Everyone (myself included) bangs on about the importance of good content and how content is the real driving force behind creating a successful affiliate site, but there is something else concerning many affiliates at the moment: design. The forums are alive with questions regarding the battle between design and content; which one you should focus on, which should be your first concern when building a site and which is ultimately the final factor that will push your site into the mainstream and monetise your traffic.

The truth is that rather than being mutually exclusive considerations, any work you do on the design of your site and the content you put on it must ultimately achieve some kind of Zen-like balance. You can have great design paired with great content, but this takes time and effort and potentially money if you’ve not got the web design or graphical skills yourself. However, there is a glimmer of light in what seems to be a very dark tunnel (and no I’m not talking about the economy!).

Aesthetics vs. Functionality
It is essential that from the get-go that you understand the difference between the attractiveness of a site versus the other ‘design’ elements that enable you to make some cash from it. This is mostly because the word ‘design’ covers both of these areas. Having an attractive site is something that many people strive for, but in the real world pretty images and flashy, animated menu buttons do not reliably convert into commission. Actually they can be counter-productive.

Let’s consider for a moment the brutal fact that as affiliates, we are all in the referral business. Modern PPC, SEO and content affiliates are sourcing traffic at unit cost A and monetising it at revenue level B. Conversion rates here are king and optimising these requires a delicate balance. On one side of the equation you need a site of sufficient attractiveness to create sufficient confidence in the user to prevent immediate use of the back button — rather you want further navigation to the right exit point. The site must also be content-rich enough to meet PPC quality page requirements and / or to build natural search rankings. On the other hand you don’t want to create something that is so stunningly good that the user never leaves (and never monetises). Therein lies the challenge.

There are plenty of examples of fairly bland affiliate sites out there that do well despite the aging look of their pages. In many cases this is because they are designed well but in a way that isn’t obvious to the naked, judgemental human eye. What matters here is the intuitiveness of the site structure and a relatively simple layout with content placed strategically and in relevant areas of the site. Many site designers agree that keeping things simple doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll create something ugly or overly bland, and there are examples for both sides of the design versus content argument out there.

Aesthetics vs. Monetisation
What we are trying to illustrate here is that although design is important, and it is of course what every visitor ‘sees’ it is not going to be the sole determinant of revenues. What you should look to create is an accessible “veneer” of design that drives visitors straight to monetising content. It is the combination of the two that will give the best results in the long run. It’s important to remember that the average web user will ultimately be ‘looking’ for something online, whether it’s product information or views and reviews. An over-the-top design can only serve to distract from the main purpose here. The path to the “meat” of the content should be as simple and uncomplicated as possible.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel – AKA an Unsubtle Sales Pitch
It is hard enough to worry about hosting, basic design, navigation, on-page SEO, text content, linking, PPC management and all of the other factors involved in getting rankings and driving traffic. If you then have to worry about trying to build monetising content based on a mixture of individual text links, graphics and the vagaries of the data feeds from the various networks and merchants, the mountain becomes a whole lot taller. Then you have to merge it in with your design.

Enter Easy Content Units or ECU (created by a team containing yours truly) which provides you with a range of customisable units that allow you to add elements such as price comparison, related products and best sellers to your site. Your users will even be able to change options such as size and colour within the unit before they even leave your site. You can adjust the shape and size of the units to fit in with your site design and choose from over 8 million products to be included. It’s simple to create your own custom content units to suit your site design, and it will also provide your users with a simple interface that compliments the content of your site. ECU is designed to remove much of the donkey work of merging and managing those monetising affiliate links and data with your site design, allowing you to focus on the hard work of getting the traffic in the first place.

Tuning the Balance
So ends the sales pitch! Whether you use ECU or not, striking the right balance between on-page value, confidence levels and click-throughs requires considerable thought and a degree of experimentation. Even relatively subtle changes can make a significant difference to percentages and thus commission levels. Time spent fine tuning based upon stats is almost certainly going to be more profitable than time spent trying to create the world’s prettiest interface. Professional yet bland but effective and content-rich wins over pretty every time!

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