Do You Think Surfers Are Concerned About The 'Quality' Of A Site?

Or do you think they are only interested in the quality of the content inside the site?

The reason i ask is that i have been checking out some non-adult sites recently and, to be perfectly honest with you, if these sites were around in the adult industry, id venture a guess than 90% of them would be called crap by most webmasters yet, these sites literally have thousands of members on them.

Do you think, as webmasters, we tend to put to much emphasis on the overall 'quality' of a specific site when in realty, we only need to be worrying about the quality of the content within the site itself?

Your thoughts?

Regards,

Lee

Truth be told, my belief is that site design is more important in attracting affiliates, than it is in attracting members.

Affiliates, aka wembasters, tend to flock towards promoting better designed, more flashy, sites. Members, on the other hand, pay more attention to the content itself, something most affiliates never take the time to really look at.

The same thing holds true to banner ads. We had a ton of VERY high click through % banners on AlleyBucks, that weren't at all flashy or fancy, yet time and time again affiliates put up the more flashy banners that we offer, even when we told them they get lower clickthrough rates than some of the others.

What performs best in attracting members, and what performs best in attracting affiliates, are two very very different things. One would think that affiliates would eventually catch on to that fact........

I agree with JM, site design seems to be a much higher priority to affiliates. Members seem to enjoy regualr updates and promises that are kept over a new flashy design.

Good conversation. I've always believed content to be king when attracting and retaining members and have always thought that people in the industry place too much emphasis on design...especially flash.
I think the method of delivery is important to consider when using content to attract affiliates. Hosted galleries being an example.

Based on what I have seen, the content is most important.

We have two identical sites (exact same with the exception of the design). One had a complete face list while the other has not changed for more or less four-years, yet the figures between the two have not really changed. Therefore, that means the untouched one is more profitable simply because the other used up time/money for the redesign.

I do believe in offering new tours, however that is not what you were/are asking.

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Originally Posted by Paco

I do believe in offering new tours, however that is not what you were/are asking.

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May i aks why you think offering new tours is a good thing, if, by your own words you think multiple tours aren't as profitable?

That kinda seems like an oxymoron to me, you want to be profitable yet you like offering multiple tours even though, doing so, costs you more.

Regards,

Lee

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Originally Posted by Lee

May i aks why you think offering new tours is a good thing, if, by your own words you think multiple tours aren't as profitable?
That kinda seems like an oxymoron to me, you want to be profitable yet you like offering multiple tours even though, doing so, costs you more.
Regards,
Lee

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I must not have come across clearly, sorry. What I was saying is (in reply to your query whether I/we "think surfers are concerned about the 'quality' of a site or do I/we think they are only interested in the quality of the content inside the site"): I do not believe a new 'inside' or members area is as important as content. I was merely comparing the interior of two-sites (more or less the exact same), so to strengthen my opinion.

At the bottom, I added the little ditty about tours - I believe fresh marketing material is, as with content, more important than the member's area. At no time did I say I "think multiple tours aren't as profitable ... ", as you stated.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lee

Or do you think they are only interested in the quality of the content inside the site?

The reason i ask is that i have been checking out some non-adult sites recently and, to be perfectly honest with you, if these sites were around in the adult industry, id venture a guess than 90% of them would be called crap by most webmasters yet, these sites literally have thousands of members on them.

Do you think, as webmasters, we tend to put to much emphasis on the overall 'quality' of a specific site when in realty, we only need to be worrying about the quality of the content within the site itself?

Your thoughts?

Regards,

Lee

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My question would be what is the criteria being used to determine 'quality' of design & content?

Is a site automatically considered well designed simply because it uses the latest gimmick or flash technique or is it that it has fancy menus?

There is so much talk about quality of design vs content but in fact, aren't both related? Does the surfer care how much code is needed to generate the page or how long the photo shoot took?

To me a well designed site doesn't have to meet how many flash movies it has, how many nifty little animated gifs pop up, but how well it gets the surfer to reach for the wallet and keep on reaching it.

Good design should mean that rarely will the surfer notice the layout, as the purpose of the design is to highlight the content to make the sale. So if a surfer has no opinion on the layout, is the design good or bad? If all they do is sign up and keep on signing up does it mean that the content is all that counts or does it also mean that the surfer was able to quickly get to where they wanted, to grab the photo's they wanted to look at, the movies, or whatever.

If your layout is crap and the surfer can't find that perfect hot stud he wants to whack off to, does that make design more important than the content? If the site design is so cluttered you can't tell if its a bear site or a twink site, does that make design more important than the content?

I think in all honesty that webmasters spend way too much time trying to decypher what is top dog rather than simply following their own gut instinct. If you build the site will they come? Not really but if you can easily surf a site and make it so the surfer can quickly spot something to interest them, to make them dig deeper, then aren't you doing the job properly? whether it is through 20 page tours or 1 page isnt what makes it successful that the surfer got what they wanted and joined?

I know for myself I don't want my surfers to be talking about the site design. If they do then I know I need to redo the bloody design because I want them talking about my stories, my content not how i got them there. So is design unimportant or second fiddle? In my mind it is as important as the content is. There is no 1st or 2nd because they are inter related, they both need each other in order to be successful. Least in my opinion.

and mini rant over and heck, just my opinion.
Ian

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Originally Posted by Paco

I must not have come across clearly, sorry. What I was saying is (in reply to your query whether I/we "think surfers are concerned about the 'quality' of a site or do I/we think they are only interested in the quality of the content inside the site"): I do not believe a new 'inside' or members area is as important as content. I was merely comparing the interior of two-sites (more or less the exact same), so to strengthen my opinion.

At the bottom, I added the little ditty about tours - I believe fresh marketing material is, as with content, more important than the member's area. At no time did I say I "think multiple tours aren't as profitable ... ", as you stated.

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Ah gotcha, i thought you meant that by building two seperate sites / members areas, you had spent more money than if you just had one, therefore, making one of the sites / members areas less profitable than the other because you had spent more to make a seperate one when one would have sufficed :)

I kind of disagree about the fresh marketing material angle, to a point at least, you could use the same banner on a site for X amount of time and still make a sale, just as i could use no banners on a site and make a sale, its ultimately how targeted the traffic you are gaining that makes the money, not the promo materials however, promo materials do help in attracting the surfers attention to a specific area on our sites.

To illustrate my point, you could have literally MILLIONS of promo materials on hand across MILLIONS of sites but, if you have no traffic, they arent going to make you a dime.

Regards,

Lee

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Originally Posted by gaystoryman

If your layout is crap and the surfer can't find that perfect hot stud he wants to whack off to, does that make design more important than the content? If the site design is so cluttered you can't tell if its a bear site or a twink site, does that make design more important than the content?

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Actually you bring up a couple of good points just in this paragraph of your post Ian :)

At what point DOES the site design become important to a surfer, more than the content itself? Hmm..

Regards,

Lee

i guess it depends on what you mean by The 'Quality' Of A Site.

a site's quality is more than its content, although content is king. but the layout of a site can greatly affect retention, and i would consider that to be part of the quality. showing the updates from the main page, having news items about the site on the main member page - those things i might consider part of the quality of a site. also plugins that actually interest the members of that site might add to the quality.

and members do care about that. also i've seen bad tours get facelifts and improve their sales 100% or more, and often 50%. and i've seen sites get turned from a stodgy old standard tour into an attractive reality tour and have sales go up.

and i know one network of sites that has THE worst design of pretty much any sites i've seen - and sells terribly. on the other hand, the content is supreme, so it retains depsite its member area layout.

so to answer that, i think defining quality is important.

I'd have to echo some of what Ian and Patti have already said. If the surfer can't find what he likes easily, then the actual quality of what is available is rather moot. I think the biggest single failure of sites is in ignoring good navigation. I don't mean fancy, but GOOD.

Get a header happening (ideally using a php include so you can quickly update your entire site navigation with one html upload) that has a home link, basic gallery index links, bonus features, and so on. And take me out of a gallery back to where I was at and don't force me to backbrowser or click through 30 fricking pages of indexes to get back to where I was. If you want to show a large pic, description and several small images for every single gallery you have in a reality style format - fine - but give me a dropdown of all the index pages that lets me fast forward!

You might have the most unique content of the hottest model(s) on the planet, but frustrating your members with a poorly designed navigation system is simply unforgiveable. I am in a lot of sites, and it's just so frustrating to start moving deeper into the content and there's not even a home link to get me back to the member page. I have literally had to close a site and log back in. That's just nuts. :boo:

And before someone comes along and mentions that this is a technique used to overshadow a site with minimal content ... I already know why it's done ... but my argument is this: if you have quality content, you don't need to "cover up" a lack of quantity.

one other thing came to me - if surfers really didn't care about quality, review sites wouldn't have so much traffic, so many bookmarkers - or make so many sales. so i'd say that quality counts ;)