A quote from the owner of a site I help out at. How much do you agree / disagree with that statement? Although I'm of the opinion looks won't hold your visitors forever, and content is probably more important, I disagree strongly with the statement... the look is what attracts people to your site in the first place, it entertains and amuses them long enough to actually look at your content... obviously, whether the content is any good will determine if they stay or not, but who here can honestly say they've never thought "Ugh! This site looks awful! I'm never going back there again!"?

Thoughts?

Color is amost everything, under layout of course. With good colors and bad layout...that isn't much of a site.

content is obviously always number one on the list of importance. however, the goal of a good site creator is to strike the perfect balance between all the important aspects of a site. sure, i could create a graphically sound site that would weigh in at 400k, but that would take eons to load, and the content'd probably suck.

DEFINATELY not ignore it, right?

i wouldn't ignore it. as a webmaster, you are trying to attract as many visitors as possible to your site. anything that can keep them coming back will be worth the effort. a scheme that is easy on the eyes or cohesive to look at will help you keep people there longer.

in the long run, i'd say that repeat visitors are far more important than people who only visit once and stay for 2 hours.

if i get too far off track, let me know, and i'll stop. why wouldn't anyone want to spend the time to make a decent color scheme for their site? if you're already spending hours and hours building the darn thing, how hard is it to make a good scheme that ties everything together? i suppose that one of the first things you notice on a site are its colors.

that's enough rambling for now. i'll comment again when my comments are required.

As matt said u pretty much notice the colors first .. just because thats usually what u are looking at while the rest of the page is loading but I would say you defiantely would need a decent color scheme because if you didnt have one or it didnt match very well many people wont go because they cant read it or they just dont like the scheme.. just the way people are but there are people out there who just go for the content

Shrek: Sites are like onions...

For me the only time content matters is if it is a very unique site that has content that other sites don't have

The only time color matters to me is the first time I visit a site if a site has content that I like or can't find anywhere else then I could care less what is looks like unless it is so horrible that it hurts my eyes

The thing that I mainly look for is layout a site could have the best content in the world but if it takes me forever to find what I am looking for then I will never come back This might just be me since I am on 56k you people with faster connections might not care about clicking on 5 or 6 links to get where you want to go A site should be layed out like a program, clean and efficiant Users should be able to access the content they want fast and not have to search through a bunch of links that send them to information that they don't want

Just a th..... err opinion

I think what this guy ment was something completely different ...
I dunno the guy, but indeed more and more the MEDIUM becomes the MESSAGE instead of the CONTENT.

May I add my 2cc to it ...

It's a nice way to put it and in a way it's correct.
You will never get a succesfull website if you only have to offer cool color schemes and nice graphics ... so it's a correct statement to start from ... (and a lot of people start with the colors and graphics and hope the content and success will come) ...

However after you have desided on what your website (whether it's bizz or private use) will be focused on and what your target audience will be, you will have to reconsider what GUI you are going to use and what will benifit most to your successtory ...

Based on your target and your plan you will go for a GUI that will fullfill your needs ... and there colors and graphics do come into play and become an essential part of your way of communicating ... you will choose the best possible tools to get your message // content delivered.

If this means NO graphics and NO fancy color scheme, than you still use colors and graphics.
The old way of HTML pages (grey background, black text in Times New Roman with blue underlined links) is also a color scheme (and even not such a bad one at that point in time).

So again ... there are so many issues to resolve once you have your idea started that indeed Colors and Site Graphics are not that important for a succesfull website, however if you choose wrong here they become very important / annoying and will ruin your successtory .

So if you apply a standard solution in color scheme and graphics and don't really pay that much attention to it you might loose on "great site awards" but if the content and backend is great and the GUI is correct but not superb you have a great way to start and grow ... if the only thing that is great and fancy is your colors and graphics and the GUI aspect is to difficult and you don't provide good content and information you will definitly end up in a dead end street ...

So if the INFO is the MESSAGE and you know how to deliver your MESSAGE, your colors and graphics will be OK and you will be heard ... if it's only the MEDIUM that is the MESSAGE ... well

My 2cc

Greetz

Knuff

They all go hand in hand, appearance, layout, and content.

You can have the best looking, most whiz-bang site on the planet and with no content people will look once and never return. There will be no need to return.

Likewise if you have wonderful content but nobody can see it or find it then what good is it? That os what a good layout fixes. Finding things.

And appearance. Even if you have great content and good navigation but it makes someone's eyes hurt and you feel dizzy reading the content. Same answer... what good is it?

By the way, knowing and targeting your audience helps. If you have ever seen what is left of my real site... not navahoville....you would think it loud, plain, and paticularly ugly. There was a reason. It was targeted as a specific audience with specific sight maladies. Looked horrid to people who could see normally, but to my targeted audience it was easy to use and read.