Thanks for that page, was an interesting read.

It, and most of it's links, actually make the point I've been fumbling towards: visually attractive pages.

So many of these product sales pages I've been reading, and these pages regarding "usability" of web sites......... are simply unattractive. They're not pleasant to look at. This is not to that they're not functional, they do present their information in a functionally sufficient manner. Just not an appealing one.

So, to rephrase my question in my original post.... Does it cause sales to suffer if the website selling products is visually unappealing? If so, why are so many of these sites selling these products not putting in the work to make them more aesthetically appealing? Far more than just the layout of text, but page coloring, images, layout, etc.