When designing and building websites I definitley put an emphasis on the aesthetics of the site. Its very important to me that the site is eyecatching and stands out, visually, from it's competitors. Its crucial in this day and age when everyone is getting online that the sites I build look impressive and stand out from the crowd, yet are functional and simple to navigate.
At the same time there should never be any compromise in the optimisation of the site. There is room for 'Flash animation' or a 'javascript gallery' in a site that has been well constructed, with optimisation taken into account from the word go. Building a website with Cascading Style Sheets allows me to produce a very flexible design and layout, while cutting down on bloated html code. Just one piece of the optimisation jigsaw, but a very important piece. Google likes CSS! Google doesn't like old school 'table layouts.
I came across this article in a favourite website of mine - www.alistapart.com.
"Another body of web user experience research shows that website users
are powerfully influenced by aesthetics, and that positive perceptions
of order, beauty, novelty, and creativity increase the user’s confidence
in a site’s trustworthiness and usability. Recent design writing
and interface research illustrate how visual design and user research
can work together to create better user experiences on the web: experiences
that balance the practicalities of navigation with aesthetic interfaces
that delight the eye and brain. In short: there’s lots of evidence
that beauty enhances usability."
Patrick Lynch
The full article is at: www.alistapart.com/articles/visual-decision-making/