Goldsites are horrible?

As a UI/UX Designer, i can't be the only one who thinks all websites that are selling gold look absolutely horrible and ugly in terms of visual design and appeal?

They are functional indeed, but the designs of them are seriously outdated, bootstrap like, and nothing seriously engaging?

How do they expect to compete with each other in that case? if you want to maximize sales you might as well present your brand in the best way possible.

Here are some examples I found interesting:

Buy Runescape Gold - Old School & OSRS Rsgp | Cheap Rs Money
PieGP: Cheap Runescape Gold | Buy RS Gold, OSRS Gold, Runescape 2007 Gold, RS3 Gold
Runescape Gold | Buy runescape gold, Buy Rs Gold | Probemas
https://www.arcusgold.com/
Runescape Gold, Buy RuneScape Gold, OSRS Gold, RS3 Gold (the worst)

Same design looks and layout, nothing engaging, boring. As far as I am concerned, i think BoglaGold is one of the leading sellers in the market, but their website is horrible.

BoglaGolds website is definitely a boring bootstrap template as far as I am concerned, i used a very similar template for one of my university projects to learn coding.

I don't mean to hate in anyway, but as a UI Designer I tend to pick on websites that I see quite often. Even Electronics, Cars, Fashion, Collectibles, Coupons and More | eBay has a ugly looking website compared to Amazon. Amazon is clean and simple, it perceives modern design standards.

What are your thoughts? I can't be the only one who feels this way.

 

The gold sites are selling black market goods. They aren't multi-billion dollar businesses like Amazon or eBay that actually care about their websites layout where having an unpleasing website could massively impact their revenue stream. Like you said, they are functional and get the job done. Any traffic that go to the sites are looking to buy services, not gaze at the pretty artwork.

eBay does look a worse compared to Amazon, but that's just an opinion both of us share and answers could vary depending on who you ask.

Since you specialize in UI/UX design, how would you fix the goldsites UI listed above? A lot nitpicking and not suggesting any alternatives as to what could be improved isn't the best way to get a point across.

 

can you review rsgoldmine.com ? i created this personally for a client, ive spent a fair bit on good ux and easy checkouts. All built using the latest frameworks.

It should be fully functioning on mobile as well.

 

You are only buying/selling gold. Most of it is done through livechat and paid through a third-party site. How a website looks is pretty much at the bottom of importance to a website. I'm sure most people won't agree with you when you say "all websites that are selling gold look absolutely horrible and ugly in terms of visual design and appeal". Personally I don't think they're terrible or amazing, but how it looks doesn't matter as much as you'd like to believe.

Customers care about price, speed, and customer service. Maybe as a designer you'd have opinions like that, but if you put yourself in the shoes of a customer, how a website looks will not be the deal breaker.

 

I respect your opinions and I understand what you both are saying.

Let me tell you this, i designed a interactive experience for booking flights within 30 minutes, it was just a challenge nothing too serious.

I got allot of feedback from people saying they would book flights with "x" company if had that interactive experience. What does that suggest? it suggests an increase in sales, which means more profits.

The same concept applies to gold selling websites, say you compare 2 services that are both the exact same, they sell gold at good rates and provide a very good service, but if one had a better looking website, that website, I believe it would get more sales.

I can bring this to a test by creating 2 mockups and creating a poll asking people which website they would buy gold from and why.

These gold sites are businesses, how can you just use a premade bootstrap template? that's horrible branding by itself right there.

The results will speak for itself.

@BuckoProduction The fact that all these gold websites look the same already brings my point across and does show that they all lack something different than each other. (design wise)

Looks better than all the sites I listed above, i'd buy from it.

 

I definitely prefer messaging a gold seller on discord/skype over these livechat websites. I agree with you though, it's crazy how often you see a successful business with a really ugly website

 

If I'm buying gold then all I want to see is the price per mil and the quality of service their livechat support provides. As long as there isn't anything graphically disturbing or something that aggravates me (super bright colors, sound, ads etc.) then I don't care what a site looks like considering I'll be spending literally 30 seconds actually looking at their site.

If I'm buying a flight ticket then there's A LOT more I'll be looking at. But in the end everyone should be using one of those flight price compares to get a better deal unless they have some amazing deal from flight rewards. There's no reason to pay more when you can get an application to compare the prices for you without having to visit each individual site.

Apples and oranges.

 

Fair points, but just because you're not going to spend that long on a website it does NOT mean you leave it looking like shit and out-dated.

You will give a bad impression to your potential customers, all because of carelessness towards your own brand.

You need to understand that to make the most out of your own business no matter what it is, you need to consider how it works and how you present it. Trust me, visuals matter and I have personally studied this and looked into it.

It's that simple.

 

Just keep in mind that your definition, as someone who is studying this and knows a lot about it, of shitty and outdated is far different from the average consumer. Boglas website actually got a lot of positive feedback once it launched.

 

I do recall their website when they launched, and the first one was better than their current bootstrap template.

Regardless, I see your point of view, however the owner of Bogla Gold is performing poorly with the presentation of his brand despite the success he is having with gold sales. His brand presentation isn't at high quality standards.

Just my opinion, and i'm sure other professionals within my field and branding experts will have the same thoughts.

So why would it matter if he is succeeding at the moment? it matters because he isn't maximizing sales like he should be. His brand isn't standing out. It looks cheap and un-convincing just like any other gold selling business I've seen.

This is basic business & branding principles.

What I can say is, if Bogla was to get a complete redesign, i can guarantee that there will be a significant increase in sales, and I'm quite confident about it.

 

i think in particular for rsgp shops, there is a certain hierarchy of importance which I would say is:

trust > findability/SEO > delivery speed > price > user experience

Most people dont spend a long time on the gold website, since its mostly single purchase, and off they go.

I know some goldshops which are basically single-page, having a direct link to a payment provider. They have good SEO and rack a lot of orders. This proves to me that people dont care how well a site is designed. Creating an order in under 30 seconds can be counted as good UX though...

 

What you're missing is the fact that this isn't a fine dining experience. Gold sites aren't trying to wine and dine their customers. This is a fast food place where all the food is the exact same quality, it's just down to which service is better and which food is cheaper. Appearance wouldn't make that big of a difference so long as the page isn't ugly to the average user. You don't need a sleek and completely custom look in order to set yourself apart; anyone with easy fast delivery, English speaking workers and low prices can do very well in this market.

Basically yes it is a business, but a considerably small one with limited growth potential in an unstable market. Why invest in it when the argument for it is shaky in an example that doesn't apply to this market? Why not focus on cutting costs and advertisement?

 

My own site is upwards of costing $10,000 USD. ZERO exaggeration.

We also have an extremely strong search presence and every feature a gold site could physically ever have, I cant speak to the rest of the sites but I set my developer a budget for unlimited whatever I want and I built a gold site I knew would stand the test of time until Runescape died.

I had 3 sites pre rsgoldfund and I went from Wordpress-> Opencart-> More advanced Opencart-> Full Custom

I'm curious as to why u think the design is so bad - The 5 sites you listed(my own included) have some of the strongest traffic and search engine presence in the industry, Pie, Probemas, Bogla, Arcus & Rsgoldfund arguably all hold 5 out of the 10 top 10 spots on search engines.

Theres a lot more to a gold site then what you see on the surface, things have to be practical, simple to use and easy on the eye, most sites have ALOT going on underneath the hood, my own site deploys all sorts of checks and protections that most people never will know about because I've never in 4 years spoken about what they are.

Every site you listed though I have NO DOUBT has over $10,000+ easily in their various sites.

The massive amounts of tabs and words are for SEO related things - "Sell to us" is just a way to rank for the keyword "sell runescape gold" which has a 9,900 search volume a month.

Everything about the gold sites you listed is practical and professional, someone outside the owner of a gold site simply will not understand and I don't want to say more than I already have, just know that every site you see no matter what the design, in the top 10 gold sites it is optimized in its own way to rank and preform better. Everyone has their own attack strategy's and we all deploy them differently.

P.S- Boglagold, Rsgoldfund, Piegp & Probemas were all custom built, I also think Arcus is but I'm not 100% sure, I know the other 4 were.

To say we all use the same template would be incorrect because every single one of us built our own individual sites to our own individual preferences. Several remakes of the various sites u listed have been done as-well, considering we all designed them without knowing what the other had in mind you probably listed the most 5 customized gold sites in the industry although R2pleasent would replace rsgoldfund in this list had you listed his as he is a larger site and was here far before I was *Nods in r2pleasent's direction*.

Customized or unique does not always = better, when Bogla & I joined the industry u have to remember - we both joined at the same time(2014, within 2 months of each other) and both made massive headway(his much larger than mine was) in a already very established industry that was over ~7 years old at this stage, I imagine Bogla shared my stance of knowing we needed to mix traditional(which had worked for 7 years) with something a little different.

Bogla took his jab at it and I took mine(I.E- Rsgoldfund's massive stock chart which is one of a kind), we each individually attacked the same problem just in our own ways.

Hope I answered some of ur questions.

 

Why I think the design is so bad because it looks boring, and un-engaging. It looks like a website from 2010. You're RsGoldFund logo is just a font, rather un-professional. Look at website designs on Behance and Dribble, you'll then understand.

You can achieve SEO and other website goals in various design ways and strategies, not only one way, the way that all these gold sites have, including yours is un-creative and nothing impressive. What people don't understand in this community you can solve design problems in many, many ways and creatively. Content layout and structure, key elements, and so on, all these can be modified and played with to achieve and establish best results.

Right, these gold sites are indeed functional. The User experience is simple and straight forward. But wow, the visuals and the design is beyond boring, outdated and un-appealing. You can combine Design & Function together to produce the best of the best results. This is what allot of entrepreneurs like you gold sellers are not understanding. Not only gold sellers, but allot of businessmen in the world. You can maximize the potential of your businesses if you actually look into these subjects.

You might provide a good gold service, but my first impressions from your site, i thought to myself this is un-professional, cheap, and it doesn't even look like a brand.

These gold websites don't give me any impression as to why I should buy from YOU rather than any other site. First impressions is one of the most basic principles to getting customers attracted to what you offer.

I honestly can't explain this any further, and I will stand by what I say because I have studied branding & some business. I'm not being ignorant or naive, and I can guarantee you what I say is actually correct.

No matter what service you provide, you must be at top quality standards. The gold sites listed are obviously below these professional standards. There's a huge lack of carelessness towards their own brands.

Sorry to also say, but especially yours.

So overall, yours and these other gold sites are not maximizing their potential. They only provide function, but not design. However, when you combine design and function together, you will achieve the best results. If you can't comprehend this then I've got nothing else to say. It's industry standards that you need to be aware off.

On a side note, you're incorrect. BoglaGold is using bootstrap. I inspected their website. Nothing wrong with using bootstrap, but it's a template that's been edited. Also ArcusGold is using Bootstrap.

 

yeah i definitely agree