Can you show an example of that happening? Where a company with a more
vanilla but easier to use page became more popular than a fancy one.
Mind you, that's not the comparison I'm after.
Let me restate: Assuming an equally attractive graphic design, and equal
content, the site which is more usable due to its having been written from
a more standards-oriented approach will have an obvious edge.
I
could (most of us could) use that as an example because most new
customers are going to want fancy when they walk in the door, and we
have to get them on the accessible track.
Why not attractive design AND accessibility/usability?
Right now we show screen shots of the same site with different browsers
to get the idea across. Showing an example where a big company went
from fancy to accessibility it would be great.
Here's what I can tell you.
The site I'm redesigning - in its original form, it barely got hits, it
wwasn't indexed in many search engines. After I redid it to standards, SEO
was automatically improved, and more people are hitting it more often.
I can't offer a site which proves the point - after all, that would likely
be impossible to do. For a large company, the site's success is such a
small facet of their marketing plan I can't imagine how to measure the
company's success against the website's design. For smaller niche
companies, there's often nothing else out there to compare it to.
However, let's use common sense as a reference point. Unless the content
is so specialized it cannot be truly duplicated anywhere, the faster site
is better than the slower site. The slower the site, the higher the
likelihood the visitor goes elsewhere.
Sites which use table layout are inherently heavier over the long haul
than CSS layout sites. Reason: table layout is re-downloaded with each
page, CSS is cached.
Studies prove that users either need to enlarge the text to read the
content, or they don't. So provide resizeable text. And, as this is
normally the basis of the content of the site, all design must be done
around the proviso that the user should be able to resize the text.
Fluid, text-size-based design and CSS layout is, without argument, more
accomodating to the user. Better accomodation means the user will have an
easier experience. Couple that with quality content the user wants, and if
that doesn't translate into sales, I don't know what will.
I recently showed how the boxedart page could be redesigned in semantic
HTML and CSS. See also [
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slashdot/] and
[
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slashdot2/]. This so clearly makes the
page more easily usable. How to test whether it is or not, I haven't the
knowledge or means. But if we accept that ease of use and speed of
download equate to more positive visitor experience, the conclusion is
unavoidable.
Those who bemoan the lack of inspiration in CSS designs are really
noticing that few talented graphic designers have really learned how to do
CSS layouts. Not being a graphic designer, I'm not well positioned to
remedy that. Hopefully, someone who is would be willing to step up to the
plate. It's clear to me that CSS layout can indeed be used to create
attractive layouts which appeal to users and rival the most attractive
table-layout websites out there.
