On the internet we are removed from visitors/customers/friends/family. To be trusted online, you have to knock down any barrier that visitors to your site may have. Your words on the page are one way to do it, but thats been done for 1000s of years through books. Your website is not a book. People want a relationship before they entrust you with their money.

That's why you have to give your words and your website character through your website's design. Videos are the best way to give a name, face and character to the company, but it can be dangerous if you build your company around one person or name. It can be powerful for the short term.

Look at Martha Stewart. She had a great short term business literally making billions off her name. During her legal struggles, her name became very negative and her company quickly removed it from their magazines and shows. The same way with Oprah, news shows with specific anchors, sports players and their collectables and on and on. The point is, don't build your company around one person or name.

So what now? If you think of your website design as your site's inflection or accent, you will make much better choices. If you have a website about muscle building and sports enhancement, using pastels and images of happy smiling people will change your inflection and people looking for those sorts of products won't be able to relate to you. I'm just guessing here.

If you want to build a relationship with your website, get into the conversation that is currently going on. The conversation for muscle building is already going on, if you have a decent product, you can jump in and add to that conversation at any point. First know what people are talking about. If the vitamin supplement you are trying to push has been discredited because it also causes cancer, jumping into the conversation that happened months or years ago won't work.

Make sure that your copywriting (your words on the page) and your inflection (your design) complement each other and are using current language that add to the conversation and your website will get the trust of visitors and you'll meet whatever objective you have for your site. Simple as that.