http://www.codestalker.com/ I've been wondering how much the design of a website affects the websites potential. I threw this together this morning which is based off of the intranet page I made for my work. It's simply, I plan to ad a 1px blue stroke at the bottum of the devider below the header. I also plan to make a header for it with a background picture. Take my logo at a low opacity to set a background image for the entire page. Probably mess around with little design features here and there to make it more appealing. I put the image under Event Pictures to give an idea of how I was going to set the main links up. Thre my adsense in there to see how that would fit. I also have the middle area set up in a con_index.php file where it pulls the file in with a php include. Because of this my adsense won't detect the text in the main content area, so i plan to ad a 468X60 banner to the bottum of each content page. I also plan to transfer everything to Redlightdrag.com when I finish it. Probably less than a week before I get enough content on the site to launch it. My main question here though is do you think I would do better with a better design, should I waste my time/money on a good design from the start or should I stay simple in the design for now and do a re-design of the site when I am rich in content. http://www.codestalker.com/
Site with poor design can be succesfull (simple example - Plentyoffish). Personally I do not like bad designed websites. I think many people will leave a site if they dislike its design. Your site has no design and content at all, 3 images from 4 are not available. I think you need to redesign it. Also note: Adsense policy does not allow to place ads on the pages without content.
of course it doesn't I put it togethor in around 20 minutes.. threw 1 image on there to just get an idea. No content yet, because I merely built it as an example, my question is, could a site with such a simple design and filled with content be successful. I didn't know adsense didn't allow ads on pages without contnent though, thanks for the information on that. I'm thinking of just using what I made as a template and designing a site off of it, because that was my basic intentions for it. I just threw togethor what you see to get a layout.
A simple design is just fine. The big things to look for (besides visually pleasing) are clutter, ease of access, understandable navigation, room for content, etc. I tend to prefer minimalist designs, but some people like extravagant flashy stuff. It largely depends on who you are targeting.