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Ask HN: Crappy website design seems more trustworthy?

23 points burglins | 1 comments | 21 Oct 24 14:39 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source

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?
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JohnFen ◴[21 Oct 24 14:59 UTC] No.41904916[source]▶
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.

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tyleo ◴[21 Oct 24 19:53 UTC] No.41907854[source]▶
Is this true in general? I’ve had the opposite experience. I’d love to see some data if you have any.
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1. JohnFen ◴[22 Oct 24 13:58 UTC] No.41914348[source]▶
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.