If the most important thing on a website is the copy, it sounds like graphic design doesn’t matter. And sites like Craigslist seem to bear that out. Here is an extremely successful site that has little graphic design. Some people have even called it “ugly.” Yet, it’s one of the top sites on the web.

But there’s a caveat here. Your graphic design does have purpose.

• Professionalism - Your website needs to look professional to your target market. Because this conveys trustworthiness. And if prospects who visit your site trust you, they’ll be more likely to buy from you. A clean graphic design conveys that you are a professional, and so it can increase trust. A messy graphic design looks like you just threw it together and that you don’t care about the image you project.
• Highlighting What’s Important - When a prospect comes to your site, he has a purpose in mind. He’s having a conversation with himself, in his mind, about his needs and how he’s going to fulfill them. On your website is content that enters the conversation going on in his head and helps him realize that you have what he needs. And on your website, there’s also other content that has nothing to do with what he wants. A graphic design can highlight the first of these, and it allows other content to fade into the background.
• User Experience - As a user navigates through your website, he’ll finish with one bit of content and progress to the next. A good graphic design will put things that go together close together. And it will take things that are separate and keep them apart. That makes it easy for someone to find what he’s looking for on your site.
• Emotional Connection - A customer buys from you because of an emotional reason. A mother, for example, may buy durable clothing in order to save money, which she believes will help her take better care of her children. She feels a need to nurture her family. If this is your customer, and if you understand this emotional reason, you can choose a layout and colors that reflects it.

But there are things that you don’t necessarily need in a graphic design. Your graphic design does not need to be cool or creative, and it doesn’t need to be a custom design. Using a design template is just fine, as long as the final design does what you need it to. I’ll talk more about this when I talk about website technology.