I picked two different websites for my final week here. Each convey the same information, but in a different way. I frequent biblegateway.com to find Bible verses for various projects. There are other websites that offer the same service, but there are multiple reasons I prefer this particular site.
BibleGateway keeps their homepage incredibly clean above the fold. I love this. When I visit their site, I have one purpose, and that's to look up verses. They keep their search bar right at the top - no scrolling necessary. The only ad is a subtle strip below that (until further down the page).
Christianity.com has a very similar page.
At first glance, it seems there really is little difference between their page and BibleGateway's. But there's an ad right at the top (the huge call to action is always annoying when it leads to another site). Then a pop-up shows up (I don't care what site I'm on - I immediately get irritate when there's any kind of pop-up). Upon further investigation, the choices of Bible versions in which to look up verses is also very limited compared to BibleGateway.
It's amazing how little it takes to produce negative feelings when visiting a website, but this is a perfect example. The ads alone are enough to turn me off, then with fewer search options too, I go straight back to BibleGateway.
I think this observation could be very valuable for a designer as choices are made to building solutions. Quite often it's the little things that either turn off users, or make them happy.