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There was a time when I was a firm believer in the concept that ugly sites always sold. The idea was that the uglier the site the more obvious your marketing message was and the quicker people wanted to see it and I'm sure it worked.

Then there were the results of a survey that came out early last year. Those results found that more people were likely to buy from a site that looked professional than they were if the site looked unprofessional.

And of course when you think about it there is a flow-on from that to the free sites and galleries that we build. If they look too rough then people aren't going to follow our recommendations to buy the products that we're trying to sell them. At the same time though we don't want to go overboard with attempts to make our sites look professional.

We really don't want to hide our marketing message behind a cloud of unnecessary artistic crap that may entertain the visitor but does little to encourage them to buy what we are selling. So where is the middle ground here?

Perhaps the middle ground falls appears when you consider whether or not a website is useful. Forget ugly; forget professional; think useful. Is a site useful for people who visit it and what does ‘useful' really mean? Is it possible to incorporate a strong marketing message into a site that is useful for surfers? And of course the basic question for our industry ... can a free site or gallery be useful for surfers and still make money?

They're all interesting questions and ones that we should be seriously considering whether we're building sites in adult or mainstream.

Another question you should think about is at what point should you go beyond being useful and include some entertainment in what is basically a marketing site? Obviously here in adult there is an element of entertainment when we display images for the surfer to look at but what about over in mainstream?

It's a question that Steve and I are considering right now as we build a site for a client. They have a very busy bricks and mortar business and they want to drive even more business to their shop via their website. For some years now they've had a website that has been all but useless for a variety of reasons and now they want us to rebuild their website for them.

Basically we can build a very useful website and one that will look quite professional but the client comes from an industry where a little entertainment can increase the chance of making sales. So for them what constitutes enough entertainment without going overboard?

It's almost proving a challenge to Steve's fundamental beliefs because, being the concrete thinker he is, he thinks in terms of functionality and making sales rather than entertaining. The client wants sound ... Steve hates sound. The client wants things fluttering across the screen ... Steve nearly had a fit. The client wants a strange page background ... Steve thinks it gets in the way of the message.

But the fact is, the sounds and the fluttering ‘things' are entertainment that will really enhance the sales message. I know that sounds strange but in this industry strange things can enhance the sales message. Even the background adds something to the message and good old blockhead Steve is beginning to see that.

The question for us now is just how much entertainment is enough to enhance the sales message and encourage people to head over to the client's shop and buy their product. We're now quite happy to include all those things in the client's site but the extent to which we include those things is becoming important.

Too much and the sales message is obscured ... perhaps to the point where we drive people away from the site. Too little and there is no enhancement and including them is just a waste of time and resources. Something as simple as the background is easily fixed but sounds and fluttery things?

So let's bring all this back to the sites your building. Are your sites too ugly to make sales? Are your sites too pretty to make sales? Have you found the middle ground between ugly and attractive and is there anything further you can add to your site designs to make them not only look attractive but enhance their ability to make sales?

We're already in the business of entertaining surfers whether we like it or not so is there something else we could add to the entertainment value of our sites that would also increase sales?

There really is no clear-cut answer to any of those questions. They're all matters for the individual webmaster to decide and something that each of us needs to think about.