Design, Marketing, and the 80/20 rule.

This is an interesting article from a marketer about redesigning his site:

http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/372/how-much-time-do-you-spend-on-blog-design/

Yaro wrote: Pure marketers working online look at the web as merely a communication tool to get across a message. Pure designers look at a webpage as a canvass where they can express their creativity and “paint a picture”. How do we find a happy medium between these two extremes?

I've been noticing lately the gap between marketers and designers online. The designers don't talk about marketing and marketers don't talk about design. Most them seem to operate as if the other didn't matter (with the notable exception of Cameron Moll) What about you? Do you consider marketing in your designs? Do you consider design in your makreting efforts? Is one more important than the other? Do you give it more consideration?

I think design can have a big impact on how words are percieved by users. For example, if you have an elegant, professional looking site the words will have much more credibility than they would in an amateurish looking design.

Yaro wrote: It is the words on the site that are responsible for the sales (in an 80/20 sense), yet most people care more about how a website looks.

How true - many of us do seem to be more concerned with what a site looks like than how well it sells. (and I'm using the term "sell" quite loosely here, to encompass communication, sitckiness, learning value, whatever you are trying to accomplish with your website.) Or worrying about what the code is doing too. Does it validate, is it semantic etc. etc. I'm not disputing that those things are important - just that many seem to overemphasize the importance of standards, design, usability etc. to the point where the purpose of the website is forgotten.

But is it really the words that a responsible for sales? I think the design can have a big part to play here - definitely bigger than 20%. However, the role is often in the non-visual aspects of the design such as usability. I've had a lot of conversations with my mom lately about badly designed sites she has attempted to buy products from. She doesn't care what it looks like as long as it's easy to purchase the product she wants. In short, if it's hard to buy something then people aren't going to do it. That's a key design problem.

Yaro wrote: I’ve spent time trying to get a box to align in a column because I wasn’t happy with how it looked knowing full well it didn’t impact the usability of the site.

Aren't we all guilty of that!