From voodoo to data-driven web design

[mandy]

When it comes to website design, don't be tempted to blindly follow the "rules." Sometimes the rules won't apply to your site, where your analytics will always inform smart design choices.

Until quite recently, designing a website was a highly subjective enterprise. In the best-case scenario, companies would hire seasoned design agencies that had, collectively, decades of experience in design, user research and usability testing. Unfortunately, the vast majority of organizations don't have the budgets to hire these rock-star design teams. Instead, they hire designers who, despite their pleasant-looking portfolios, do their best based entirely on their instincts and on subjective feedback from the client. 

The truth about this kind of web design is that it's completely unscientific. Copywriters and designers make hundreds of decisions when producing a single web page, and if they're wrong on enough of them, they deliver you a page that looks good but is full of hidden inefficiencies and opportunity costs...

full article: http://imediaconnection.com/content/19845.asp