Unless your business is website design or something else in the arts, you don’t need a beautiful website. A nice looking website is a bonus, but make sure you’re working towards a functioning website instead of something that will look great printed out and framed on your wall.
Oftentimes when going over design mockups or newly updated websites, you’ll find yourself leaning back in your chair and staring at your homepage for a minute or two taking it all in.
Stop it! No one browses the web this way.
If you think of your website as a work of art, you surely will find little things here and there that might be smaller or larger or a little bit to the right. Resist the urge to do this.
If you know the primary goal of your website (see post #1), make sure the design focuses on that goal. Focus your design feedback on how well the design enables sales, mailing list sign ups, contact requests, etc.
As for website design, hire an experienced web designer at a decent rate and trust their instincts for what looks good.
If you hassle your designer with a lot of feedback on what “looks goodâ€, they are going to shut down and move into “code monkey†mode where they just code up whatever requests you have. Unless you are paying bottom dollar (in which case you get what you pay for) you are wasting money by paying designer rates for code monkey work.
More importantly, micro managing a code monkey will not get you as good of a website as one where you control the vision via a strong primary goal, and an experienced designer controls the particulars of the site’s look and feel.