When someone is having a website designed it can be a bit of a constant battle between the website own on how the site should look compared to the programmers view on functionality.
The truth is a good website can have both and it is an important quality to have both of these elements to make it work. From the end users point of view, they do not want to go on to a website that looks amazing but crashes everytime they want to do something or they find it very hard to navigate round. On the other hand research has shown that if a visitor goes to a site that is unappealing to the eye very often they will leave.
This is all about finding a happy medium and ensuring that you test the site thoroughly prior to it going live to iron out any issues that may be there.