Bad designs?
 

Do bad gallery and TGP designs actually do better than sleek graphic designed pages?

Take Hun and Thumbzilla for example. It would appear they were designed in 1995, but yet are bigtime sites.

I don't get it. I've only seen a handful of galleries and TGP's that can run with current overall internet design standards.

Do gallery makers / TGP owners mean to do this, or is there just no previous internet expierence before this?

ppl go to see pussy not pretty graphics.

design is nothing compared to marketing ability. get over it

with tgp it's function over form... ANY frills detract from loading and viewing time. the only design that is neccesary on a tgp are the ads... you're trying to scoop up as many possible people regardless of any factor and throw them at a sponsor.

hmmm.... I kinda figured I'd get "it's all about the pussy" type replies.

But, I don't know if this is because:

A: These people CAN design, but they choose not to b/c it's not necessary.

or

B: They can't design worth a damn, and just make themselves believe it's not necessary.

IMHO design is a huge part of any website. I don't care what you are selling. The overall design is the first impression you place upon visitors.

And the argument that graphics cut down on load time or distract from ad's is invalid if you truely do have design skillz.

keep it simple. why go through extra bandwidth when u don't have to? i highly doubt the hun would get more bookmarks if he had a better looking website. a good design might get a 'wow, this is cool' but its the site content that makes the site.

most people don't care what dictionary.com or google looks like.. they just want the information..

different sites have different functions.. i neglected to mention your own bandwidth when i was talking about frills (thanks iguana).

the only design a tgp page should have is one the doesn't cost the webmaster an extra few dollars a day because it's got frills that don't add much but design wank.. and gets the content to the users as quickly as possible.. the only design on a tgp gallery page should be like that of the sponsor it's trying to promote..

if you're just talking html background colours and table layouts.. and a few 4k gifs then yeah i get what you're saying.. make it look nice and simple..... or not ugly.. nothing fancy.. but if you're talking about extra bitmap graphics and what not then the argument just doesn't stick like it does to many, many other sites.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. :stoned

to get to your question.. i think it's "A".. but i don't mean design in the traditional "i went to design school way"..
the fact that the hun et al are so big should answer your question as to how important traditional "design" is in tgp's..

a site/tgp like http://www.boneprone.com looks good. Just a few graphics to spice it ll up :thumbsup

i think design has more to do with paysites myself. like an amateur site should have an amateurish look to it. but a site with high quality playboy-like babes should have a more professional look to it. u can kind of set the mood for the surfer depending on the type of site it is.

but tgp's are just huge lists of tits and ass. just a big ol smut farm.

making pretty graphics can take away from ads on the page. if u have 2 items and one is butt ugly, it will make the other item look better than normal. so u would want your ads to be the best looking part of the website so they stick out more. in theory u should see more clicks since the surfer will notice them more.

I think most surfers are basically impatient. They want to hit a site, then have the links right there for them to start clicking on. They aren't there to critique design. They could give a shit how fancy a site is as long as things are easy to find.
You can throw up a shitty looking site, and as long as the page loads fast and the links are easy to read and find, with desired destinations, you'll get plenty of return traffic.

I don't get it either.

I end up scratching both heads everytime I visit the hun.

:thumbsup

since it's already been mentioned, I won't pull out my "it's all about the pussy" post....

you want your tgp, etc. to be fairly plain...here's why....if you are trying to sell your sponsors, you want them to look better than your site...if your tgp is all "Look Ma, I Own The Photoshop Bible" it could detract from the design of your sponsors' site(s) and minimize the impact of their designs (thus minimizing sells)

Here's a couple of screenshots of the TGP i'm working on at the moment...

http://www.geocities.com/brendan/tag.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/brendan/tag2.jpg

Nothing to "in your face"
But i like to think it's not butt ugly either. And it loads damn fast too. The only images on that site larger than 2kb are the banners.
And those damn things are like..15-20k each (2 per page)

Some opinions would be appreciated ;)

Someone once told me that the uglier a gallery was, the better it did in sales....... the next gallery I made, the colors didn't match, it had a horrible layout, eat up with text, and you know what? I made $300 off that fucker........ I made a nice one, for ME it was nice, as I am not a designer by any means......... I got ONE sale and it was a fucking trial..............

Less is more, and some would do good to realize this. I am not one to talk because I clutter the hell out of everything I do........ but in MOST cases, less is definitely more.

There must be something with this design thing. 'Amateurish' tours on my site always did better than the 'pro' ones. Once I posted a question here and got 'get a pro design' answers. I got 'pro' design and ... my signups dropped...

since when is Zilla an ugly site? :eek7
His logo is fucking cool!

and I don't even trade with him at this time, so I am not kissing ass - I like that site

I think it's kinda like when I go out... I'd rather go to a quaint little, relaxed atmosphere, bar than a fancy, "Everyone put on their best act" kind of place.

But... that's just part of the joy of variety.. :)

I would think if you have a free site or TGP you would want to keep it very simple. I was told this years ago.... Spice it up with some Scrolling Java
and colored buttons...and that's about it...

I also think alot of these pay sites are screwing using Flash, there dam pages take forever to load.... Hell am on a Cable Modem and one sponsors
stats page, I set here and wait...Everyone does not and will not have Cable or DSL for some time..

And alot of designers are designing pages for
1024x768... and around 50% of people are still using 800x600...

It's pretty much the way it is in all corners of the adult site biz...

Even in the bikini/babes, non-nude teens, etc. The worse it's
designed, the more traffic it has, the more $$ it makes.

Strange sort of phenomenon.

poorly designed flash loads slow.

well designed flash is 10-20% of the normal size of a graphic
(.jpg or .gif). I don't know why people blame flash so much...

it rules when you do it right. that seems to be the problem
though, doesn't it?