No, not the “crips vs. bloods” debate. Nor the “Arsenal vs. Real” one. The one at work where one guy wants a triangle that points right (feng shui!) and another one wants a circle that spirals inwards toward the first letter of your company name. And, oh yeah, someone has an Aunt who is “creative.” Help!

If you’re going to be selling retail-over-the-web in a super competitive arena like fashion then you should spend a lot of time on your look, the shapes of your icons, etc, etc.

Otherwise, I would argue, once you hit a minimal level of quality then you’re done. My prime example of this is Amazon. A sprawling pile of ugly UI. Next up is GoDaddy. Enough said.

Do I think that REI’s site is prettier than LL Bean’s? Yes. So what. I’m not sure it changes anyone’s buying habits.

Social sites? If my dog looked like reddit I’d shave his behind and take him for walks backward. 8M visitors a month? Obviously ugly isn’t important. I think propeller.com looks like it fell through a time warp from 2001. And they just put it up!

The best way to save your time and avoid the logo/color hassle is to first realize that if you were to stackrank what is important about your website, worlds-best-graphic-design would be at the bottom of the list. Or near there.

So, once you’ve decided to avoid spending a $10K and (what is worse) a thousand hours arguing with everyone about logo shape and size, I suggest that you get on over to google and type in “logo design” and pick someone who will give you something decent for $100. You don’t have to marry it: “ok” is ok. (Hint, if their site is ugly to you, don’t buy a logo from them.)

Then, once you’ve got something that takes your fancy, go back to google and type in “Joomla template design” (or whatever) and find someone who will take a basic template (free or paid - I see little quality difference, frankly) and match the colors and give you some basic navigation icons in similar shapes and colors. This should cost less than $200.

So, there you go, a week elapsed time and $300 and you have a decent looking website ready to hold your navigation, content, and product.

If you really want to save money, reverse the order: find a free template you like and tell the graphics designer to match the color. I think it works better the other way, but, then, $200 is not such a big deal to me. YMMV.

If your minions are really upset by this, try to get them to focus on navigation issues, or tone of contact, or something that is actually customer affecting.