I think you're asking the wrong question. It isn't so much the age that matters. Ask what kind of relationship they have with your site.

Search results can look plain. Classified ads can look ugly. Someplace associated with their own identity needs to look great.

More on my experience here:

http://ourdoings.com/2008-02

> Someplace associated with their own identity needs to look great.

I would have agreed with you on that until MySpace came along and showed there was less "need" even in that situation.

OK, so "great" wasn't the right word. What's a word with similar meaning but conveying subjectivity?

Well, I didn't actually mean it in that sense. When MySpace was getting its umpteenth million user, the site layout, fonts, styles, etc, was all amateurish and nowhere near "great". It didn't have any elegance at all anywhere.

Nowadays they've had some professionals hop in and touch up some of the core site elements. I still wouldn't call anything about it "great", even in terms of "good match for each user" because it feels more like they're just working with whatever they were given. None of the widgets/elements/profile tools they're given are 'great' on its own.

So basically MySpace shook the premise for me that quality is any sort of an essential element for success. They're probably an exception, but they're very much a huge exception.

nice blog post

I'm going to be a little contrary to some of these other guys:

Good design is very important. However: Usually, if you're the first in that space, poor design is tolerated (arguably MySpace) If you're not the first in the space, you need a 'better mousetrap' which can be the same features, and a better design in some cases. Virb has excellent asthetics, and a great user-feel, but it didn't take off like myspace or Facebook, so obviously design is not the most important thing either.

It's all a matter of perspective, and what is important to your site. I would say, if you have the money, hire a good, professional web designer.

good design will attract people, good usability will keep them. I say focus on simple usuability first, then graphical niceness.

Take a look at "Emotional Design" by Don Norman (http://www.amazon.com/o/asin/0465051359/pchristensen-20 )

The thesis is that if you present people with two [websites, machines, etc] that function identically but one is beautiful, people will be measurably better at using the pretty one, and they'll enjoy the experience more too.

I'm a borderline young person, so I guess I can comment. Good aesthetics and good content seem circular. If a site looks good, I'm probably more inclined to look around, bookmark it, or contribute to the content. Conversely, if the content's good on its own, that might give it the popularity that spurs some visual improvement. A lot of popular sites weren't particularly pretty when they launched/grew (take Facebook), and some still aren't. But if it's a user-driven site, people might be less inclined to contribute information or come back in the first place if its ugly. So, I generally try not to separate the two in my own work. Form and function follow each other around.

Visual design is a key, integral part of "look and feel" and usability. I would argue that even if you ask your users and they tell you they don't care about the aesthetics, they actually are influenced at some level by them. People (including me) are more likely to continue to use and contribute to a well-designed and attractive site.

Here are some rules of thumb that may help guide your approach.

In my experience, you need to divide up your problem into two different issues to solve: design and branding. Design for functionality and smoothness of user experience. Brand so that your audience relates well to your product.

A lot's been written about good design. Yes, teens definitely respond to it. If a site's hard to use, they have the attention span of hummingbirds and if you cause an engagement failure because of poor usability, they'll be gone and won't return. Above all else, focus on making your site easy to use and the user experience seamless.

Branding depends on your audience's demographic. Most teens have developed a strong enough, though flexible, identity to be attracted to some things and repelled by others based on their perceived sense of who they are in their greater and lesser social ecosystems. You might be interested in reading everything danah boyd (intentionally lowercase) ever wrote, most especially "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace" here: http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html

In general, people, no matter what their age group, adapt to symbolic systems they're immersed in. Kids in gradeschool can glance at a page in a textbook and from the fonts, point size, layout, graphics, tell you precisely whether it's a third grade book or a fourth grade book, and therefore whether it's for them or not. (The same goes for someone looking at a full page ad in The New Yorker - font, point size, color choices, etc..) Higher income demographic kids are exposed to high end design by the time they're in their teens and have a more positive response to it than kids without the opportunity and exposure to design. In my own work with teens, non-college bound teens find Facebook's design BORRRRRING! [picture an entire class of kids singsonging that in unison] They tolerate a _lot_ of busy-ness and chaos on a page and will jump onto MySpace whenever your back is turned.

I think there are examples on both sides that are successful.

The iPod is fantastic design. Myspace is absolutely hideous design.

I think the younger you are, the more willing you are to want to customize something to express yourself and personalize the experience (some of the younger generation would put stickers on their iPods).

The older you are, the less apt to want to bother you are: you want it to just work, and you don't have time to customize every little thing.

Great examples.

I think functionality overrides appearance, at least until competition steps in. Reddit and YC are examples of spartan design but great loyalty among readers young and old. It's the idea and the execution first followed by the quality of design.

We see it all the time: small company comes up with cool product but not-so-cool packaging/marketing. Once they become successful, they hire people who make their packaging/marketing as good as the product.

I guess I fall on the side of "Product First, Marketing Second." It could be that a great website design is more about marketing than product but I don't know.

Spartan design can be fantastic design and also does not necessarily indicate a lack of features.

Fantastic design is product first and marketing second. Marketing is about convincing you that you need something via a channel that is not the product itself.

there are a couple of ways to look at it, but you first need to figure out what you are selling. in the case of myspace, they were creating a place for people without web skills and money to have a social website, it was geocities2.0 and if someone at geocities was paying attention, they should have come up with the idea. the ipod on the other hand was designed to have every sales advantage over every other MP3 player, and at launch, IT DID. the iPod was smaller, easier to use, had a larger hard drive, and it was cheaper; Jobs was able to sell the iPod cheaper than other MP3 players because he knew that he could make the money up in the online store, so if Apple broke even on the device, he would make it up later. So Apple had more in common with selling a Starbucks Coffee, than selling a piece of hardware. Apple became a music experience vendor.

Dyson sells vacuum cleaners as an experience vendor too.

How are new cars sold? Are they a total experience sale, or are they a hardware sale?

How are used cars sold? Are they a total experience sale, or are they a hardware sale?

If your site is an experience sale in a developed marketplace, you may need to think about design "now," however, if your device is a time saver, or is new in its marketplace, you should be able to iterate the design over time.

I love good design, but I've noticed recently that many people don't care that much. The company I'm freelancing for keeps buying programs which look like they were designed by a monkey (eg, clipart icons, garish colours, poor alignment of elements, graphics literally done in MS Paint) and nobody except me seems to give a damn. If your product is a good one, don't sweat the design too much. If people use it and like it, you can enhance the design later.

My partner & I wrestled with the same issue -- craigslist is fugly but functional, etc. Does depend on audience, but we're following Mint's path. First pass was functional but bad UI (probably an extension of the prototype), then they got $4M and voila. If you're asking for all their financial data, it probably can't look like MySpace.

Good design and good user-interface. Nothing is more annoying than sites with awesome design but bad UI...

I think it depends on what you mean by "nice designs." Personally, I have a (pretty low) bar that's set in my head. If the design doesn't meet that bar, the website gets relegated to the "mom and pop" bin. If it passes the bar, I will usually give it more consideration.