"I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it!"
I took the tone of the article as quasi-facetious, but there is a kernel of truth to it. The fact is that for the most part visitors don't really care how a website looks as much as we care about the content on it. People usually get to sites from Google search results, and Google only sees content, not fancy graphics, transparency, and rounded corners.
The company I work for (to remain nameless) makes millions from generic community forums and website acquisitions that haven't been redesigned since the first internet boom. When we redesign them it is mainly to convert them to vBulletin for forums or a cms for other sites, or Windows/ColdFusion/ASP to LAMP. Updating the look of a site is a byproduct of improving the user experience and maximizing revenue, never an end in itself.
I took the tone of the article as quasi-facetious, but there is a kernel of truth to it. The fact is that for the most part visitors don't really care how a website looks as much as we care about the content on it. People usually get to sites from Google search results, and Google only sees content, not fancy graphics, transparency, and rounded corners.
The company I work for (to remain nameless) makes millions from generic community forums and website acquisitions that haven't been redesigned since the first internet boom. When we redesign them it is mainly to convert them to vBulletin for forums or a cms for other sites, or Windows/ColdFusion/ASP to LAMP. Updating the look of a site is a byproduct of improving the user experience and maximizing revenue, never an end in itself.