Is web design important for SEO?

Silly question. If it didn't matter then neither would on-site metrics (or conversion rates). Who here thinks a high bounce rate is good for your rank? Raise your hand. Who here doesn't think time-on-page isn't something Google cares about? And this is to speak nothing of the impact that your site has on your conversion rates themselves. If you double your conversion rate then you could lose half your traffic and still make the same money. In some ways conversion rate is the MOST important on-site metric because it defines how much traffic (and rank) you need to stay afloat.

-ThopHayt

Colors not really.
Making it mobile-optimized with easy category navigation, and a sitemap, definitely yes.

Don't forget about speed too.

Its important for the visitors you gonna get using SEO
Design matters in different ways not just SEO

AlexPam said:

Panda is on-page (text) content filter. There is no direct correlation with web design and Google Panda penalties. But quality web design can boost your ranking. Definitely.

Click to expand...

Go and read about Google Panda
It check user experiance also i.e. bounce rate, internal backlinks etc

My opinion is:
Site to be minimal, responsive and easy to use, also with good response hosting, fast.
Is important for all, visitors, sro and all thing.

Apart from social signals and high quality links pointing to your website, going higher in the SERP would need minor indicators like your website's design factor, onpage factor, etc. It appears that Google is trying to be the authority when determining a good website design and a bad one - and it looks like they do know what are the factors that would influence that in their logic. And the recent importance placed by Google, would be mobile friendly website - it looks like mobile sites now has a little more edge in ranking for a certain keywords.

I feel web design is important for an seo.
if your web site design is user friendly then only the user shows some interest to spend on your website.It results in low bouncing rate.
If the bouncing rate is high then the user is not satisfied.
If your website is on commercial concept then the bouncing rate should be low.