Syren_Song - 1:40 pm on Jan 13, 2003 (gmt 0)

IMHO, different people have different preferences and sometimes there's no knowing why they prefer what they do in some cases.

On the other hand, I think design and speed preferences depend a lot on the age of your visitors and their connection speed, as well as the purpose of the site.

Look at Drudge Report vs. ESPN vs. name-that-gamer-site. Each site get lots of traffic, but they all have different purposes. Folks going to Drudge Report want news and they want it FAST. They don't care about fancy programming, or the latest Flash design. ESPN users want excitement. They want things to happen fast, but they want it to draw them in and involve them. Gamers usually have high-speed connections, so they want every bell and whistle there is coming at them all at once.

You've got to look at who is coming to the site to decide if the design is going to work to draw people in, or send them running in the other direction.

<edit>typos</edit>