman Knudson.*
*And NO, I’m not an affiliate, but I wish I were.
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