Design for content or content for design?

I am asking this question to my self maybe more than 3 years and still cant decided.

I have to put more than 2000 charactered content to the homepage.
Not just because of giving brief description of each goods and services offered at the homepage it is also about the ranks.

Every beautifull design I made just not fits for the 2000+ characters!


I am confused about that

Please vote.
a service homepage with wordy design or an attractive design with only headers and some promo description ?


I know there are lots of reasons you to choose web site to get some goods and services however
I think the best way to made a reliable vote please just think the websites you purchased some services and goods, are they with attractive design or wordy design ?

My vote for design for content

Same design for content, Content is gold for the SEO and definitely it needs intelligent design. For example if you consider Google, it targets the ads based on your site’s content, not your visitor’s desires.

Every beautifull design I made just not fits for the 2000+ characters!What is it about your designs that prevent them from adjusting to varying amounts of text? A beautiful design should provide a compelling atmosphere in which to absorb content, and occasionally a page within a site will be present only to visually excite the viewer. This is definitely more the exception than the rule.

The Web is a flexible medium. It's not a piece of paper. A design should have no problem displaying 20 characters or 20,000 characters. Either way, in the end, it's the information and the message that impacts a business's goals, and design should never be done in spite of content, but always complementary to it!

wordy design good for google and googlebot only
can read text but not image

[QUOTE]Originally posted by the_pm

"design should never be done in spite of content, but always complementary to it!"

Very good point. :)

Nobody reads anything on the internet anymore. That's why a clean and attractive design is better than the over-stuffed wordy websites that explode in your face with WHATS NEW's and CLICK HERE's..

If you can't present everything on your page to your visitor in 7 seconds or less... you lose. Too much words = brain overload.

Nobody reads anything on the internet anymore.That's an incredible assertion, especially considering the exponential explosion of news sites, special interest news sites, forums, blogs, etc., all of which rely on the exact opposite to happen.

Could you perhaps link to whatever studies concluded this? I'd be very interested to read those findings!

Let me ask you a question...

When you get one of your magazines that you have a subscription to in the mail and you sit down for the first time with it... what is the first thing you do???

Most likely you thumb through the entire magazine rather quickly, getting an idea about what the new issue contains by skimming some headlines and most importantly looking at the associated pictures.

Web sites are no different. Visitors come to your website to gather a few tidbits on each page... merely skimming through trying to find anything that jumps at them. The problem is, pages that are overloaded often show no great importance to the the topics of most interest. Even worse, some topics of interest to one visitor may be skipped over. So what do I do to stop this???

I lessen the content on each page, and let them thumb through the website... ensuring that each page presents all the headlines and important tidbits within 7 seconds or less.

I have no conclusive studies, nor any testimonials to my opinion... it is merely my way of doing things. I know how I surf the net, and I have seen how my friends and co-workers surf the net. I hardly ever read anything thoroughly on any website... as I find myself "speed reading" and skimming almost everything these days. I guess that's what you do when you have to cut through all the junk that makes up 99% of the internet.

"THAT'S WHY NOTHING ON MY WEBSITE IS JUNK!!"... so you say...

One man's junk is another man's treasure... no matter how hard you try, you'll never provide perfect content to everyone.

When you get one of your magazines that you have a subscription to in the mail and you sit down for the first time with it... what is the first thing you do???Find an article of interest and read it. Yes, I'll thumb through, but when an interesting article catches my attention, I'll read it.

Conveniently enough, the headline and the article are usually located on the same page.

Yes, I see what you're driving at with your analogy, but those headlines, subheads and tidbits exist within the context of the rest of the site's content. About the only time a page full of headlines works is within search engine results, and SE design is purposefully bland so as not to detract from those listings. Having pages with less content only means you have to concentrate that much harder on ensuring the design helps the visitor make the most of what content is available.

Here's the million dollar question - what do professional sites have in common? (http://www.iwdn.net/showthread.php?t=2878) You'll find the answer is not contained within the context of visual design ;)

Here's the million dollar question - what do professional sites have in common? (http://www.iwdn.net/showthread.php?t=2878) You'll find the answer is not contained within the context of visual design ;) [/B]

I agree that this indeed is the million dollar question... but as IT professionals, we are a seperate and different breed of people who are constantly seeking information, news, and how-to on the internet. Unfortunately, the rest of America is markedly different from us....

While we may spend hours searching for how to implement CSS layouts, PHP web applications, check up on the latest SEO news, read the latest blogs on the recent Google-Sun partnership... the rest of america is searching for WWE wrestlers, pokemon, and motorcycles.

As members of the IT breed, we distinctively always have a end-result for a goal in our browsing. The rest of America has no end-result in mind, they merely enjoy looking around (thumbing through) these areas that interest them. The last thing on their mind is to come away more informed on a particular subject than when they started. The big biker dude who is on the net during his lunch break may pull up one of his motorcycle IE "Favorites", not to read up on how to change a carb or find out what the future of motorcylce mechanics are... he just wants to feel those feelings of passion for his hobby by looking at beautiful pictures of biker gangs roaming highways, and the beautiful black and orange with chrome site skins that make him say "Man I can't wait for the weekend." A drop dead gorgeous motorcylce site will do this, even if it lacks the content that maybe an all text black and white site may provide.

Million dollar question???? It most certainly is....

But I think America wants beauty over content... us IT professionals are indeed a different breed. :)

I agree that this indeed is the million dollar question... but as IT professionals, we are a seperate and different breed of people who are constantly seeking information, news, and how-to on the internet. Unfortunately, the rest of America is markedly different from us....I think you may have missed the perspective of the article - perhaps it wasn't clear enough.

Ask 500 everyday Web surfing people each to point out a site they find to be professional. There will be no consistent measure of aesthetics between them. Some will point out nearly designless search engines, some will point out visually unassuming community portals, some will point out very flashy and/or elegent sites, etc. You could look at those 500 sites and find many will not be pretty, and many will be pretty, but ALL of them will have designs (pretty or not) that make it easy to internalize the content.

Just look through this thread. Just look at the most visited sites on the Web. Amazon isn't pretty, Ebay isn't pretty, Google isn't pretty, Slashdot isn't pretty, but they are organized, useful and the visuals they do have make for a pleasant viewing environment.

WHT is pretty, but no one comes here to look at the pretty blue colors ;)

Mikimoto is pretty, but if it didn't have content, it's prettiness would be worth about one look, and that's that.

Don't underestimate the viewing audience. People do like things that look nice and are visually engaging, but at the end of the day, the substance has significantly more value than the fluff. It's no coincidence the Web's most popular sites are also the Web's most useful, pretty or not ;)

Well, i as myself, it does not metter to me how design looks to me absolutely, I even usualy dont look to the design really at the page i entered to readsomething or get something. I also know the biggest and the most famous services have the worst design, like ebay, amazon, tough they changed about a month ago but you remember old ev1servers.net design [ it was really the worst design ever made on a reliable service on the internet, it was annoying me too much especially its flash menus they were like created while they were thinking how can we made the worst flash effects ] ...
However i am looking to statistics of designer services [ you know the name of the most famous one out there which prices starts from $20k no need to advertise tehm here ]
A service before new design is like that , A service growth 300% and tripled its customers in 6 month after this new clean design... stories.

Anyways votes are for the clean attractive designs too i think most of the people dont think as me?

I think the first impression really does matter :rolleyes:

A service before new design is like that , A service growth 300% and tripled its customers in 6 month after this new clean design... stories.Is it the design, or is it everything that goes into the reinvention of a Web site collectively?

Yes, first impressions matter, but that first impression driven by a whole lot more than the site's looks...

I'd definitely have to say clean design and content. Unique minimalism is attractive in its own right I find most of my clients deem true.

My vote is for clean design. My eyes like to be pleased with some visualization but they got tired and itchy when attacked by TOO much graphic details. Wordy design makes me uncomfortable as if I'm going to read some kind of dictionary instead of "human language" text.

Clean design with quality content is a sure winner.

For me, a combination of both works. Designs that are outdated do turn me off. Likewise, sparkly, cool, flashy sites with bad punctuation and spelling cause me to click out just as quickly..

If you have a clean site and one that uses proper spelling and punctuation, you can't lose! You don't need to say a lot to gain customers; you only need to say it well.

Design, hands down! :-)

Much more Web surfers are non-IT professionals, just Web visitors and customers. However, words are more meaning and messaging, so these two are better to be mixed: attractive, clean design + good-sense words.

I voted for design, even though I think you should concentrate on both equally