November 6, 2002, 3:08 PM ET
Unfriendly Web design 'may be just fine'?
Business 2.0's "Who Needs a Pretty Website Anyway?" reports the ugly, cookie-cutter RealCities sites are profitable despite their much-criticized look:
KRD is proving that Web design that's unfriendly to users may be just fine, as long as it's friendly to advertisers and cheap to operate.
"Web design that's unfriendly to users" is not just fine. The logic is quite simple: If you annoy users enough, they won't come back to your site -- and not a single non-comatose advertiser will want to spend his or her money wooing your shrinking audience.
I'll also point out that any decent content-management system will allow for design customization while maintaining the ability to share content.
More comments on this topic are at E-Media Tidbits and Barry Parr's MediaSavvy.
