What do you think? Should you design for user preference or user performance? Most webmasters would say design for user preference. It makes sense at first, designing to what your site users prefer. An example would be using flash for a younger audience. Many prefer flash because it looks cool, it’s interactive, and not boring in design like this text based site. Preference doesn’t equal performance though.

Preference Does Not Equal Performance

If you tested a site that was designed for user preference, I am sure you would find that preference did in fact equal performance, but not entirely. Just because someone likes your site does not mean they will successfully complete your desired visitor action. Looking at it another way, a visitor may not even like your site, but does complete the desired visitor action.

When designing your site or making improvements to your site, think about your objective. Use facts that are improving performance, and not general visitor feedback such as “I like your site, it looks cool.” It’s hard to be cold and calculated, “just the facts, mam”, but why build a site that just looks cool. Best web design should consider performance first, and then build for user preference. Then you will get the best of both worlds.