Creating a website, from planning to delivery, is like making a movie. And like movie, designer is the director here. Designer is the person who knows out and out about the website’s target audience, budget/timeline for creation, what to sell, what are the weak and strong points of the product / service that are going to be sold etc. Same with movie making, director is the person who is the captain of the ship. He is the best person who has the big picture in mind. No one else has that.
Now as the director is decided, who is the hero of a website? Answer is: the product or service that will be sold through the website. We often forget it and give much more importance to other elements / sections of the website like layout, colors, background, text content etc. These are all important but with context to the the product / service to be sold. When creating a website keep this in mind. Keep the hero at the center of attraction and let other stuffs revolve around it.
Imagine a James Bond movie (which is hero centric) is coming up and you know about many things like the starcasts, basic storyline, locations etc, but who is playing Bond. How interested will you be? So Bond (the hero) needs to be promoted in right manner first and then comes the rest. Same with websites, product / service first, everything else should simply follow that!