[Sean S]

Honestly, I believe that it's 50-50, I see many people say that flashy or cool design is not as important anymore, but I say that it does. like Tony made a good point with sites having a head start, but if I was about to go and become active in a new site that didn't bother to do anything with it's design, I wouldn't even bother revisiting it.

that's my own personal referrence, that I think that if the webmaster/admin is lazy enough to not care about the uniqueness of the looks of his/her website, than it's more than likely that he/she doesn't care about it's content as well. It may not make sense but that is how I look at different websites.

It also has to do with the category your site belongs too. I visit websites that targets designers/artists, therefore most of them are very graphical and yet very useful content wise, including cgtalk or gfxartist for example.