Busy — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 07:51:05 +0000

What if you had the same content, say tea and scones (or crumpets) but one site was made in Frontpage 98 (badly) with comic sans, centered text, animated gifs ... and the other in a Royal English flavour, real nce. Remember exact same content, who would you buy from?
Go towards proving design does have an inpact on sales.

No lets turn the scales slightly, keep the content topic the same (tea and scones) but worded differently. The Frontpage version has perfect spelling and grammer, everything spelled out in a real 'omg i just have to have that even though I have 12 already' kind of way while the elegant layout is short of facts, bad grammer, slang even out dated information. Now who would you buy from.

80/20, 60/40 ... ? it's just numbers that don't mean diddly.

Another example, you use MSN.com's layout and Google's layout, sell the tea and scones again, or yahoo, or amazon or any other 500 company. Google's layout/design is minimal where as msn is everywhere and these fit into the scale where?

All these people that make these silly statements have earnt how many millions? and google and msn and yahoo ... have how many billions? If companies like google and other 500 companies followed the advice of these 'experts' I am sure the cash box would be a few dollars less

demonhale — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 02:16:52 +0000

First you need the hook-up, its like love at first site, so you need a good design(thats why we need our sites critiqued). Then you spend most of your time making the site accessible, not only do you get to validate with the w3c code validators, you need also for WCAG rules to take effect on your sites, this is where you make your site sticky... You attract first (with design), and make them stay (with coding and accessibility)... All of these are still a part of a marketing strategy... Thats why most designers work with SEO and Marketing people to market their stuff... You also need psychology, you need to look at your public, what niche are you targetting, design it for them... Many itty bitty things come into place, but as we continue to learn, we do these things naturally...

Blue — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 00:38:08 +0000

Yes very true. I reckon it's 60/40 in favour of content. Design surely has an impact on the credibility of the business. I wouldn't buy from a dodgy amateur looking site but I wonder how many non-websavy surfers notice the difference between a good and a bad site.