SITE DESIGN TIPS

First and foremost, I want to make it clear that I am about to make reference to one of our clients in a humorous tone. OK, somewhat of a demeaning tone at times.SITE DESIGN TIPS

First and foremost, I want to make it clear that I am about to make reference to one of our clients in a humorous tone. OK, somewhat of a demeaning tone at times. He will remain nameless of course, but I want you to know that he and I have become good friends and now laugh about our experiences that we have shared including the ones I’ll disclose with you.

Secondly, this is a dialogue of sorts. There are a few different designers who write for YNOT and each of us is presenting our opinions and philosophies about graphic design based upon our academic backgrounds, personal experiences, what we’ve seen work within the industry, etc. Your part in this experience is to take all of our collective thoughts and ideas, keep the ones you like and agree with, while discarding the rest. Having said that, let’s begin with what our understanding is of basic website design.

Recently, I sat down with a new client to redesign his adult pay site which had recently lost its ‘1:500’ sign up ratio luster. I told him that I’d review his site and get back to him with a quote and plug him into one of our designers to begin the new design. After surfing through most of his site’s tour, I thought to myself, “How the fuck does this site even turn over a 1:1000 ratio, much less a 1:500?” I knew he was lying.

This particular gentleman happens to live in the state below mine. I arranged to meet with him so that we could go over what would be his new design in more granular detail. After a few beers, I discovered that he was in fact lying about his website’s success. After admitting to having a whopping 17 members after 6-7 months of operation (not to mention his licensing debts), he also confessed that he designed his own website. The poor fella fell victim to his girlfriend’s delusion that she could help him make money on the Internet not by posing nude mind you, but rather from designing his website with her ‘understanding’ of what a man wants when surfing for porn. A good concept, but what appeared to be her girlish touch beaten about with his testosterone bat produced one ugly fucking website.

Having said that, let’s roll straight into rule number one: color. Color is fundamentally one of the three primary variables that have to be right. You cannot get this step wrong. The site that I was referring to above was truthfully hideous. I try not to be so judgmental of other people’s designs, but even a blind person’s eyes would sting from a monitor’s radiation as they were penetrated with all of this ‘color information’. Picture this: A pink, purple, red, blue, and green splash screen!

There are several great research papers (mostly funded by advertising agencies) that have documented in detail the powerful effects of color and the psychology of buying behaviors. The casinos in Vegas were designed primarily on these principles. The literature suggests that reds, yellows, and bright oranges are the most effective colors for selling (bright royal blue coming in very close statistically). They are said to represent excitement, confidence, energy, feelings of grandeur, and most importantly success. Those are the minute details that separate the ‘greats’ from the ‘averages’. Think about some of the most successful logos in the history of marketing: Coke, Pepsi, McDonald’s, Tide, Gatorade and on and on. Are there exceptions? Sure, but look at your averages and see what seems to have the highest success rates.

My experiences in a handful of different businesses and mediums also validate the above colors I mention. In addition, I have also come to realize that lighter colors seem to do best on the web. White is probably the most successful background color in the adult industry if you ask me. However, background is only one component, and the other above colors on top of white can do wonders.

The “preview” button continued the torture. Once out of the first carnival tent, I stumbled into another with a completely different color scheme and design! The second rule: consistency. Face it, one of the secrets to any fast food chain’s success is consistency. McDonald’s would not be McDonald’s if each one did not have those warm glowing “Golden Arches” along with that fat juicy Big Mac burger with the ‘secret sauce’ (stoners keep reading, you can satisfy your munchies at the end of the article). For example, have you ever been in a foreign country with food you hated? And then you see those Golden Arches, those two entangled glowing ‘M’s’ that remind you of home. That same rule applies in porn and any other business I have been involved in. Don’t over-complicate things by changing what makes your surfers happy and comfortable. Just find the design and look that you are happy with and stick with it. Remember your audience; they’re (mostly) men. We are simple creatures us men, everything we love and want falls into the same category as beer. We just want it to be a certain way, cold refreshing or whatever other crap makes beer so good. The website is your favorite beer after a long day of hard work. You know where it is, and what to expect from it. Lesson learned: Don’t fuck with your customer’s beer. Give them what they want, and more of it.

The third rule in my own philosophy of good design is that the most important aesthetic consideration is transmission speed, otherwise known as ‘Mr.Bandwidth’. You have to decide what a reasonable download time is for your site. Maybe you want the splash page to be a fast load, but you’re willing to compromise a little extra time for surfers who take the first step and surf through the front door? There are different strategies for this, and you just have to negotiate with yourself and arrive at a compromise between resolution and bandwidth. Do some research, find out your audience’s average connection and experience it yourself at that speed.

The fourth rule that I have learned from my experiences is to get a basic comprehension about the Zen of the font and flow. Flow portion is designing a page that takes the eyes from one point on the page and guides them to another (usually the join button). This is a difficult rule to articulate effectively. It’s more of an acquired understanding. You know it when you see it. There shouldn’t be too many fonts and the ones that are used should work nicely for the theme. Always have the mindset to logistically take these factors into consideration. You’ll get it right.

The fifth rule is to always use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets: a simple way to add style elements to a web page) where you can get away with it. Before you resort to adding all your text to a graphic, consider using CSS to reduce your bandwidth. Sometime this just is not an option with your particular design, but challenge yourself to use it whenever possible. The advantages are faster downloading times, smooth clear text, and cross browser compatibility.

Well, those are some of the most basic fundamentals of design from the buddha-style perspective. I plan to cover these fundamentals at a more in-depth level for the more advanced webmaster. If you are interested in any more information on the above topics feel free to contact me. If you are interested in our design services, please take a look at our portfolio. YNOT members receive a 15% discount on their designs as we are supporters of the YNOT effort.