Is good design important?
Scrivs made an interesting post at Work Boxers about good design and getting links. He provides some graphs of his traffic before and after the redesign of Damn I’m Cute which, by the way, is an amusing blog that I read regularly.
After Mike Rundle’s redesign he has received a huge increase in traffic. Why? He says it’s because the new design gives him credibility which allows more people to link to him. I think with this post I am only proving his point…whatever.
There is some great information here if you’re new to blogging and wondering how important design is to your site. He also proves how popular the celebrity/gossip niche is.
Scrivs believes so firmly that design is important that he is making sure every Fine Fools site gets a makeover:
Every site in this Network is getting a makeover and every new site that launches will not do so until they have the new template. Since its launch last week, Sexerati has yet to have a day where they didn’t surpass 1,000 pageviews and I am not sure that would have been possible without the great design provided by Mike Rundle.
Content is a necessary and sufficient condition for popularity, but design is not. Design can certainly help, but you can have popularity without a particularly striking or unique design.
If you’ve become known for both your design AND your content, then you win! Unless, of course, you re-design. Then you get blasted. Fortunately, if you ever reach this super power status with your blog, people will come back anyway – because of your content. And that’s why content is king.