Quote 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
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