According to Cole Camplese of Pennsylvania State U. (heard on iTunes U) web design in today’s world is a commodity not an essential element. In other words, what a website looks like is far less important then the information it contains.
This is obviously true, just ask yourself what websites you visit most often. I’m willing to bet that they are not filled with fancy graphics or animated interfaces. You don’t visit them to see the graphics, you visit them because they have information that you want. Most importantly this information is updated daily, hourly or even by the minute. Moreover, if you are like most web users, the sites you visit
are sites on which you can have a say.
The web today is more about content, especially user generated content, then it ever has been. The actual design of the site, its look and feel, is important, but only in-so-far as it does not get in the way of the content and the ability of the visitor to comment on or create that content. (Prime example: myspace, wow that site is ugly!)
For those of us who design websites for small organizations and business, this provides an interesting insight. Most small organizations want little websites on which can be found a phone number or a ticket price. These websites are never destinations, they are at simply resources.
These sites are pamphlets in the library’s breezeway. They’re Looked at once, perhaps saved for future reference, but ultimately disposable. Ironically, this means that the look and feel of these websites is far more important then it is for the big boys. These sites are judged by immediate impressions so they have to make everything count.
So while web design may be turning into a mere commodity for the web at large, it is becoming an absolute necessity for smaller niche websites. Just being on the web is no longer enough. Everybody’s on the web. For a websites with sparse information the only thing that makes it stand out over its competitor is its design.