This piece below does a good job at expressing the importance of aesthetics when working up a Website. Standards are certainly important, but so are the way it grabs the user, too.

Palettes
For most people, colour is something taken for granted. It is all around us. Yet, when we come to use colour, in paintings, in design, in our furnishings and clothes we often make mistakes because we don’t understand what is going on.
Some people will say that this colour goes with that colour and that “blue and green should never be seen.” They will even try to make up complex tables and formulae for combining colours in pleasing ways. I’m not going to do that!

The Power of Colour
We perceive colour through receptors at the back of our eyes. They translate the different wavelengths of light reflected from surfaces into distinctive stimuli that our brain converts into red, green and blue and other colours. So, the eye sees the light and the brain interprets it and identifies the colours.
But it does more than just identify. It makes certain judgements based upon basic human instincts, and on other learned information…. Source: Web Page Design For Designers

Tags: human, palettes, instincts, receptors