Simple design vs. "Standard design"

Hello

To keep it simple and too the point....

Content is King...

Sure it is nice to have a flashy graphic interface, but it is the words that sell everything..... So, depending on your market, I would suggest that alwasy go for content first and then see how it goes.

Hosting is so cheap these days that you may want to run a mirror site.... Meaning try one with no flash, just content and the other with lots of flash and see which does better for you..... You can get both groups this way..

Have a Great Day!

yes that's a great point... thanks for the insight... ma head is so crammed up with info right now that i didn't think of that one...

In a word, Google.
They became wildly successful because the site worked better than the competition's, and not because of marketing or flashy design or anything else.

If your market is not-so-computer-savvy people, then the simpler the better.

The instructional design and content writing in any website is always the first and foremost thing that increases overall website popularity and ranking. There is nothing called standard,simple or fancy design. Its all the technique and the principle of instructional design that holds good. Easing user interactivity,limiting numbers of internal links clicks and providing large set of information on web page is an art. Logically arranging,categorizing and placing user personalised information plays a pivotal role of any website success.
The top banner,footer and menu placement decides the area of information that can placed in content panel. The wrong sizing of any of this will hamper overall webpage look and feel.

the main thing is that less is more... especially in this case... I don't want the users to be distracted by any flashy effects, any banners that "demand" attention or any other type of animation that catches the eye... although several Google ads won't hurt since they will be text based... and mostly used in the article section...

Websites are marketing models that so many people misuse. You need to have a nice balance between looks and content.

When designing, I think from a consumer perspective. If I'm building a corporate site selling corporate products, I'm going to put of a lot of emphasis on the way the site looks. I want the site to look professional as people that are paying for services want to know the company they are giving their hard earned cash to is reputable. There are so many internet scams out there, consumers are extremely wary. That is why most of the affiliate market sites sell small amounts of products / downloads.

It sill amazes me that some websites convert as the pages look so scam orientated. It would be very interesting to get "real" numbers about what percentage of websites actually make money. Doubt we will ever get these numbers as people aren't too honest about how their websites are "really" doing.

Yes, sometimes more is less if it's done in the right way. Each project should be looked upon case by case.