Jakob Nielson is the author of Designing Web Usability and several other fantastic books on Web development and usage.  But I really just need to take a moment and ask the obvious question….Jakob why does your site suck so bad? I realized this is a bit like an ant telling an elephant he’s weak and pathetic, but seriously go visit his site and tell me your first desire isn’t to scream, “Would someone please pay for this poor chap to hire a web developer!” Don’t believe me, take a look.

Now in his own defense Jakob gives his own two reasons for why his site has absolutely no graphics.

• Download times rule the Web, and since many users still don’t have broadband, Web pages can be no more than 6 KB if they are to download in one second which is the required response time for hypertext navigation. Users do not keep their attention on the page if downloading exceeds 10 seconds, corresponding to 60 KB at modem speed. Keeping below these size limits rules out most graphics.
• I am not a visual designer, so my graphics would look crummy anyway. Since this website is created by myself (and not by a multidisciplinary team as I always recommend for large sites) I didn’t want to spend money to hire an artist.

I’ll agree with you that yes the majority of users are still on, on, on dialup…43% of our users at kcbt.org are still on dialup.  However, I’m inclined to think that even a monkey likes to look at pretty pictures, properly done.  Dude, I’m not saying you should cover the thing in jpg’s just some nice color usage would be great.

As for not being a visual designer, I can respect that, but the web motto is beg borrow and steal.  No I’m not recommending you steal design, but certainly you could get some nice ideas from other sites and impliment them? right?

Don’t hate me Jakob, I’m a huge fan, and your book, “Designing Web Usability” inspired me and made me want to be a web developer.  I’m just calling it like I see it.

Which of course brings up my real point here.  You can’t divorse Usability and style.  They should go together hand in hand.  After all as the old marketing adage goes, sexy sells….I guess that would go for website too.