Just look at some of the most popular web sites:

• Craigslist
• Wikipedia
• Google
• PlentyOfFish
• MySpace
• Orkut

All of those websites have a very down-to-earth or in some cases downright clumsy design. But it doesn’t matter, I think the key is content, especially user generated content. If you have the right content then the people will come. Also this ties in with my previous post about The Delphi Effect. We are seeing more and more of it and that’s the thing of the future.

Secondly besides the content, those sites are welcoming. They have a casual feel to it. You could compare it with a departmental store analogy. If you are walking down the 7th Avenue in New York, you are less likely to think that you’ll find a good deal or at least something cheap in one of the stores compared to let’s say Wal-Mart or Ross.

I don’t know if this was an intended strategy while they made those sites but it definitely seemed to work out quite well.

Vitamin has a very interesting article discussing this phenomenon and Robert Scoble has also touched upon this topic.