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Ask HN: Do quality web graphics, design and layout actually help businesses?

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Re: Ask HN: Do quality web graphics, design and layout actually help businesses?

#41

Post by adrianhoward »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #19

If you were dying of thirst in a desert would the style of the canteen matter when you were offered water? Businesses concentrate on providing water to thirsty people, i.e., find something that people want and provide it to them. If they want it enough, nothing much else matters. This is the goal. Artists concentrate on providing visual joy and passion in the world. Make people enjoy things they normally might not. F…

Businesses concentrate on providing water to thirsty people, i.e., find something that people want and provide it to them. If they want it enough, nothing much else matters. This is the goal. Artists concentrate on providing visual joy and passion in the world. Make people enjoy things they normally might not.

You seem to think design is purely about art and aesthetics. This is a very narrow slice of a good design/ux practitioners skill set. Good design/ux folk are much more about the process of finding the thirsty people, understanding why they've missed the water fountain that's right in front of them, and fixing the problem.

Re: Ask HN: Do quality web graphics, design and layout actually help businesses?

#42

Post by autonoms »

derefr wrote: post #40
adrianhoward wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what designers like about designs is in many cases orthogonal to their effectiveness in convincing customers to enter business relationships You have there, in a nutshell, the difference between the outlook of good and bad designers. Bad designers care about whether they like the design. Good designers care about whether the end-user likes the design.

I think, more often, the dichotomy is between idealistic designers and pragmatic designers. Idealistic designers care about whether the end-users (meaning the people who will, say, visit the website) like the design. Pragmatic designers care about whether the client likes the design. It's quite a bit harder to make money as an idealistic designer, unless you can wield conversion rate data at the client. If you're jus…

I disagree with the your dichotomy. It isn't whether the end-user likes the design, it is whether the design is useful. So useful that they don't even realize "design" is taking place.

Re: Ask HN: Do quality web graphics, design and layout actually help businesses?

#43

Post by adrianhoward »

piotr_krzyzek wrote: post #25
kitcar wrote: post #11

This is one of those questions where human psychology is the predominant factor driving decisions. Many managers look at the cost differential of hiring a high-end designer versus getting their back end dev to mock something up, and ask themselves "Will I get another $X,XXX amount of business in return for this investment?" Depending on their personality, they will then answer "yes" or "no", and act accordingly. The…

This is the core of my question and puzzle. As a consultant, I can see the 'image' value for the company. Let's say Company X is currently making 1M in clean profit, and their overall image is low-end (business cards are cheap, website is cheap, their trucks are dirty and cheap); then I'm of the opinion that they are a cheap, low end company. I'm guessing most businesses do NOT want to be seen the low end type. My as…

I'm guessing most businesses do NOT want to be seen the low end type.

That totally depends on the market the business wants. If you're selling low-price office supplies then you want to look like you're selling low end office supplies. If you have a classy expensive brand to your site, then your customers will be more likely to think you're selling a classy and expensive product. If you're money is in supporting the low-end then this is a very bad move.

You brand yourself for your market. Burger King don't want to look like a four-star steak restaurant. And vice versa.

Re: Ask HN: Do quality web graphics, design and layout actually help businesses?

#44

Post by adrianhoward »

derefr wrote: post #40
adrianhoward wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what designers like about designs is in many cases orthogonal to their effectiveness in convincing customers to enter business relationships You have there, in a nutshell, the difference between the outlook of good and bad designers. Bad designers care about whether they like the design. Good designers care about whether the end-user likes the design.

I think, more often, the dichotomy is between idealistic designers and pragmatic designers. Idealistic designers care about whether the end-users (meaning the people who will, say, visit the website) like the design. Pragmatic designers care about whether the client likes the design. It's quite a bit harder to make money as an idealistic designer, unless you can wield conversion rate data at the client. If you're jus…

The good designer knows how to get the client to understand that the end-user is the one who needs to value the design :-)

[Top tip - never ask the client "What do you think of X?" instead ask "What would your customers think of X?". You'll be amazed at the different kind of responses you get.]

Re: Ask HN: Do quality web graphics, design and layout actually help businesses?

#45

Post by melvinram »

Disclaimer: I am a web designer.

Design is more than just pretty pictures. Organization of information and communicating the right messages are more important than presentation. Craigslist looks like POS but it's organized to be useful.

"So why do companies stick with, pardon my language, P.O.S. websites?"

The answer to that question has a few different roots. The three most common that I've seen are:

a) As patio11 said, the website isn't a critical ingredient in the sales cycle.

b) The competition is doing a terrible job with info organization and communication. If competition communicates horribly but has pretty pictures and you have ugly site but it communicates in a way that connects with their pains, fears and desires, you're probably going to win the sale unless design is important to what they are going to deliver for you.

c) If a website is working well (even though it's hideous), making drastic changes may result in killing the formula that was working. This happens because a lot of times when designers redesign a site, they don't think/experiment through what is already working and what isn't. Business owner gets new design, launches, sees sales go down and reverts back to old hideous design. Eventually they get to a "if it ain't broken, why fix it" mentality.

Now we've done tests where we took terribly designed sites that were working well, revamped the design while keeping the same layout, content & flow, and it increased overall conversions.

The key with improving anything that is making one change at a time and letting the numbers guide you with the decision making.

With all that said, I have launched substantial redesigns of my own site countless times and reverted back to the current version. This is because incremental changes give you less and less increases over time. Sometimes a drastic redesign can give you a relatively gigantic boost. That's how we discovered our current design. But you want to be making singular changes to test impact most of time.

Re: Ask HN: Do quality web graphics, design and layout actually help businesses?

#46

Post by adrianhoward »

melvinram wrote: post #45

Disclaimer: I am a web designer. Design is more than just pretty pictures. Organization of information and communicating the right messages are more important than presentation. Craigslist looks like POS but it's organized to be useful. "So why do companies stick with, pardon my language, P.O.S. websites?" The answer to that question has a few different roots. The three most common that I've seen are: a) As patio11 s…

The competition is doing a terrible job with info organization and communication

This is an often overlooked one. I once talked my way out of some work after doing some usability testing on a bunch of recruiting sites. The client chose not to fix some of the issues that we discovered not because they didn't consider them important - but because the competition was so much worse (e.g. in one case only 1/5 people could register!).

Re: Ask HN: Do quality web graphics, design and layout actually help businesses?

#47

Post by Ahmedb »

Like everything : it depends ! If you are let's say a paper company, you can afford to have a shitty website. Your business depends on sales people and the website is just a note out there that you exist.

But if you are an Ecommerce company your website is your business.

Now people, me included, will most likely trust a well designed website over a crappy one. Why ? because it shows that you care about it.

Look at the scams we get by email. The more well designed they are, the more likely we are to trust them. Thank god they're mainly plain text.

Re: Ask HN: Do quality web graphics, design and layout actually help businesses?

#48

Post by adrianhoward »

billpatrianakos wrote: post #26
patio11 wrote: post #13

There are many roads to the cheese. Cold calling, for example, works. I've never done it and if I suggested it to my (very successful) clients they'd laugh in my face, but it is an enormous business. A lot of businesses can get away with terrible websites for the same reason I can get away with terrible business cards: 99.8% of the business is elsewhere. If you're Nobu your website could be done by a 4th grader in Fl…

I waffle back and forth between agreeing with you and disagreeing with you as I've asked myself that same question time and time again. Right now I agree with the one caveat being that awful design can only pass when the information presented is well organized and easily found. I've seen designers changing tens of thousands for sites that look like they were built using a 90's style WYSIWYG editor measurably boost bu…

the one caveat being that awful design can only pass when the information presented is well organized and easily found

Nope. Awful design survives when the users incentives for using the site outweigh the pain caused by the bad design.

I was comparison shopping for marbles this afternoon (don't ask) - several sites just got closed because I couldn't trivially see what the P&P was.

I'm traveling to the US this year. Which means I have to get ESTA authentication from the lovely DHS. It doesn't matter how fking awful that site is. I will go through the process until it works since I have no other option.

Re: Ask HN: Do quality web graphics, design and layout actually help businesses?

#49

Post by underwater »

piotr_krzyzek wrote: post #27
underwater wrote: post #18

As a counterpoint to commenters who are going with their gut instinct, see the blog post by patio11 about redesigning Bingo Card Creator http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/04/19/ab-testing-is-frustratin... . He found that a new design did increase trial sign ups but did not increase sales.

I remember this one. The problem is the statement and his design is that it also changed his sales funnel. There was too much of a change to tell exactly where things fell apart or why specifically sales did not increase. Was it the initial offer? The middle? The actual offering? ect ect ... I agree with this assessment that new/better designs don't always increase sales, though I believe (should he ever choose to pu…

I agreed completely, but am not aware of any studies that compare purely aesthetic changes. At the very least Patrick's post shows that design is less important than a tuned Sales channel.
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