3 ms·
I have a friend who is trying to find a way to make the Tarsnap website look nicer without losing its essential geeky/minimalist character; Maybe you misspoke
by neilk 17y ago
I have a friend who is trying to find a way to make the Tarsnap website look nicer without losing its essential geeky/minimalist character;
Maybe you misspoke here, but based on this quote I think your approach could be improved.
1) You went to a friend. Unless this person is an experienced designer of commercial websites, that doesn't sound like the right approach.
2) Your primary concern is preserving the site's "geeky/minimalist character", although that seems to be your Achilles heel. The last time Tarsnap was on news.yc, I made the same incorrect assumption, that this was not really a business, but just a side project of an academic. You and I even talked about that in the comments.
3) You're framing the problem as aesthetics, but it's really about poor communication. Engineers often make the mistake of thinking that visual design = making something look nice. This is like saying a database designer makes data nice.
Just like a database designer sees important patterns to capture, a great producer or designer understands how to drive website visitors to the right understandings and behaviours.
It sounds to me that if you go down the route you descirbe, you'll have all the pain of redoing the site, without solving the more fundamental problems.
- cperciva 17y agoYou went to a friend. Unless this person is an experienced designer of commercial websites, that doesn't sound like the right approach. I went to a talented web designer who understands my vision. I think understanding my vision is important -- otherwise I'm likely to pay $$$ only to be presented with a website which I hate and don't want to use.
- Poiesis 17y agoI think what people are trying to tell you is that--with all due respect--your opinion on your website is not worth a damn. I mean, if you're interested in pageviews, and revenue--and your comments wrt Balsamiq seem to indicate you are--you need to realize that the aesthetic you're looking for is likely costing you customers and hence money. Nobody's going to fault you if you prefer to make less money and keep your website any way you want, but if you're going to complain about sluggish growth you've gotta realize that your customers' habits and tastes are much more important than your own. In related news, the demographic you seem to be targeting is quite possibly either unwilling or unable to pay for it; the former because they'd rather hack something up on their own and the latter because they may not be the decision maker for their organization.