Don't you just hate it when people give bad advice for their own profit? Recently there's been quite a few articles popping up online that talk about how "design doesn't matter," how it's OK to have an ugly website, that content is the most important thing, or that designers are just trying to rip you off. I have one thing to say about that kind of advice: it's bullshit. Let me tell you why. There's been a lot of research done that proves the impact design has on sales. For example, did you know there's a study that was done by a group of researchers in Canada that proves website visitors make a judgement about your site within the first 1/20th of a second? I don't care how good your copy is or how usable the site is, if your site doesn't capture the visitor's attention in that first 1/20th of a second, they won't stick around long enough to see any of it. Now with that said, I do agree that design just for the sake of having something "pretty" is a waste of … [Read more...]