On Visual Appeal

by Joshua Porter  |   January 18th, 2006  |  shortlink: http://bokardo.com/p/314

Mark Bernstein:

“does visual appeal lead to lots of sales? Take eBay. The eBay home page is ugly — everyone knows this. I guess that’s because eBay is making so little money that they can’t afford to hire a designer to improve their use of color? Conversely, do appealing sites lead to hot sales — making Mark Boulton, say, a tycoon?

Visual appeal is nice. Findability is nice. Structure is nice. Clarity, brevity, and sincerity — all nice. But they’re all secondary.

You can compete on price, or service, or quality. If you’re in a tie, the visual appeal of your web page (or of your salesperson) can make a difference. To argue that visual appeal is the dominant factor in web commerce is to assume that people are stupid, that they make snap judgments based on tiny glimpses of the page and act on those judgments against their best interest. It can happen: people make mistakes. In my experience, though, the audience is smarter than you.”

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Comments

1.  CM Harrington 12:29pm, Wed 18th, 2006

I think there is a stronger linkage to “quality” and visual appeal than is implied in that passage. There are many sites out there that allow me to get my mail. All of them do the basics, such as read, compose, forward, etc. However, the ones I actually enjoy using are the ones that are visually appealing, like Roundcube.

2.  CM Harrington 12:32pm, Wed 18th, 2006

Oops… forgot to mention that currently Roundcube doesn’t yet have all the basics (lacks search), but I still like it, as it is a joy to use. I also know that eventually, they’ll catch up in the features department.

3.  Alex Pooley 3:25am, Thu 19th, 2006

The masses like shiny stuff. Here’s a study that suggests visual appearance does matter:

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060109/pf/060109-13_pf.html

“Potential readers can make snap decisions in just 50 milliseconds.”

In my opinion, you need the package.

4.  Alexander K 3:56am, Thu 19th, 2006

That supports the notion that a appealing design will influence our perception of the usability of a certain product. [Appealing] Visuals play a big role in the total user-experience and in the perception of other relevant factors of that user-experience, like usability.

5.  Brian 8:38am, Thu 26th, 2006

I believe that many of the times your competitors might have more or less the same functinality and the visual element will be the deciding factor. Also, the design isn’t necessarily the key—people have varying tastes, rather the ease of use, the overall presentation and usability. User interfaces are definitely key in developing software and shouldn’t be slapped on like a final coat of paint.