We don't need you to design anymore
drawar.com
drawar.com
For Amazon, getting a 0.1% increase in revenue from changing the color of a button would be a big deal. If Amazon paid $50k just for that one color change they would still be millions of dollars ahead.
For a smaller business a 0.1% change would not be as significant.
If you have 5x less traction than a competitor but you can monetize yours 10x better, you're in a way better position. Aesthetic design can be a huge driver in higher value users.
For Amazon, A/B testing a button color could have a huge effect.
However, being "prettier" might not do a damn thing. Heck, it might HURT them.
The author, I think, is talking about graphic design. His point would obviously fall REALLY flat if he was talking about UX design.
So, what is UX?
You could make similar arguments about source control, unit testing or bug tracking. Plenty of companies succeed despite not having them and they're not crucial to success but it can make or break in a large amount of marginal cases.
Despite that, the article is making an important point and having a conversation I don't see designers having very often.
My experience is that there isn't a lot of good cross over between print designers and web designers as the skill sets differ greatly. If I need a logo for my business I expect that it's going to cost me about $1k or maybe more. I will be able to use the assets for the web, print, video etc. This has been pointed out before, but I would also want my designer to take into consideration how the logo looks away from the screen. Is it legible on a business card? Would it scale up to a billboard or signage for my storefront?
The other issue with things from 99 designs is that they are often built from templates and you could run into licensing problems later. That could be an expensive mistake if you attempt to register trademarks or copyrights and submit anything with those designs in them. Overall the article is simply short sighted.
Isn't it the other way round?
Shhhh... don't tell anyone that a gradient or a shiny button doesn't mean having a good design. A good design might be as simple as text over a white page. Good design is about getting out of the way, making the use of the website or application easier and intuitive (and of course making it look good while doing that). Design is about aesthetic and functionality, you can separate them.
You'll find varying emphases between these two all over, but very few successful products make it with a significant disconnect between them.
My company built its own online quoting and ordering platform from the ground up - Smartpress.com. There are many sites out there that let you buy printing online. Ours is clean, fast, pretty, and gives you instant quotes on all products. I'm not pimping our site, but these features of our platform have won us customers. We know because that is what they tell us. The design attracted them, and equated to conversions.
We have our own designers in house, just not web designers. So, we paid good money to a contractor whom we know very well, and worked closely with him. It was worth every penny.
Github & Sourceforge
Slashdot & Digg
Facebook & MySpace
Look at Apple. When they started building their products with interesting, cool designs, they started recovering as a company. I own a Nexus One because it's a better phone, but the iPhone outsells it because it's more slick to own one.
Design does matter. Especially if you do it right. A really stellar website markets itself.
edit: loads up in firefox 3.6 no problem. I'm on windows 7 64bit.