graphicpush

I'm usually not one to toot my horn, but this has been considered for awhile http://forums.seochat.com/affiliate-marketing-58/how-slick-is-too-slick-29930.html

I'm not sure that content wins to the exclusion of any design considerations -- if you've interviewed/hired people in an HR capacity, or have sold things for a living for awhile, you'll know that packaging has its tipping points in both directions.

For me, the less-designed, more homemade a site looks, the less likely I am to give out my credit card number. But…

I am getting a membership, for a school project, to one of those websites where you buy background reports on people. Out of the few I looked at, I ended up picking the ugliest one . But I picked it because, one, it was a better deal, and two, the other sites were actually clones of each other. Different company addresses and styles, but the exact same layout and features.

In the grocery store, I was looking at two bags of peas, and I decided to buy one bag over the other because the picture had better contrast, knowing that the peas would taste exactly the same.

Robert, that is a good discussion and I’ve made the link active.

Jacob, I too would have picked the peas with the better photo. I constantly find myself being swayed by clever graphics vs the better price of a generic brand. (Which brings up a similar discussion—are generic food brands “under-designed” so as to appear more budget-friendly? Food for thought, pun intended.)

We as designers/artists react to better design. I think the general populace reacts to design differently—if it’s over designed (“over designed” being completely subjective), it might be interpreted as a scam.

I think that “ugly” sites are successful because of their functionality and freebies, not their lack of design. If myspace charged a low fee like $10 a year I bet a lot of people on there wouldn’t sign up.

I’ll be the first to admit that when I search for a service online, their web presence influences my decision of which company to use. If a company has spent the time/money to develop a good website then I am more likely to trust their attention to detail. I’m not likely to trust a Frontpage built site for anything important or expensive.

In my experience (albeit brief) with MySpace, what bothered me the most was that some of the people’s pages were downright ILLEGIBLE. I couldn’t read anything on a lot of them.

And I just couldn’t support that because ultimately, there has to be some sort of check to make sure that things are still legible. Otherwise the web is going to become a lot of noisy, ugly sites that are all connected in one way or another, but you won’t be able to figure out how because you can’t find the information that you desire.

Besides, all MySpace offers is just combining a blog, Flickr account, and email into one ugly site.

Good article. Well said, you make some valid points. I personnaly think it just depends on what the goal of a website is. The website of a large, exclusive company should be ‘well-designed’, professional and slick looking. If that company had some ugly non-designed amateur frontpage design, it would give a very bad impression. On the other side, if some small shop or a charity organisation would have the slickiest-looking, black-and-white corparate design, people wouldn’t trust that! Here in the netherlands some big chain of shops for building material (hornbach.nl) uses some very ugly colors for it’s branding. The colors make the brand look cheap. And that’s the purpose. So in a sense, it is well-designed…

I disagree. I think graphic design has little to do with success of a website. I think information design has everything to do with the success of a website. It’s about how it works, it’s about ease of use. It is not about pretty graphics. It is not about ugly graphics.

Matthijs has a valid point. If a site is directly involved in taking payments from users, no one will trust a site that appears it has been hastily slapped together.

Yahoo is another example of simple site design. Notice that all of those sites you mentioned are driven by usability, not design. They design for usability. Personally, although minimal, I think flickr has a beautiful design. It works and it works well. Not to mention it probably saves a fortune on bandwidth.

I 100% agree. Usability is key. And I also agree that the design of the site should follow the function of the site—corporate sites (think HR Block, Sprint, etc) should be professional and slick-looking because that is exactly the type of image they are trying to portray. Sales sites—and I’m really talking about the smaller shops selling things like ebooks, self-help videos, things like that—depend on that air of authenticity to come across as small, honest and trustworthy.

I’m trying to connect it with a real-world analogy. We expect big companies to be in big, shiny downtown buildings, just as we expect the one-man bait shop to be in a small shack down by the harbor. That same guy could probably set up shop in a strip mall, but he would immediately lose credibility. Maybe not a perfect comparison, but you get the idea.

The lack of professional design is the design.

Do you believe that I’ve seen people that don’t like (aka don’t use) usable sites?

It’s true. Some people have been so much addicted to bad design that cannot tell good from bad anymore.

I don’t really think usability has anything to do with the success of myspace. I hate myspace.

I hate that when I google a myspace user I find other users that mention the user I am looking for on their page. Or when I search on myspace itself, I find people that are friends with them. But then if someone logs in and does a user search, then it works.

My girlfriend canceled her account recently. It was literally a process with at least three steps, including a form where you comment on why you are canceling.

I think the fact is that it’s popular because it’s popular. I use AOL Instant Messenger because when I got it, more of my friends used it than MSN or Yahoo or whatever else. If you’re in a band, you get a myspace because similar bands have myspaces and your would-be-fans have myspaces.

I think it will lose a little momentum when people find out that Rupert Murdoch owns MySpace.