Well, if you ask me, it’s essential. Of course you might argue that I’m biased: I’m a designer with a background in visual arts, after all! So I tend approach my work with aesthetics high on my list of priorities.
However, there are those who might say that it really doesn’t matter what a website looks like. As long as it conforms to standards and expectations, has excellent functionality and is highly useable for visitors, then that’s all that matters. A few might even argue that visual design gets in the way of these things!
While all of those things are very important – even absolutely essential – I don’t think a site or any other communications project will ever work as well as it could without a good visual design to bring it all together.
Human beings are visual creatures – our subconscious minds deal purely in images. And how something looks tends to play a large role in how we perceive that something from the moment we lay eyes on it.
Something that has had attention paid to its visual design will generally have a greater impact than something that hasn’t. Imagine someone turning up to a job interview wearing the clothes they cleaned the house in that morning, versus someone who has dressed up (and dressed appropriately!) for the interview.
Also, good design is about a lot more than simply making something ‘pretty’. It’s very much about communicating – but visually rather than just with words.
With a well-considered design that suits your own identity or purpose, you can instantly tell people something about who you are, what your values are and much more.
Not only that, but good design for websites in particular helps to inform people how to use the interface they are looking at: how to identify the most important information on the page, where the navigation menu is, how to separate the primary content on the page from other information, etc..
Of course all of this must work in conjunction with excellent usability, good coding and the right functionality for the site’s needs.
Form and function should always elegantly work together for the best possible outcome in any design task. Choosing one of the other will, in my opinion, never work as well as choosing both.
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