Ask HN: How important is UI/UX design in side-hustle project?

Hi, everyone. Recently I've been building a website that you can simply think of as 500px and Reddit r/photocritique combined.

As of now, I've done building core backend APIs for it, and to be frank, I find it pretty time-consuming and a bit exhausting to do frontend.

How much should this concern me? Do things like button paddings, inner shadows, round borders, and choice between #d9d9d9 and #ffffff matter?