One of the things I’ve often thought about is how much design matters. Does a poorly designed website cause people to go elsewhere? Or does the content matter? Well, I think the answer lies somewhere in between

If I think about how surf the net (admittedly I am a fairly seasoned surfer, unlike most web surfers), the design matters in that a site hosted on a default wordpress template or on a blogger account will certainly cause me to close that browser window (or tab for that matter). Unless there is something really compelling on that site, the little “x” gets my attention. I guess what goes through my mind is that if the writer/blogger couldn’t make the effort to use a decent template or some paid-for hosting (or at least point a paid-for domain for a wordpress.com account) then surely their opinions hold no value – if their value is the amount of time or money they spent setting up the website, then their opinions must be worth just as much.

I think the same holds true for affiliate sites – subconciously, the average man on the street arrives at a website and assuming their criteria are there, design dosen’t matter that much – however if the design is poor and dosen’t have the elements they’re used to (such as a shopping basket like Amazon, a nice looking header or credit-card pictures, a surfer will get the next wave.

What are your thoughts on this? How much do you think design matters for conversions? How about the initial “grab”?

Related posts:

1. Attracting visitors to your website
2. PhpBay Pro: an introduction
3. Must have Wordpress plugins for affiliates