advice for web designers....

According to Seth Godin, the first question a web designer must ask is.... "Do you want the people visiting this site to notice it?"

For artists, musicians and web 2.0 companies, the answer is most likely, yes. They want people to see the interface or remark on their skills & cleverness.

For everyone else, it's no. The purpose of the site is to tell a story or to generate some sort of action and if the user notices the site, not the story, you've lost. Amazingly, this means that not only can't the site be too cutting edge, clever or slick, it also can't be too horrible, garish or amateurish. And that's the trick- finding a place somewhere in between.

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