Ask HN: Do quality web graphics, design and layout actually help businesses?

Many managers look at the cost differential of hiring a high-end designer versus getting their back end dev to mock something up, and ask themselves "Will I get another $X,XXX amount of business in return for this investment?" Depending on their personality, they will then answer "yes" or "no", and act accordingly.

The reality is the manager is a very bad person to make that call - as they are intimately familiar with the business, and therefore generally very bad at judging how a person who is encountering the business for a first time will respond to a design.

Testing the new design is expensive though, as it requires an outlay of $X,XXX without any guarantee return of results; therefore the manager takes the conservative approach and hires the cheaper designer, as at least that way she/he won't have the issue of having spent money and not being able to show any results from the investment.

A lot of businesses can get away with terrible websites for the same reason I can get away with terrible business cards: 99.8% of the business is elsewhere. If you're Nobu your website could be done by a 4th grader in Flash and you'd still sell sushi at $100 a plate.

That's the part of the answer you won't mind hearing. The other part is designers vastly overestimate the importance of design and that what designers like about designs is in many cases orthogonal to their effectiveness in convincing customers to enter business relationships. (I'd say a variant of that regarding programmers, too.)

That one is probably the main reason why companies stick with awful-looking websites. I'll never cease to be amazed at how many people have no design sense or eye whatsoever and genuinely cannot see the difference between an absolutely horrendous-looking logo or page and a well designed one.

In fact, not only can they not see the difference but I often see them preferring the godawful version over the well designed one. There's a reason why every home-made flyer uses Word's multi-colored 3D fonts and wordart - a lot of people genuinely think that they look absolutely amazing :)

Businesses concentrate on providing water to thirsty people, i.e., find something that people want and provide it to them. If they want it enough, nothing much else matters. This is the goal.

Artists concentrate on providing visual joy and passion in the world. Make people enjoy things they normally might not.

For the vast majority of us, we'd do much better focusing on finding something people want. A lot. Society and culture will tell us otherwise. There are a lot of nice canteen builders in the world who will take you down a nice rosy path. You'll be building wonderfully decorated canteens that are empty. And you'll never ever figure out what you are missing (Which is kind of what your question sounds like)

That's not to say there's anything wrong with art and things of beauty and drama. It's just not directly applicable to your question. Perhaps your question would be better phrased: to what degree should I apply aesthetics to prevent losing potential customers. Much better question :)