Desing to good?

If you spend to much time, does it look bad?

[aaronjf]

I was going through some old threads this afternoon and came across something Brett Tabke had said about not trusting ppl that's sites were to nice "The painters house always needing paint..." and all that. Now while I think Brett may have been joking to some degree or another. Do you guys think to some extent this is true. If you spend to much time on your site does that say to potentials, hey this person does not get much business and they have time to waste on their own site?

FTR, Not that mine is some Taj Mahal (thanks Mardi_Gras), mine is among the worst of them. Just wondering.

PS: Sorry about the spelling of the Title. Swear I am not illiterate, ;-)

[edited by: aaronjf at 3:23 am (utc) on May 28, 2003]

[chiyo]

To me, it means they have enough money to employ or subcontract a professional web designer or that they think enough of their product that they think it deserve being presnted nicely. I would personally tend to trust "nice-looking" sites more, if they are still fast to load and talk more about their product rather than spin, ads and the like.

But it depends on the site of course and what it's function is.

[eWhisper]

Sites that look cluttered, and tossed together and not maintained, I think look amateurish and I don't have a tendancy to trust them - especially affiliates.

Now, before everyone jumps on me for that, I am an affiliate, but too many people toss up an ugly quick site to make a buck and don't care about the product. At least they could do some research first to make sure it has good content.

Sites that have dates (such as copywright at the bottom) should keep them upto date - how often do you see copywrited 1997-2001 and then think this info is two years old - it's outdated, even though the content might not be.

I think anyone who wants a good looking trustworthy site should keep it in good repair and double check it everyonce in a while for broken links, dates, out of date content, etc.

[jeremy goodrich]

Nicer design = I trust it more.

Reason: if they are serious about online business, they will do it in a serious fashion.

Brett was also referring to his company site or lack there of, as in, Phdss or what not doesn't have a corporate site.

[aaronjf]

Yeah, Brett's site, was were I first saw him mention the thing about a Painter's House. Although I would imagine he, more so than most, has good reason for his site's lack of "paint"

[StanBo]

The more professional one’s site looks, the more people tend to trust its owner. The "painter's house" saying is fine, but would you seriously consider, say, a web-design company (the best example of on-line painter house IMHO) whose site shows almost no (or just a few) traces of professional designer’s effort? I wouldn't :)