PornoXO

It can be so easy to get caught up in the content of your website that you forget about great design. That's totally understandable. You got into the game so you could bring together your passion and wallet, so it stands to reason that you would have your head buried deep in the porn. But, no job is all fun, games, and masturbation. Occasionally you have to do some real work also.

If you can keep to a few design principles creating a great site isn’t too hard. You just have to put the time, research, and care into doing it right. If you do it correctly the first time, you won’t have to do it repeatedly, and you can keep focused on finding great content. I know you like to take every video on a test run first, so you better put a lock on your office door.

First things first, you need to know precisely what you want your site to do so that it can handle all the wants and needs of the user. You should anticipate those needs fairly easily, considering you have been a consumer of porn for years. Think about all the sites you have ever used. What did they do right? What did you find yourself wanting for? How could you do it better?

I’m Dumb, You’re Dumb, Keep Things Simple

To that end, keeping things simple is the way to go. Every time you add a moving part, you run the risk of confusing your customers. It is a tenuous balance you must maintain between usability and creativity. When you know, you know, but when in doubt, keep it simple. Don’t overwhelm your visitors with color or intricate typefaces. Sure, that curly cursive looks cool but can anybody fucking read it? What kind of headers and banners you use also falls into this. Flashy neon imagery always looks fabulous in a vacuum, but you may find it clogs up the senses once you add it to your site.

Why is keeping things simple the rule of thumb? To make navigation intuitive for your visitors. You know how it is when you’re jerking off. Ninety-five percent of your brain is shut down. The only thing still working is the proprioception of your dominant hand and the blood flow valve to your cock. There’s nothing left over to help a man navigate a confusing swirl of menus and options. You have to put it plainly in front of their face.

Out west, where people read left to right, top to bottom, one of the best ways to achieve usability is using F-shaped pattern reading. It takes advantage of our natural reading patterns by placing the most important aspect of your site near the top left. This creates an intuitive layout without having to rack your brain. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel while building a porn site.

It also helps to build a certain visual hierarchy to help delineate options by importance. You can do this with all sorts of visual qualities, including, but not limited to, size, color, typography, and style. Your brain will build a ranking without you needing to consciously think about it. Remember, masturbators’ brains are only barely functioning.

Many websites use a grid-based layout to help keep things easy. When you combine a grid layout with the principles of F-shaped pattern reading, you will have an intuitive website by default. Hammering that down can give you room to be a bit flashier with your typefaces and imagery. Most porn sites want to be at least a little dazzling. Watching porn is primarily a visual experience, and your banners and headers can be like foreplay.

It’s an obvious one, but keeping your load times down is critical. Goodness knows your load takes zero time, but thats a different issue. No matter how good the site and content are, if it takes ten minutes to load, people will move on with their day. These days much of what can affect your load times is your advertising. Ads are great, but if no one wants to hang around your site, they won’t be making you much money. You have to create a balance between content and advertising both you and your customers can be happy with.

Last but certainly not least is mobile usability. Nearly eighty percent of porn is viewed on mobile devices these days. Sure, it's great to watch porn on your big screen at home, but the fact is your phone is always in your pocket, ready to go. That means people can watch porn no matter where they are—waiting in line at the bank? Watch porn. Bored at work? Watch porn. Stuck in rush hour traffic? Watch porn.

Websites that can navigate these principles will be the most popular, and we know what that means. They make the big bucks. An example of a site that pulls this off with flying colors is Pornoxo. Their blend of excellent content, intuitive web design, and well-placed advertising is exemplary. They found a perfect balance.

Up at the very top is a search bar that can hunt for either videos, playlists, or members. Along with a classic bar, an advanced menu lets you refine your search to a fine degree. Using it, you can find any sort of content your little heart can imagine. I wish every website did something similar. To the right of the search bar are controllers to swap the background color from black to white along with a language switch.

Below that is the main menu containing the options Videos, Playlists, Tags, My favorites, My profile, Live sex, Adult store, and Get laid tonight. That is the perfect amount of options that get you everywhere you want to go while still stopping short of being too much. The “Live sex” and “Get laid tonight” selections are links to other sites. Surprisingly Pornoxo does host its own adult store. I honestly did not see that coming. On my last visit, this section of the site was down, though.

F Isn’t Just for Fuck?

Below that and down the left side is a fat category list. Remember the F-shaped pattern reading? That’s why the categories are down the left and not the right side. There are enough categories that they do not all fit on the main page. I say you can never have enough pending you organize them correctly.

To the right of the category list, but before we get to the content wall, is a final, simple filter with four parts that control how content on the front page is displayed—the first part filters by the video quality. The options are All, HD, and VR. The next one controls how content is listed. The options are Trending, Date added, Most popular, Top rated, Longest, and Random. The third filter controls the length of the content displayed. Finally, last but not least is how you want the content displayed. You can choose from four in a row or five in a row.

That brings us to the content wall. It’s organized by however the fuck you want to organize it. Each thumbnail displays a title, A rating in percent, length, and video quality. Below the primary wall is a list of hot new videos for all the frequent flyers out there. At the very bottom is a final menu I won’t fully review. It’s not for navigation but contains all the essential leftovers. What you should pay attention to are the “Advertise” and “Make money” options. These explain to you how you can both advertise Pornoxo on your site and advertise your own shit.

If you host a video belonging to Pornoxo on your site, you will receive a dollar and fifty cents per one thousand watches. If you choose just to embed the video, you earn fifty cents per one thousand watches.

Pornoxo is a fantastic example of how a porn site should be designed. Not only can you increase your traffic by advertising on the site nut you can also learn a lesson in web design. Because it is so well built, Pornoxo brings in tons of visitors. Those visitors can become your visitors.

As superb as the place is, nothing is perfect in this life, and I see areas that the site could improve on. First, they could get their store up and running again. Sound like it could be a lucrative business venture. Second, while they do have a language menu built, its only option is English. It looks like they have plans to expand but just hasn’t had the time to do so yet. Hopefully, they can get to it soon.

It’s time to go back and review how your site is constructed. Once you have that done, start trading ads with Pornoxo. It’s sure to be lucrative for both of you.