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Ask HN: Crappy website design seems more trustworthy?

20 points by burglins 2 days ago | 20 comments

I visited my bank's website and it hit me. For some reason, their crappy website design appears as more trustworthy than other, sleeker designs of modern banks. Why is that?

al_borland 1 day ago

I think there is a sweet spot.

Too "modern" and I assume a site is using excessive amounts of tracking and playing other tricks with A/B testing different marketing tactics for services to try to milk their customers for all their worth.

Too crappy and I start to question if the site is actually secure and if they are putting enough money into IT... or if it's even the real site vs some kind of scam.

Both can be problems that erode trust, but they are different problems.

dtagames 2 days ago

It is possible to have both great content and great design, but it's rare. Think of the Met museum website vs a tech startup. Both will have modern, fancy UIs, but the museum also has real information where the marketing site will only have design elements and simple hype statements.

That said, you probably want to judge your bank's trustworthiness by it's rating with the Federal government, which is public info. Most banks (all but the biggest) have to outsource their online banking software and it's never as slick as the big guys'.

JohnFen 2 days ago

I know that in general, the flashier a thing is -- that is, the more obvious effort that has been put into a thing's aesthetics -- the less likely that thing is to be great.

My hypothesis is it's because time and money investment was put into aesthetics at the expense of making the product or service better.

tyleo 1 day ago

Is this true in general? I’ve had the opposite experience. I’d love to see some data if you have any.

JohnFen 15 hours ago

I have no objective data, only decades of personal experience and observation. It seems true in the majority of cases to me. Enough of a majority that it's a reasonable rule of thumb. The effect is particularly pronounced with websites.

I've even seen it happen in real time with small YouTubers. They get money and start putting it into "production values", then more often than not the quality of their actual substance declines.

Of course, it's not 100%. There are some flashy things that also happen to be decent, and there are nonflashy things that suck. Flashiness is just a general indicator of what the priorities of the maker are.

brailsafe 1 day ago

Whether it's true or not, it's definitely a rule I follow for many situations. If a restaurant has loud signage in a busy area, sometimes literally flashing, it ain't gunna be good. Most new websites try to fill negative space with unsubstantial bullshit

tyleo 1 day ago

I agree with that example you just shared. I think I don’t view it as the same as your quote though:

> the more obvious effort that has been put into a thing's aesthetics

I would consider that sign example to not be aesthetically pleasing. Maybe it’s more related to the ‘loudness’ of the aesthetics.

There are a lot of simple text blogs on HN which is a great aesthetic, some with lots of thought to keep them simple. Thats the counterpoint IMO.

brailsafe 1 day ago

There's an idiom that describes this; "Putting lipstick on a pig".

If a thing looks and feels great, and has something worth making so, then there's no issue at all.

handfuloflight 1 day ago

I think this becomes less the case as good design and aesthetics become table stakes.

h2odragon 2 days ago

We're trained to assume that the prettier things are implemented by entities that care more for the pretty than the function the thing was supposed to preform.

Uglier, less decorated things are expected to function better, with less effort "wasted" on goals unrelated to the problem being solved.