Website Design

not 100% sure exactly what you're asking, do you mean does good design sell more of your product/service? if so then the answer's yes.

while information marketing in particular is often more bare bones in the amount of design, or graphic finish it has, this is usually due to the content being the important bit, the sales pitch as such, so minimal distractions works better in this case. Also if you're selling in the 'make money online' area then you want your customers to think that the creation of similar sites is achievable by them too so to have a site that looks complicated and expensive wouldn't help you to sell the idea on to others. And of course a pitch website is just a modern day version of a tradition direct mail letter sent through the post so that has always really defined the rough format online pitch sites follow.

Interms of design helping a more traditional online business, again design can only help you. It builds trust and confidence in the site visitor, and a well designed site is easy to navigate and should hopefully be easy to take in and understand. The minute someone has to stop and start thinking about things on your website that's when you're in trouble.

Anyway, hope I understood the question properly!

Lots of people get too caught up in the design aspect of site developement. The design should please you first and foremost. Make for an easily navigated site and NOT be too distracting to visitors. Most also forget that a large number of web surfers are on dial-up access and too many graphics and such cause them problems due to site load times and broken image links - just adding to their frustration and they will likely bounce.

Simple and clean layouts are generally best for converting a visitor to a buyer.

i think maybe your refering to blogs and single sales pitch sites more specifically, I was perhaps thinking more along the lines of web design in general, both harry12's links were to a traditional company website rather than a IM style site.

So whoever designs that type of site would have tried to look into what sort of demagraphic breakdown there was across the current customer base, and who ideally they were aiming themselves at, and then kick off the design process from there.

I guess it is essentially just creating a custom theme when it boils down to it, but one that can take in all the finer aspects of delivering your brand effectively to your intended customer whoever they are, CEO's, mothers, students or whatever.

it's really all a designer does is to do the above, obviously taking away all the usabilty, information architecture, and general design side of things.

So when I said don't go with what you prefer, I meant you might think a style of design on your site looks great when in reality it may not be the best style to appeal to your intended audience.

Web design is a process of conceptualization, planning, modeling, and execution of electronic media content delivery via Internet (or World wide Web eg. WWW) in the form of Markup language such as HTML suitable for interpretation by Web browsers (Such as IE and Firefox) thats display as a GUI (Graphical user interface).Improvements in browser compliance with W3C standards prompted a widespread acceptance and usage of XHTML/XML in conjunction with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to position and manipulate web site page elements.

Designing a website is a very crucial part if u want to make ur website alive...u must first think about the type of visitors going to visit the website like if u r designing two websites one related to providing "free online books" and second which is providing "free online games" then the look n feel should be different for both the website...u have to choose variety of eye soothing colors for website related to "games" so it will attract the visitors and let to play games for long time n let him to provide positive feedback so that it will visit again n again whereas for "books" variety of colors is not necessary but the font of the content in terms of size and readability is important...totally user friendly as the age of the visitor can be from 10 to 75...so it totally depends on the visitors visiting the website...

UI is a important experience for user.

Hi I am new in this forum everyone give their own opinion about this discussion great and such a wonderful discussion.

Web design can be a barrier if it prevents, or slows down promotion of your business. Don't neglect answering the phone and booking a limo because you are knee deep in setting up you web site. However, like many things, investing up front or laying a good foundation can reap rewards later on and so you are smart for settiing up a site.

If finances are tight, just start and build as you can afford the time. You may find that what was once an insurmountable barrier has become a gateway!