Originally Posted by harvey

funny thread. All in all, I gotta agree somehow with Metaman, although I don't agree (at least 100%) on some points.

First thing first: Design has A LOT to do with Marketing. And viceversa. For your info, I have a degree in marketing and at least 2 of the academic subjects every year were design and/or media related. And everything else was about researching on design and media results. Even easier: Most marketing companies (I mean real marketing companies, not salesmen) have design depts. Advertisement firms have design/art AND marketing departments. So, either a multibillion dollars industry was wrong all these decades (and the whole cultural, economic and social context derived from that industry) and GFY discovered the gun powder or some people here has to step back and re-think things a little.

See, you can use tools like size, color, placement, layout, shape and so on and so on and so on to achieve an outstanding result. You can use even fonts. Gee, I do it every fucking day trying to solve fuckups done by designers with no clue of marketing. Yet, the knowledge of both areas is what will tell you what to use and what to do (and what not). It's true that sometimes designers design for their own egos, sometimes I do it myself. And it's true that sometimes really simple pages convert better than "designed" pages. But that's because the designer that "designed" that page has no clue whatsoever (and probably charge $150 like Meta says, although I know people that charges a few grands and have no clue whatsoever as well). And it's also true that 99% of the times designers are told to do something really specific (usually a copy of another site) and they've no option than doing that, even against their own best judgement.

Let me put an example: a Pinto will take you home. It will do what it's supposed to do, you drive it and it will take you wherever you wanna go. Now, if you have the chance: will you drive a Pinto or a Ferrari? The main purpose will be achieved by both, but the Ferrari has so many added values that you'll always want the Ferrari, you won't even think about the Pinto choice. And that applies to design and everything else in life. You can fuck the fatty next door and obtain sexual pleasure, maybe great food, maybe real love. And you can fuck Megan Fox and maybe she's a frigid bitch that will drive you nuts. Then again, 99.99% of you will choose to fuck Megan Fox. Why? Because of the "perceived added value". Marketing and design.

Everything you do, everything you live, everything you like, everything you wish is driven by... marketing and design. You're molded to it.

I'll go further: design and marketing will tell you that for some kind of content you'll need different looks (like amateurish for amateur sites). Why? Because YOU'RE MOLDED TO IT. Someone decided for you that's what it's supposed to look, someone decided for you you gotta like that and you follow that, because you live in a cultural context where everything was molded, decided, planned and designed in a certain way.

And a final thought: small sites with niched content where the webmaster is a niche follower itself will usually convert well based on webmaster's knowledge of the niche and his/her own taste. And most designers won't be able to beat that unless they know the niche themselves. Now, if the designer knows the niche, it will beat the webmaster's design most of the times, probably ALL of the times (I'm talking about webmasters with no design knowledge, obviously).

And for general niches... well any good designer with just a SLIGHT knowledge of marketing will kick asses night and day. There might be exceptions, but in my pretty long experience I've seen that happening no more than 5 times.