You have a domain name, the hosting, and the content. What to do with it all? Put it in a pretty package so that people can see it, of course!

If you’re a web design guru and know all the programming involved, you’re a step ahead of a lot of people. If, on the other hand, your knowledge of web design is limited, you’re going to have to look into hiring a designer.

The thing about adult content design is this : complicated=bad. You have to think about your market – these are not going to be people that want to spend time clicking through page after page to get to the scenes and updates that you have for them. Think of it like entertaining children – if you can keep their attention, they’ll stay. Lose it, and you’ve lost valuable profit potential.

A lot of adult design companies have pre-packaged products so that you can do a one-stop-shopping of what you need, and then upload all your content into that template. It may not be as customized as going to a designer and hiring them outright, but it will be a tad bit more economical. If you’re starting out, it might be a great place to start.

Regardless of who you use to design your site, or if you decide to design it yourself, there are a few elements of an adult paysite that are pretty standard:

• A Warning Page
• Main landing-tour page and other content pages.
• The Join Form and Design, with proper Processor/Visa Details.
• The terms and conditions, privacy policy and disclaimer.
• A customer support section, contact forms, password lookup.
• Members Login Page
• Error Pages, like 301 failed member logins and 404 file not found error pages.
• Exits or chains of exits, if any.
• The members area, a header, footer, and menu graphics.

We’ll get into payment processors in the next post, but bear in mind that a few of the processing companies do offer additional support in the way of password protections, and may help cut down some of the work.

In addition to the basic layout of your site, you should also look into hosted galleries and banners/ads to place on your site. Whether you’re affiliating with other sites, or offering additional sites in addition to yours (we’re seeing a lot of “Sign Up Now and Have Access to All These Other Great Sites!” offers on a lot of adult sites lately), you want to be able to offer other things to your members. We’ll cover advertising and marketing in a later post as well.

As far as the design of your site, take a look around. Much like when you were looking for your niche, and you went to tube sites for ideas, you should do the same when it comes to your site design. You don’t have to sign up and become members of 1000 different sites for ideas (although that might be appreciated by the site owners), but you should definitely spend the time and energy touring various sites within your niche to see what’s working for you and what’s not. Is it complicated? It is dated? Or is it something that is slick, clean, works well – and most of all, is just a great looking site? Take bits and pieces from different sites that you like and make it work on yours.

In addition, take the time to research some mainstream adult sites of the larger companies. Places like Vivid do well not just because their girls are gorgeous – they spend the time working on the presentation.

Other research should come from adult site reviews. Rabbit’s Reviews is a great example – and is actually an awesome additional place to go to look for niches. Not only does Rabbit’s Reviews actually review sites based on quality of content, user manageability, and ease of use, they will also review YOUR site when you submit it to them – which can be an extremely useful tool in making your site better by general consumer standards. Obviously, if you don’t necessarily care about consumer reviews because you already feel you have a targeted market, then don’t worry about getting it reviewed. But it’s still a great place to check out the competition and get ideas on site design.

Websites can, and should, be updated and revamped on a consistent basis. I’m not saying that the site design needs to be changed every month, but gauge the market. If it looks like site design is going through major overhauls on other sites, or you see sites that compete within your niche that are looking better than yours – might be a good idea to update your look. Besides, members like knowing that you’re keeping the site fresh for their enjoyment. A lot of sites are going with a Web 2.0 look these days…might want to look into that.

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