A website isn't an art project. It's fundamentally a machine that has a purpose. The purpose is to make visitors behave a certain way – click buttons, buy products, sign-up, travel certain paths from one page to the next, etc. The entire site has a series of goals, each page has a goal and a purpose. It's a machine, not art.
A user who trusts a website has a better chance of trusting the company behind it. Visitors to a site should feel secure and taken care of. The navigation should be intuitive, the writing direct, pictures and graphics interesting and tending towards informative. If a website simply has clear navigation, and is easy to read and basically “professional” (whatever that might mean), the most important aspects of the design are finished.
The aesthetics of the design support the goals of the website and the direction of your life. Fonts, colors, images, the placement of things on a page, animations – these decisions aren't about appearance. They're about making things easy for the user while maintaining consistent branding across the site. Taste or personal preference really shouldn’t play much of a role. All design decisions we make always have practical reasons.
A website must be useful, but there should be something intriguing about it - a little quirk or feature that makes it stand out. Nothing should impede clarity or navigation, but if possible, a website should be fun. This isn’t always achievable, and we never push this aspect of the design to the forefront, but if a site can be made a bit magical, in addition to being practical, people like it more... and it works better.
