Google AdWords
The more we need a website, the more we’re prepared to put up with a poor design.
Amazon’s layout is famously basic but effective. Consider the following after a search for paper towels:
And the appearance of the results for the same search on eBay also won’t be winning any design awards:
Amazon and eBay both offer clear and tangible benefits to their users, and so in a sense don’t need to develop the appearance of their websites.
Amazon seem instead to devote their efforts to cross-selling and upselling, while eBay offer more great (and safe) deals than any other website.
Which is why they can get away with ugliness and a dated design.
Yet both websites offer a far prettier front end. Both sites have better-designed and more attractive home pages.
If you rely on your website to impress visitors and turn them into customers, then an ugly interface and design simply won’t do it.
I would say that it’s not just about them “getting away with ugliness and a dated design” – I bet that prettier design would decrease their conversions. If not, they would already have it.
But you are right – there is a conflict. It’s tricky: Beautiful front-end is required to attract new customers and get their attention, but ruthlessly functionalist back-end is required to maximize conversions.
Simpler, more clean landing pages often outperform beautiful flashy pages with lots of eye candy. But these pages are all about the message that speaks directly to the needs of the customer.
I think that in many cases, good design is invisible.
I think you’re in danger of confusing good design and aesthetics. I think Amazon have it right: you go there looking to buy things or find something in particular and their site delivers. If you can combine good design and superb aesthetics, great, but too often IMO web designers are keener on the second than the first. My church’s website, professionally done, looks beautiful but it’s all Flash – no ability to copy and paste text from it, no Ctrl +/- to change the text size and when if ask Google what it knows about the site you would weep.
My own site is far from beautiful (as I’m selling structural engineering software who cares?) but it is clean HTML and I get to be on page 1 of Google for the most likely search terms. I’d be terrified of spending $$$$ to end up with something good looking that lost search engine cred.