Do ugly websites sell more?

Have you heard about the article written by Mark Daoust entitled The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites? According to this article, ugly websites sell more that there attractive counterparts but I disagree with his claims.

While unattractive websites can be successful, my belief is that the more attractive ones can outperform them easily. The article cited the case of Plenty of Fish, a dating website which is also running AdSense. Other examples included eBay, Craiglist, IMDB and even Google. Although all these sites are not aesthetically appealing, they are not truly ugly.

Why do I say so? Well, let’s look at the case of Google, Craiglist, eBay and IMDB for the meantime. While these sites are plain, they have functionality which is lacking in other sites. When we do a search in Google, it returns thousand of results. If want to buy and sell something, the interface to do that in eBay is simple. Craig list also allows you to post unlimited number of classified ads. Although these sites lack the color which can be seen on other sites, they have certainly made up for it by being useful.

Also, another claim made by the site is that ugly websites convey trust. Through an amateurish design, customers will have an idea that a business is being run by a family; hence they are less likely to get scammed. Unfortunately this is not true. Ugly sites means that the owners cannot be bothered to invest atleast $100 for their venture, and this can also mean that they do not care about their clients.

Three things to keep in mind for a better ecommerce website

As a web designer, you goal is to convey messages to your site visitors in an efficient and effective manner. No matter how much you’ve learned about designing, only one thing is certain - simplicity is still the best. This is even truer when it comes to a small business website. While interactive graphics can help you win web design awards, it won’t probably win you customers. As a matter of fact, it is the more complicated designs which have greater risks when it comes to delivering messages. In most cases fancy bells and whistles are best avoided.

For most small businesses, a four or five elegantly designed website is enough to get the job done. Also, these sites are much cheaper compared to sites which have classy multimedia playing. If your goal is to improve sales, then pay attention to these guidelines for a more effective ecommerce site.

1. Make your website easy to understand. In order for you to get leads, you need to ensure that your site is consumer and reader friendly. So, make sure you use short sentences and paragraphs; you can also use dark text on light background. At present, a lot of white space is a norm.

2. Make your site easy to navigate. Put a search bar or a table of contents (index) if you can. Check for broken links and fix them and you can even use lists for better navigation!

3. Make sure your site loads quickly. Sometimes, flash animation does not add value to a website. Ensure that all elements have a purpose; if not better remove them so as to reduce the clutter.

Invest your money wisely!

If you are working as a freelance web designer, then you ought to know that aside from web design being your profession, it is also your business. As a businessman (or woman, whichever works for you), you need to invest your money properly so you can make the most of your available resource. Also, whatever you earn in web design is not totally yours except for that 10% of your earnings which you can use for your living expenses. The rest should be reinvested in your business and of course, you’ll also need to pay your tax. But the question is, where should you invest your money?

1. Stock photos. Whether we’re talking about printed media or the internet, it is always true that a picture paints a thousand words. Sometimes, you don’t need a thousand words to describe the message you want to convey, all you need is a great picture chosen to fit the topic. Professional web designers collect premium and high quality photos and they are not afraid to purchase photos which are really good.

2. Tools and other programs. If you’re using Photoshop for your web design then you should know by now that there are a lot of plug ins you can install and purchase to make your design standout. By purchasing effects and plug ins, you can save time since you won’t have to do it over and over again.

3. Invest in icons. These take a long time to create and can be a waste of time if you do them on your own.

4. Enhance your skills. They say life is about continuously learning of new things. As a web designer, it is important that you learn the latest trend in your craft. Enhance your skills by purchasing videos, trainings and seminars.

Two tips to become a great web designer.

Working with big companies as a web designer has lots of benefits. First, you get referrals for doing a great job and if those referrals are happy with your work, you get even more referrals. This is basically a dream for many web designers – to get paid doing the things that they are good at and being appreciated for it. Unfortunately, getting hired by giant corporations is not so easy. First, you need to have superior skills in order to get noticed. There are a lot of designers who are good with their imagination but cannot express it in their work. On the other hand, there are designers who know the ins and outs of design software but have no creativity to start with.

So, how do you improve your web design skills? There are actually a number of ways. The KISS principle is one of the most widely used technique in the web 2.0 arena. If you can keep the design as simple as possible, then you can be sure that you’re on the right track.

Ever heard of the phrase “Good artists copy, great artists steal”? The two people who were documented saying these words are two of the world’s richest men – Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. You don’t need a major breakthrough just to be known in the design world. What you need is a good grasp of the basics, the ability to manipulate and change elements so that you can make them uniquely yours.

How can you add animation to your site?

One sure fire way to catch a reader’s attention is by using animation. Adding it to a webpage is fairly easy as long as you know how to work the software which are used to create it. At present, there are two most common ways you can add animation to your site – frame based animation and Flash.

The oldest form of animation is GIF. It is also considered as the most common format of graphics on the web. Animated GIFs are like traditional animation wherein each frame is a part of a sequence. Each frame does nothing on its own but the animation starts when it is played. Frame based animation can also be used for different graphic formats such as PNG (portable network graphics) and MNG (multi image network graphics. The great thing about these other formats is that they support more colors than GIF. Frame based animation is fairly easy and you won’t need to purchase expensive software to do it. On the downside, more complex animations will eat up disk space and you can’t add sound effects.

Flash is becoming a popular animation format because of its capability to produce beautiful, rich content using your own images. Aside from these, it also allows amazing sound effects to be added. Its best selling point is that all animation look the same, no matter what kind of system or browser you use.

Some things you need to know about flash

Whenever the term “flash” is mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind is animation. If you want it more accurately, it’s actually about moving graphics which is far more superior compared to simple animation. In order for people to see flash on WebPages, their browsers need to have plugins.

According to a report published by Macromedia, maker of flash, which was published in 2000, there are about 85% of internet users who are already using the Flash 4 plugin. On the other hand, Flash 5 plug-in has about 35% and 95% of all internet users already have Flash working on their systems. Using the 1999 estimate of internet users and the number of people is found at 320 million people!

One of the biggest advantages of using Flash in websites is that it helps insulate platform differences so you won’t have to worry about the limitations of HTML. Now, Flash is no longer just about simple animation, it can do much more. Now you can use any typeface of sensible size, put it on any part of the screen, in any color. You can put it at an angle, make it jump around, and even hyper link it!

Remember however, Flash is not yet indexed by search engines, so it cannot totally replace HTML. If you want your site indexed, you can set a meta tag in the page’s "HEAD". Also, if you want your site to be bookmarkable, set different movies to different pages – you can’t bookmark inside the movie, just the page that hosts it.