Simple websites are better than beautiful ones. I'll repeat that for the folks in the back. Simple websites are better than beautiful ones. Let me be clear what I mean by a simple website. I don't mean a Wordpress site with a minimalist theme. I also don't mean a Substack …
Pretty sites are cool and all, but in my experience super simple things often just don’t work. I’m not patient anymore when it comes to stuff like that, so I’ll close the tab real quick and find the information elsewhere or move on to the next thing.
Pretty sites aren’t aimed at us though.
For the average consumer grabbing their attention is really important and first impressions mean a lot.
If they go onto a site that looks “basic” it’ll give a bad impression of the business.
I know I’m not part of the target audience for pretty sites, but the average user gets frustrated with poor design choices and outright broken websites as well.
Just as one recent and therefore present example, I was on a pretty site the other day and nothing happened when I clicked on “About Us”. The next thing I did was close the tab. As you say, first impressions mean a lot.
I hear complaints about these kind of things at work constantly as well. As an internal product owner of sorts users think I and the devs make poor design choices on our own, but all we can do is manage the best we can with the UX garbage Microsoft comes up with.