What do you think is a stronger influencer: writing, or a visual work of art? If you could only choose one medium to impact society would you write, or would you create something? Do you have a stronger reaction to reading about an issue, or seeing that same issue represented visually?
Keeping this in mind, does your same mentality carry over to the web? Are the websites you value the most, the ones with the best content, or the ones most visually appealing? Is user-experience only about design, or does it have something to do with the written content as well? Can you have one without the other?
Update: I found a great post by Will Price regarding Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion.