Stepping into the adult website business can be difficult for new webmasters. There is so much competition on the web, how can you really stand out? Who can afford to hire a professional web design team with the economy being as tough as it is? I know many webmasters who are not professional designers and did not have the start up resources, but they run a very successful website. The fact is, you don't need to be a high-end web designer to profit in the adult industry. Knowing a few simple design techniques can help convert your visitors.

1. Call To Action button

A call to action is an advertising and marketing concept, a request/direction to ‘do something’—often the next step that a consumer could take toward the purchase of a product or service. - source Motive Glossary

Some of the most popular examples of a call to action button is in the form of "Join Now" or "Take Tour" buttons. This is one of the most important elements to include in your design. If you do not have visible call to action buttons on your website, you will lose visitor conversions.

For more examples of call to action buttons, read this article from SmashingMagazine: Call to Action Buttons: Examples and Best Practices

2. Text Contrast

A lot of adult sites use a basic black background and white text color palatte. Although this style is very popular, many webmasters are unaware of the effect this can have on visitors. The key point that gets overlooked is site readability. Dark backgrounds with brightly colored text can cause eye-strain. Choosing the right balance between light and dark can really create a much better experience for your visitors.

This is not to say that you should completely avoid using dark background and white text. Sometimes the contrast works great, especially if other elements on the page break up the text. Try mixing things up a little and use different shades. It will allow you to still deliver quality content and make the website more appealing to visit.

Take a look at this article by WebDesignersDepot.com called "The Do's and Don'ts of Dark Webdesign". The article covers a few more points in light and dark usage. The image below is from the "Text Contrast" section of the article. It is a basic example on how shifting the colors slightly makes a difference.

3. Flash (Animations)

Flash is a great tool for adding animated content to your websites. Just like any tool, you need to know the right and wrong uses of Flash. One area where Flash really shines is with streaming movie clips. When it comes to using Flash as a website intro, keep in mind, some viewers will like the intro and others will not.

Using Flash to display streaming movies is a great idea. The biggest advantage of Flash is, nearly every user already has Flash installed. This means no additional plug-in or software is required to run before viewing the movie. Movie clips can be added very easily to your tour and within your website. Below is an example of a Flash movie with some added CSS (cascading style sheet) to customize the look. Video is from the NastyDollars affiliate program.

Dim lights

If you decide you would like to add streaming videos of any kind, I strongly suggest either turning auto-play off or auto-play without sound. Doing either of the two will increase the load time of the page. This also gives a chance for your visitors to choose if they want to watch the movie or move on.

It is generally a good practice to avoid using Flash for site navigation and for the entire site layout. HTML and CSS is better suited for website designing. This also goes for music playing in the background anywhere in the website. Nothing is more frustrating to a visitor trying frantically to find the STOP button.

4) Picture and Movie galleries

How you choose to display your content is very important. Internet users are impatient, if they cannot find what they are looking for, they will be out the door in no time. Coming up with a good tactic for displaying the content will keep your customers happy and coming back for more.

Some methods you will want to avoid are the use of web frames and overloading a page with thumbnails. Both of these methods not only increase page loading times, they also cause unnecessary scrolling. Instead go with a common thumbnail layout of about 30 - 40 images per page. A gallery of 120 images will have roughly 3-4 page. This is very easy to navigate through. The same can be applied to movies too. Creating a paging system and limiting the amount of content displayed per page will greatly reduce load times and adds to the visitor experience. If you can, offer a zip file or movie download as an option.

However you decide to display your content, keep in mind, you will also need to be able to update easily. You can either create your own solution or use one of the various adult content management systems out there. Doing a quick web search returned these companies.http://www.adultinterface.com, http://www.myadultsite.com/, http://paysitecms.com/, and http://www.adultsitecms.com(wordpress). I have not used any of those programs so I cannot personally vouch for them.

5) Newsletters

Newsletters are a great way to keep you in contact with your current and potential new members. They can also increase your traffic and conversions. Managing a newsletter campaign can be as easy as sending out a simply weekly or monthly update regarding your website.

For newsletters, I recommend and use Aweber. They are one of the best in the business. They are ISP friendly so you do not have to worry about messages not getting through. Aweber also does not tolerate SPAM of any kind.