Recently we had a customer who had a idea for a very complex website.
It had lots of Flash and icons with a very different look and feel on
the home page. His 15 year old daughter liked music and flash with
avatars on websites she visited.

The purpose of the site was to sell a product and the demographic was
the 24 - 50 age group. So what is the problem you ask? Well the
problem is that when consumers go to a web site they expect navigation
items to be in familiar places. Also it has been proven by many
studies that people in the western world browse websites from top left
to top right then down. (the Middle East can be a different story as
they read from right to left).

If you look at the large and well know shopping sites you always find
the same patterns:

- Banner at the top announcing the site
- Maybe some special navigation items below or in the banner
- Browse categories will be down the left navigation area.
- Products right in the middle of the page (not hidden)
- Promotional items and some navigation down the left navigation area.
- T&Cs, Privacy Statement, Copyright etc all on the very bottom of the
page

When you put a catchy image on the home page that might draw
attention, if it has no purpose all it does is take people away from
the purpose of the site. Music is just a distraction which will force
people to browse away from your website and music (and flash) uses
bandwidth so can affect performance for those with slow internet
connections.

So in general simple and clean is better than complex and clutered
when you are trying to get people to buy your products online. We have
to sometimes remind our customers that their teenage children won't be
buying a lot from the webstores that they run.