How much does a website's design matter to you?

I'm just curious. If you come across a site and you think the design's poor to average, do you still use it? Does content make the site's visual design completely irrelevant?

Or are you the more... shallow type who judges a site as much on its looks as content and community?

 

It depends on a number of factors. Design matters a lot to me but I'll generally still visit a badly designed site if I want the content badly enough. That said, if the site design incorporated red text on a dark background I'd avoid it like the plague because that would probably trigger an ocular migraine.

 

Well you've already loaded the question based on your second paragraph. I'll do my best to be nice, despite enjoying "shallow" bits. A few things:

First, Design is not just the "shallow", "pretty" bits of the page, but the entire layout, structure, and how the content is represented, and how it is interacted with (whether by people, screen readers, or other forms).

People spend hours upon hours tweaking settings to update their search engine rankings, yet pretend that design has no correlation with the guests interpretation of your website. just because it takes a bit more time and effort to test these things, they pretend it doesn't matter.

Content is king, but if the content is displayed poorly, ineffectively, or flat out hard to operate its just about useless. There are sites (forums definitely included) that may break that mold and still have a thriving community or following, but they're the exception and not the rule. They often are there because they have been for years.

There have been numerous studies, and almost always there is a correlation of professionalism and trust when a website is designed and built in a cohesive way that doesn't get in the users way. You can also look at studies just on typography (the most overlooked part of "design"), and even just the typefaces you choose has a large effect on how people perceive your message, and how believable and agreeable a message is.

So yes, it does matter.

Edit: some reading:
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=985776
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/hear-all-ye-people-hearken-o-earth/

 

Website design for me is pretty much the factor of wether I will use the site or not… I can not stand the thought of using an awfully designed site.

 

There's a few different layers design needs to satisfy at .

Functional - at the least, it must be functional. (It's tempting to sacrifice function for style)
Accessible - it must be easy to use. I think many forums fail here (tiny pagination links, scrolling, several clicks to get places)
Pleasing - This is probably where we're talking about... making things look "nice"..
Personal / Emotional - Most of us don't get here... where you take it so far that you can dig into people's emotions or create some sort of personal attachment.

I don't care if a site looks like shit if it is easy to use and navigate. However, it makes it hard to recommend and it may take a certain mood to be able to tolerate the website. Maybe it's only easy enough on the eyes late at night, or maybe I have to be in a very patient mood.

Whether we like it or not, our society will always favor things that look better vs things that do not, all other things being equal.

 

Of course design matters a lot to me! It speaks a lot about you and your site. Presenting something nice is just as important as the content, whether you like it or not.