[heyoman1]

I thought of this question when my little brother was looking at sites to buy trading cards. He looked at several, and even purchased from two of them. They both had a little less than "spectacular" designs you see on most sites nowadays. I was worried, but the orders did come through (though it did take a while).

So, does a site's design make you think twice?

[lordofduct]

The wording of your question is really wonky.

Are you asking:

"Does the layout/organization of a site affect your decision to purchase from/patronize the service?"

???


If this is so, yes. And I'm betting it's going to be a landslide towards yes by most all.

This post has been edited by lordofduct: 04 January 2012 - 11:03 AM

[jimblumberg]

I guess you would have to want to order something online for it to matter.

Jim

[Martyr2]

I think this is pretty much a fact. As a web developer I have had to struggle against this all the time. The majority of people will only buy from sites they trust and looking good and organized helps encourage trust.

People are more willing to give their life savings to the man in a suit than to a homeless looking man... even if they are both crooks.

[mojo666]

It would have to be an extremely frustrating site. The only time I experienced that was with a charity site. I almost gave up on collecting funds for them, but ended up just taking checks and mailing them. An ok site vs an amazing site is going to be determined purely on the money they are charging me.

[creativecoding]

If the site looks like it's layout was made in two hours, then they obviously do not care about you or your money. If the site is selling something I really want/need, and can buy nowhere else, I'll just google it. Many other sites provide information about scams/bad website.

[CTphpnwb]

Design == Function
A poorly designed site will not function well, so it will discourage people from staying long enough to make a purchase. Many restaurant sites for example are completely Flash based, slow, and tedious to use. That usually has me moving on to an alternative.

[ishkabible]

Quote

The majority of people will only buy from sites they trust and looking good and organized helps encourage trust

ya I'm one of them. I have found a number of other sites that didn't look as nice as newegg but had just as good of deals for what I was looking for but I trusted newegg more based on how it looked. I do that quite a lot it seems. It's also on of the big reasons I chose to get help from DIC rather than daniweb or stackoverflow when I first came here. so yes, site apprentice matters to me mostly on the basis of trust. weather you are providing a service, product, or information I need to trust the medium I'm getting the information on and esthetics is definitely part of establishing that trust. citations also help quite a bit.

although.... parting comic:
My link

This post has been edited by ishkabible: 04 January 2012 - 09:30 PM

[Apokio]

I have paid more for products because the site that had them cheaper looked so crappy that I was afriad I would never get my product or they would take my credit card number and abuse it. On that same note, I think Amazon looks really bad, and reminds me of some shady sites, but I know through reputation that they are a site that trustworthy so I will buy from them. Everyonce in a while the only site I can find the product I want looks bad but in that case I will do the research and try to find out if they are reputable and take my chances.

[Shane Hudson]

It comes down to trust. I have seen websites that have fancy stuff all over the place when actually a white page with black text in the middle and an image of a product would look a lot more trustworthy. So design does influence my decision, but that does not mean a well designed graphically site would be more influential to me over a simpler site that looks trustworthy.

[ishkabible]

although, it seems that the two tend to follow. a site that has gone to great lengths to look trustworthy will also tend to look good.

[Shane Hudson]

ishkabible, on 05 January 2012 - 10:00 PM, said:

although, it seems that the two tend to follow. a site that has gone to great lengths to look trustworthy will also tend to look good.

Certainly true. I cannot find any examples at the moment but I am thinking of the differences between a site with lots of images and colour everywhere and one that is a lot simpler and just does what it needs to do.

[CTphpnwb]

I think you're talking about differences in the quality of the design, which is what I thought the poll was about. Quality is much more than fancy graphics, and it depends on the purpose. A simple site may or may not be well designed, just as a more complicated, graphically intense site may or may not be well designed. In either case, a well designed site is much more likely to make a sale. A poorly designed site is likely to turn away sales.

[cfoley]

For me, it depends. If I want a book or DVD, the site must be up to scratch. It's no coincidence I get most of that kind of stuff from Amazon, Play and The Hut.

If I want some martial arts stuff then there are reputable companies to choose from but their sites all look straight of the 90s. I order anyway because I need the stuff and because I know they are good companies.

My girlfriend likes a lot of custom clothes and boots. These online stores are basically a cottage industry. I've met some of the people who run them and it tends to be one or two people making crazy stuff to order. The quality of the merchandise is generally top notch but the sites are usually made by a mate of the owner who knows a bit of HTML.

The bottom rung are motorbike rallies. These guys are into their bikes, not their websites. The checkout procedure is print off a form and send it snail mail with a cheque. I do it anyway and have an awesome time at the rallies. I wouldn't be doing this for a book though.