I am into blogosphere for the past 2 years, but did not feel into going into professional themes, I use wordpress. But, recently I am researching to hire a website designer who can create a simple yet effective design around Thesis theme.

Can you please have a look at my blog and lemme know whether you can take up the job?

And I agree… Especially if a site were asking me to spend money while I’m there, I would be pretty hesitant if it didn’t “look” solid and professional.

Keep up the good posts

So, if you were looking for a solution to a problem, and you chose to click on the top 2 results in Google, you’d be in a similar situation to the survey participants. Sure, you’d have more incentive to engage with the content, but you’d also be judging whether the source of the content was credible or not.

And, especially where payment for a solution is involved, you really want to feel like you can trust the person providing the solution. And if the only contact you’ve had with this person is through an amateurish-looking website, I think it would be natural to be a bit hesitant about paying them good money to solve your problem.

Of course, there are many factors at play. This study just proves that the old adage that Content is King doesn’t mean that Design can be swept under the carpet as though it has no effect.

You know, design is not just about credibility for me… It’s also about approachable-ness, coolness and friendliness!

For example, I’ve been seriously considering switching from my current autoresponder service to mailchimp… It’s not that the autoresponder I use isn’t very trustworthy. It just ain’t as cute and friendly-looking in it’s interface… And I’m realising that, considering that I spend time every week uploading my newsletters into the program, I want to enjoy the experience… Mailchimp just makes it look fun!

One query about the study you quoted though… I’m thinking that content may have showed up more importantly if the users were actually searching for something important to them. When people are checking out your business, you would hope that they would be looking for something to help them with a particular problem that is making their life uncomfortable in some way. I’d imagine that content would be more important to those people, than to people visiting random sites that they have no other reason to visit than that the survey sent them there.

Without a problem relating to what that business solves, the participants would have little incentive to engage deeply with the content… And it would be less likely to resonate with them / they would be less likely to care about it. Naturally, their minds would be left with nothing to do but pick apart the fonts!

Still, I do believe websites need to dress to impress… I just think the level of consciousness about the “dress” might be lower if the hunger for the content is higher… If that makes sense!