Comments on: Web Design: Winning Awards vs. Driving Sales

By: Dustin Jacobsen

Dustin Jacobsen — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:28:47 +0000

@ Jeremy: Agreed. Great design + conversion = awards. To reiterate my summary: balance. Design. User experience. Technology. And there, at the intersection, you’ll find the optimal conversion rate.

@ Lexi: Appreciate the feedback. I should have explained my take on conversion. In the world of ecommerce, conversion = sales. In the world of non-commerce related sites, conversion could be defined as users following the optimal path to accomplish a specific objective. It may be lead generation. Or purely entertainment. Even in the case of a site that focuses on brand awareness, the goal is to increase the value of the brand in the mind of visitors. So yes, balance is the key to it all.

By: LEXI

LEXI — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:16:36 +0000

Man, it was hard to even read this whole thing before commenting. I think you are generalizing a bit here. The variety of sites and functions out there is so wide that I don’t think you can say the conversion rate and the need to sell are the ultimate goal.

If you are talking about an ecommerce site, then I think some of your comments apply. Research on page activity is nice. It is one factor in a list of many. Designers often have the job of taking lemons and making lemonade. Creating a perfect UX dream of a site just might not get it done if the content sucks. Sometimes a little magic has to happen to keep anyone on the site longer than 2 seconds.

My major disagreement with you is that the majority of sites are NOT ecommerce and therefore do not go into template best practices only bucket. Each site has it’s own goals and hopefully it is not how many hits can we get on twitter and facebook with this thing.

So, my point is that all information is relevant but it is the designers job to take it all in and spit back out something compelling and functional. It is NOT their job to take other peoples ideas and make them pretty. Please stop reading articles that suggest any designer should be on a leash. You do work with amazing designers. They are not reading articles about how to ignore everyone and do whatever you want.

play nice guys.

By: Jeremy Fuksa: Creative Generalist

Jeremy Fuksa: Creative Generalist — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:12:09 +0000

I think the point would really have been driven home if only you chose to include a Venn diagram. :)

Seriously though, I think I’m on board with you. I will chime in from the creative/design side of things and reinforce your point by saying that the best interactive designer will be aware of the insights that are uncovered via testing and best practices and use that knowledge to create a solution that is both creative AND effective.

Design is problem solving at its core. It is NOT art. Any designer that argues otherwise is not at the top of his game. Design can inject artistry into the solution to the problem, but it cannot solve a problem with artistic decoration alone.

So, as an argument, I would not say that you have to sacrifice one or the other. You can have awards AND conversions when you really apply collaborative knowledge to the problem at hand.