I enjoyed Douglas Karr’s recently blog entry titled “What’s in it? Where is it? How? Web Marketing Strategies“. In it, one particular point rang very true for me:

Aesthetics of the site. The layout and theming of your site needs to reflect the professionalism and attitude that you wish to portray. I used to say not to worry about this – it was all about the content. I was wrong, though. Larger sites are seeing a gain in traffic with a new design. Want to open a Web 2.0 site? Make sure it looks like a Web 2.0 site!

Very true! This is one of those concepts that is sometimes difficult to explain to businesses or convince them that it’s important. I see so much effort being placed on getting traffic to a web site but often times not as much effort is placed on how the site looks once the user arrives.

Great design matters. The better your site looks, the easier it is to convince your customers to buy from you.