Lots of people have an almost unnatural obsession with how their website looks.

Especially many web developers, who convince their clients to spend tens of thousands of dollars for award winning sites that are monuments to the skill and flair of the developer, but may not do much to improve the profits of the client.

Well, I don't believe that the look of your website is that important, if the visitors REALLY are interested in what you have to say to them.

Sure it needs an effective navigation system so that visitors can find what they want, as well as contain content that is important to them.

But most of the other stuff is just eye candy.

My reasons for making these heretical statements are:

1. Nobody ever refused to read a letter from someone they love just because it's on the "wrong" colour paper, or the writing is too large or too small, or it doesn't have pretty pictures.

2. I recently saw a museum exhibition of wartime relics, which contained letters from soldiers written on toilet paper. The writing was small and hard to read. And then the paper was turned 90 degrees and filled with more lines of text.
Paper was precious.

And reading those letters was extremely difficult:  but I'll be that none of them were ever screwed up and thrown away.

Because again, the readers were vitally interested in what they had to say.

The reason that there is so much emphasis on presentation these days is because a lot of people are saying basically the same thing, and they need to have the gimmicks to attract the attention of visitors.

That's why I believe that if your content is good enough -  and you have the attention of your readers, the  look of your website isn't that important.

cheers,

Eric G.