Why are camsites so ugly?

[Fay_Galore]

Interesting read I stole from Vex' twitter today, a graphic designer who does banners for porn sites. I've always been fascinated by the lack of good design in most camsites, if not all. apparently 'amateur' is the keyword.

http://www.vice.com/read/this-girl-desi ... r-a-living

Thought the concept is interesting and deserved it's own thread.
it goes on about porn in a very one-sided negative light, sorry about that. (it's vice after all, not very political correct)

 

[MadisonxJade]

This made me think of how sexual websites and materials that cater to women are done much better. I suppose something about the amateur design attracts men. Totally worth a study! :thumbleft:

 

[JubalCobb]

Could you just use anyone’s picture in a porn banner?
Yeah!If it’s there [from context there is either the web or google], it’s not under copyright. It’s a pretty grey area. I could use your Facebook pictures, like the ex-boyfriends who put up pictures of their exes.

I find that both morally and legaly problematic.
although the legal aspect may depend on your jurisdiction.

but back to the topic in the title.
The banner ads according to the article are intentionally amateurish to draw clicks.
camsites (some of them) are amateurish cause they dont see a return on investment in making them look better.

 

[GweenBlack]

This is so cool to read, and here we are, spending hours on CSS and HTML5 threads to make our profiles look better :lol:

I wonder how much impact it has. I personally like a cute profile that looks like the model spend a lot of time on it, but some top models has the crappiest and "fast" graphics i've seen. Some, still has the ugly green profile.

Maybe the simple the better?

 

[MayaEden]

Thank you for this. It's going to be an interesting read. I remember the first time I stepped into MFC, I was like "wtf ew" and my brain red flagged me "SCAM SITE GTFO" and I gtfo. Only when I found this forum did I confirm it was indeed not just some fugly site, but a very legit and famous fugly site.

 

[Leon_Omega]

Could you just use anyone’s picture in a porn banner?
Yeah!If it’s there [from context there is either the web or google], it’s not under copyright. It’s a pretty grey area. I could use your Facebook pictures, like the ex-boyfriends who put up pictures of their exes.

I find that both morally and legaly problematic.
although the legal aspect may depend on your jurisdiction.

IIRC you would still need to have the legal rights to use the picture. It might not get you in trouble, but they can claim ownership of not only their picture (if they took it) but also their image. You can circumvent this by having them sign a model release or using royalty-free images.

 

[LilyEvans]

This is so cool to read, and here we are, spending hours on CSS and HTML5 threads to make our profiles look better :lol:

I wonder how much impact it has. I personally like a cute profile that looks like the model spend a lot of time on it, but some top models has the crappiest and "fast" graphics i've seen. Some, still has the ugly green profile.

Maybe the simple the better?

I feel like for the camsite as a whole (MyFreeCams, for instance) the plain, kind of ugly look is good because it looks, well, cheap. It doesn't look like a site that you will end up spending a lot of money on, and it gives the vibe that the women using it are amateurs as opposed to professional porn stars. However, I think a camgirl's personal profile might benefit from customization because it gives them a sense of personality, which is especially important on the social sites like MFC where many guys are looking for a "real girl" to talk to.

BUT! I'm not a dude, and I wasn't a customer of camsites until I started investigating becoming a model, so perhaps my opinion isn't qualified.

 

[Hello_Kimmy]

I also thought MFC was the most hideous beast I ever witnessed. Especially when I saw all the weird emotes and colors in the chat rooms. I was like omg is this 2004 AOL chat rooms but like in the future??
I got over it though and now I like the website. Streamate is not bad to look at though, I like the color scheme.

 

[Fay_Galore]

I find that both morally and legaly problematic.
although the legal aspect may depend on your jurisdiction.

yea what Leon said, it is in fact worldwide prohibited to use images that are not your own. People who post images online don't automatically give up copyright or portrait-right. I've had my images used quite a lot without my permission or knowledge, it's a pain trying to get them down so usually it's not worth the struggle unfortunately. (but I am not holy myself, since I use fonts and brushes for my profile that are not meant for commercial use, so all in all it's a grey area)

but back to the topic in the title.
The banner ads according to the article are intentionally amateurish to draw clicks.
camsites (some of them) are amateurish cause they dont see a return on investment in making them look better.

yes, but, why? do they know for sure?
I'm certain MFC has a marketing team, why the palmtrees? why the ugly layout?
it cannot be because they can't be bothered, a site like MFC would go to great lengths to be even more successful, I'm certain the amateur design is intentional. the question is, why does it work better then if they would have a fancy design?

 

[Fay_Galore]

I feel like for the camsite as a whole (MyFreeCams, for instance) the plain, kind of ugly look is good because it looks, well, cheap. It doesn't look like a site that you will end up spending a lot of money on, and it gives the vibe that the women using it are amateurs as opposed to professional porn stars. However, I think a camgirl's personal profile might benefit from customization because it gives them a sense of personality, which is especially important on the social sites like MFC where many guys are looking for a "real girl" to talk to.

I think you hit the nail on the head there! I'm pretty sure that is their thought pattern.
However, a site like piggybankgirls has beautiful easy to navigate design as well as a very approachable 'real' feel to it. To me that site comes off very authentic, with real girls, not a big super commercial company with it still being pretty to look at. I bet there are more.

 

[Leon_Omega]

This is so cool to read, and here we are, spending hours on CSS and HTML5 threads to make our profiles look better :lol:

I wonder how much impact it has. I personally like a cute profile that looks like the model spend a lot of time on it, but some top models has the crappiest and "fast" graphics i've seen. Some, still has the ugly green profile.

Maybe the simple the better?

I feel like for the camsite as a whole (MyFreeCams, for instance) the plain, kind of ugly look is good because it looks, well, cheap. It doesn't look like a site that you will end up spending a lot of money on, and it gives the vibe that the women using it are amateurs as opposed to professional porn stars. However, I think a camgirl's personal profile might benefit from customization because it gives them a sense of personality, which is especially important on the social sites like MFC where many guys are looking for a "real girl" to talk to.

BUT! I'm not a dude, and I wasn't a customer of camsites until I started investigating becoming a model, so perhaps my opinion isn't qualified.

Yeah, this may well be the case. Though personally I found the design and some of the scripts the site used to be very annoying when I first came there. I left to Chaturbate after a few days and wouldn't come back until I saw some interesting models on MFC that made me consider switching back.

For me personally, it's not the cheapness of the site's design that makes me spend more (not consciously, anyway). If anything that would be a deterrent for me because of my background in marketing and graphic/web design. A "cheap" looking site to me screams unprofessional (a good example of this was fucking Moneygram, the Dutch page of which had Lorem Ipsum on its page last I checked as well as broken links, making me think it was either a very unprofessional company or a really inept scam). I'm usually hesitant to buy from unprofessional companies.

 

[CallMeWilliam]

I said this to a graphic designer once....

Ugly sites rule and fancy sites drool when it comes to client site rendering.

Meaning the more complex the client HTML is the longer the browser takes to render the HTML. Lately tho this has not been much of an issue due to computing speed, differed content loading (AJAX), CDN's, etc. Another side factor is bandwidth cost since sites like MFC are basically uploading content that is their true cost. Uploading a lot of content (images/CSS/html) will cost them more that a plain ol' site with some basic CSS and HTML

However I am amazed at how shitty web sites have become with implementing differed content loading, it seems everything is loaded after the fact and you spend more time waiting for the main content to load while other useless content is rendered first (like links to external referral content sites).

 

[VeronicaChaos]

I'm starting to wonder if they've had their layout for so long now that they can't change it. Customers really hate change, sometime.

I think if they ever changed the layout they would implement a "personalization" option where you could change from the palm trees to something else. But at this point, those palm trees are like a landmark so I think they're probably here to stay.

 

[Shaun__]

I never knew MFC had palm trees or randomly changed the model in the banner at the top, until a model started talking about it with the room.

 

[Fay_Galore]

My friend who introduces me to MFC as a possible camsite for me has been a member there for a while when he send me the link, of course I responded "why does it look a tacky?" and he said "what do you mean? it's functional!" coming from a designer. so yeah, I guess even if your first reaction is 'ewww' you get used to it within minutes and it ís fairly easy to navigate.

 

[RainyDayGuy]

It seems like all of your jobs are all really depressing.
Yeah, they are really depressing. I’m actually an illustrator, but there’s no money in that during wartime. People don’t pay for art: they pay for sex and war.

This made me smile.

As to site design, as someone that has been paid in the past to write code for web stuff, MFC is butt ass ugly code. Tried to write a script a little while back to extract some info from my personal history and just gave up because it was such inconsistent and badly structured code it wasn't worth the effort. I don't find the layout particularly functional or effiecient, but I guess compared to some other sites it isn't horrible. Then again, I am probably not the customer they are trying to attract with their less than professional looking design.

When I looked at the mobile site, it seemed better visually. Hopefully at some point in the future they will do a total redesign and get rid of Flash for streaming video. That would improve things way more than any other change.

 

[Lintilla]

As to site design, as someone that has been paid in the past to write code for web stuff, MFC is butt ass ugly code. Tried to write a script a little while back to extract some info from my personal history and just gave up because it was such inconsistent and badly structured code it wasn't worth the effort. I don't find the layout particularly functional or effiecient, but I guess compared to some other sites it isn't horrible. Then again, I am probably not the customer they are trying to attract with their less than professional looking design.

When I looked at the mobile site, it seemed better visually. Hopefully at some point in the future they will do a total redesign and get rid of Flash for streaming video. That would improve things way more than any other change.

Totally agree with this. I was a professional front end developer/designer/cubicle monkey for some time, and while I can understand the look of the site (ugly really is beneficial sometimes), the coding and functionality makes me want to stick a fork in my eye. Recode the entire site. Use the same butt ugly design, but everything else needs to be redone from the ground up!

Every site needs a total reboot from time to time, if you don't want it to remain exactly the same indefinitely. You can't just tack more and more new features clumsily onto and old site. The code gets messier, bugs become harder to avoid, new things you want to add but didn't originally consider leaving an opening for a decade ago because they were literally impossible at the time become near impossible to implement without breaking what's already there... More bugs, more mess, endless circle of kablooie.

At least they made marginal improvements to the profiles, but nothing I was particularity impressed with. Though, that would be the hardest part to rebuild considering how many people have it customized.

Aside from all that, though...

The actual article fits my experience as well. Once upon a time I also freelanced doing various web stuffs, and sold numerous banner ads. Never for porn, but what's said in that article definitely goes for many other industries as well. Especially if one of the selling points for something is that it's "cheap", but honestly... nah, ugly just generally seemed more effective. If the banner looks too slick it won't get a high click through rate. Bright red Comic Sans with yellow outlines everywhere. It hurt me to do it, but that's what works.