The importance of information design
First off it is important to define exactly what we are talking about here. The design of a web site is understood by the majority to be how good a web site looks, how easy it is on the eye. When you dig a bit deeper you will be exposed to the information architecture or the information design as I said in the heading. This is the area which many gloss over, don’t understood or just can’t be bothered to understand.
When you begin to publish sites and as you continue to publish web sites you begin to view web sites in a different way than regular visitors ie. you visit a web site notice the ads and instinctively pass them by for the information you are looking for where as a regular visitor may get stuck on the ad and click away from the site. In the same way that as a designer I can’t help visit a web site without examining the design a little bit closer than most.
This is where the importance of good information design comes in. If you can manage as a publisher to put yourself in the position of a regular visitor who knows nothing about design, google adsense or seo rankings and is just looking for the content they want then you can plan how to give this and other visitors the best of your web site. A long time before you start thinking of colors, bevels and drop shadows.
So does ugly sell
No more than beautiful does. The problem comes when people take too long making a site look beautiful and neglect what is really important which is, you guessed it, information design.
What’s the point
The point here is very simple. Before you sit down and design how your web site will look or brief somebody on how it should you look. You need to think about how the site will work. How people will get around the site, how they will interact with each element and ultimately how they will exit your web site through an ad or something purchased.