If Content is King, What’s the Queen?

We all know that in the web world (especially blogging), content is king.
But what is its queen?

I would have to argue the queen of the web is design.

Presentation is (Almost) Everything

Think about it.
I went on over to Google and search for “Free Web Site Reviews” and got ‘about 84,200,000′ results. (yes, that is how many results come up)
Two web sites caught my eye. Their titles were nice and the descriptions were exactly what I’m looking for.

I clicked on Site A and the design on the web site is horrible.
It looks as if the designer didn’t care at all about how it looked but only cared about getting the web site online as quickly as possible and filling it with ads.
What did I do?
I left.

Returning back to Google, I choose Site B.
As soon as it loaded, I was confidant that the review service was worth it.
Why? The web site’s design is clean, well done, ordered, and aimed at the visitor.

What was the difference between the two web sites?
Was it content?
…
I’m not sure…
I didn’t even look at Site A’s content…

That is exactly my point.
How many times have you done exactly that?
You went to a web site, it looked horrible, and you moved on?

That is why I say Content is Queen.
Granted, without good content, you will not gain links or regular visitors - but if you do not have good design, you won’t even have any potential readers.

Ok, so now what.

Enrapture Your Visitors

You have about five to ten seconds to keep the majority of your visitors.
In those moments, you need to show your visitors what your web site is about, why they should stay, and how they can dive into the content.

Probably the best example of doing so is Apple.com.

Apple’s home page is simple and to the point.
You look at Apple.com, and you know what the site is about and have reasons to dive in.
It looks nice and is easy to understand.

Just how do you take advantage of the Queen of the web?
Well, that’s what plainbeta is all about.

Stick around as we dive into the ins and outs of design and how to take full advantage of her.