Image via Wikipedia
A lot of web designers put a lot of their faith into the visual aspects of their websites. However, a lot of these people forget that the aesthetics of a website are of less importance than the ultimate functionality of the site itself. The functions of a website go beyond just looking good.
For one thing, a website can be perfectly ugly and still work extremely well. If a website has to allow people to buy or sell something, they don’t need to be on a pretty website. Of course, being pretty does tend to allow a website to attract more visitors, just as being attractive allows a person to attract more suitors. However, the look of a website and its design are not the same thing in some cases. Sometimes it’s far more important that a website does what it needs to do.
When a website fulfills its intended function, nobody really cares what it looks like. If it has the ugliest colors arranged in nearly seizure-causing patterns, a lot of people won’t mind in the slightest. This is because in the end, the ultimate measure of a website isn’t in how it looks but in how well it does its intended function. If a website is making you money, do you really want to invest a lot of time into changing what might be working? In some cases you want to push onward, but in others you might already be satisfied with a bad-looking but ultimately functional site.
