How much does a style matter?

We're still using the default vbulletin style. Does anyone have any experience or insight as to how helpful a custom style, or at least some style other than the default, can bad as far as making people want to stay and participate?

From someone who visits forums I really do not stay around a forum with the default style as it shows that they do not really care about their website.

People are going to look for "authority" when making instant decisions about whether they should spend time on your site or not. Absolutely great content will help to overrule design mistakes.

However, when you have thousands of different thread pages delivering thousands of different visitors, your "first impression" is going to have measurable impact.

I see customer forums all the time, and I am able to make instant evaluations of how well they are doing & going to do in making cases based on what I see visually.

Not everyone is going to discriminate on whether or not you are using the default template as much as they might with other aspects like your logo/header and even quality of text.

When I visit sites with text only logos, amateur self-made logos, alignment issues, use of pure red (#FF0000) text for bold type, non-specific sub-forum descriptions, typos in forum descriptions, silly large admin signatures with huge images, sub-forums that are primary focused on idle chat about movies, games, downloads, etc. that are not directly related to the niche, etc... I see a site that has a lower than average potential to succeed.

Which of these two site would we likely see as more of an authority on a search like "Barack Obama's 63 questions":

Sam Donaldson examines Obama job application - Home Talk Entertainment Forums

Above site: Text only logo; basis template; off-theme.

Pres'ent-elect Obama irony alert: background checks - Sean Hannity Discussion

Above site: More professional logo; looks political; seems to be on-theme.

Validation errors, coding issues, excessive use of tables, bad C2C ratios, etc. will have some measurable impact on your SEO.

But after you get those hits to your site, it is just as important to figure out how to keep them there.