Recently I came across Everton’s post regarding lingscars.com – claiming it was the worst website ever! At first I laughed profusely, but soon came to realise that laughing at someone elses work and success is quite rude.

Ling responded to Everton with a snap of reality, reminding him that she shifts millions of pounds worth of cars every year, and people enjoy her site. In reality, she is quite successful, and if I were to choose a website to sell cars I probably wouldn’t be as daring as she is.

Which leads me to my question – does having standards make you a snob? At what cost do we adhere to standards?

Back in 2002, when I started BloopDiary.com, the site had a colourful appearances like crayons. It grew popular very quickly. Now days, it is somewhat bland in appearance. When it was colourful, it stood out from the other sites. I almost miss my awful colour scheme!

And look at other sites, such as PlentyOfFish.com, a hugely successful website with a layout that a 5 year old could design.

What Ling’s site, my site and Plenty Of Fish all have in common is one thing – the value they offer to the people that visit. Somewhere we get lost in design, and forget about what really matters. To be honest, when I’m looking for something on the web, I could care less about what the website looks like, as long as I can use it and it gives me what I want. I definitely don’t search Google and then drool over how a page looks.

I think we need to step out of our boxes for a while, and look in as a visitor before our collective ego explodes.