Entire industries have been built around making the world’s websites look better. From web design as a part of education to the multi-billion dollar action-driven web design industry, the amount of money passing through good design is truly incredible. Artistic websites, slick direct response advertisements, and ultra-professional corporate websites are some of the web’s biggest cash cows, generating millions of dollars annually for highly skilled designers.
However, there is a flip-side to every online industry. For the world of website design, that flip-side is the anti-marketing design industry. Rather than designing, planning, and building beautiful websites, the anti-marketing design community prides itself on putting together websites that are not so much pretty and flashy, but stripped-down, highly optimized, and incredibly effective for their owners, operators, and clients.
The classic example of anti-marketing design is the ultra-popular dating website PlentyOfFish. Now in its ninth year of operation, the giant Canadian dating website was referred to as a design ‘disaster zone’ in its early days. As time went by, its competitors invested in flashier websites, slicker designs, and smoother on-page orientation.
At the same time, PlentyOfFish’s focus remained on what is truly important for a dating website: connecting people. The website’s owner, Markus Frind, poured his time and income into optimizing the website for global search terms, improving the website’s people-matching algorithm, and creating a better experience for its customers – an experience that went beyond design.
Nine years later, it appears that Markus’ decisions have paid off. Not only is PlentyOfFish the world’s most popular dating website – it is one of the world’s all-round most popular websites. Alongside giants of the web like Facebook, Twitter, and Digg – each decorated with slick designs and smooth animation – sits PlentyOfFish, a website with limited design appeal and very outdated design.
The lesson to be learned from PlentyOfFish’s success is not to ignore design altogether, but to ignore certain aspects of design. A more elegant blog header or rounder corners might not appear to come at an expense, but they really do. Every second that is invested in superfluous and indulgent design details is another second that could have been invested in boosting returns, optimizing the website for maximum advertising revenue, or improving search engine positions.
It is not that Markus ignored website design – he perfected it over many years. The difference between perfection for PlentyOfFish and its rivals was in utility – Markus’ website focused on functional and measurable design, while his rivals spent their time perfecting subjective qualities and unimportant page elements.
So treat web design as you should – with a slight level of caution. The vast majority of websites are not design projects or works of art – they are commercial ventures. Just like retail outlets learn to design an outlet store around their customers, smart webmasters and graphic designers learn to piece together their websites according to their most important value. Rounder corners do not sell products or convince advertisers to invest in you – action-focused and tested design does.
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