Sorry for the noob question but it seems every website I look at that someone has posted on here looks the same....kind of plain and to me the first thing I think of when I see them is spam and they're trying to sell me something. I must be missing something....?

Detz,
Can you give your definition of spam? Do you mean "hypey"?

I will agree that too many "sales letters" these days are rip-offs of someone elses. The templates are very similar. Many of them look like the same old white page with dark background... Dark red headline... etc...

Many have heard (through previous tests) that ugly sells, so this is what many do.

I think the best way to find out is to make (at the least) two different styles for your sales page.

Test each: One being clean, nice graphics... and one being grungy, downright nasty.

I've got two running right now for a client... One with great graphics - one very plain-jane (very little graphics involved).

Haven't got the results back yet, but I'll let you know how it goes.

Well, the reason I ask is I think this way. If I'm looking for a product and I come across a few sites I usually don't take the "crappy" ones seriously. I think, if they can't even take the time to design a proper website than they can't be serious about their product either. Probably not the best train of thought but I can't help it. I often will lean towards the better look and thus more professional sites. Also, another no-no in the web world is looking like you're coming from a template or worse you've copied someone's page. I would say 95% of the marketing sites people post here all look the same so it's hard to distinguish if the products are different let alone better than the rest. You all know how important great copy can be so you should use that principle in design as well, looks sell.

Yeah, I guess that makes sense too, most of the sites on here are targeted towards the same audience, maybe an audience that doesn't care for looks but rather the material they will be getting(which is probably better). I would be interested in seeing the comparison though, even some nice logos or different colors, I bet you'd be surprised at the difference it makes.

Detz....

I luv you man!

I love you because you are speaking from an outsiders perspective.
Like Subtle said,More people here should pay close attention to what you are saying. Of course you will probably also hear from those who have done prior testing with this and they will tell you that their ugly stuff sells better.

If you do get any reponses to this and they do tell you this, ask them to show you the side by side comparisons... the losing sales letters and the winners... see if anyone responds.

So far, I only hear about "ugly sells", but I've never actually "seen" it for myself... I'd love to see solid "proof".

Anyone here want to give it a shot? Be my guest... let's see your proof.

-- no, not trying to be sarcastic... I would really love to see actual tests done on this.

Umm, thanks.
Heck, for fun I would do it to someone sales letter for them. Give me their current ugly copy, I will make it nice and split test it, this is very interesting to me since I live in a world of "pretty sells" not "ugly sells".

Hey Stephen, not too pick on you but I'm anal about this because I work with it everyday and since you're nice enough to respond to my posts I figured I would pick on you but I see it on every site on this forum. You website has 146 HTML errors. This might not seem relevant as long as it's visible to you viewers but being a software engineer I understand the important of easily parsed page. The google/yahoo/msn spiders that read these sites for search engines work much better if the code is valid and this can actually hurt page ranking since the spiders might actually be misinterpreting information on the page. I'm not an SEO expert but from what I've learned over the years is that the different tags on a page(bold, underline, headings) do effect SEO in a bunch of different ways and if the spiders don't find these or can't find them because of errors you could be missing some potential. Come to think of it, I don't even know if you guys rely on SEO or you just market the stuff but either way I figured I would throw it out there as another outside perspective.

Oops - Thanks for the heads up. I do use Dreamweaver and run it through its own html checker, but I didn't know this.

What are you using to find these errors? Are you putting it through an online check service?... thanks.

The W3C Markup Validation Service

Good thread with a good point.

Most people are copying the WHAT that the gurus are doing without the understanding the WHY they are doing it.

My friends give me this "ugly sells" crap that they hear from Kennedy. BUT they haven't done their homework to determine - WHY Kennedy can do it, HOW Kennedy does it and WHO Kenedy does it to. They just run off and create ugly sites and sales letters.