Consequences are the most important thing by a mile. A little counter-intuitive, but everything about reality at this moment is a consequence of something, it is the actual content that matters to us. Defining the desirable consequence can be tricky. Happiness, or avoiding pain, or things like that are common but casual phrases. Maybe we can say a good consequence increases positive feelings or reduces negative ones. Using that as the reference for happiness, I tend to go to the old formation that best consequence is the one that leads to the most happiness for the most people for the most time. I also tend to think that though it is difficult to quantify with precision at this time, there's probably only so much happiness one person can experience, so there's a limit to how much can be gained out of one person's happiness.
Anyway, enough about defining a good consequence, and more about why I think it's more important. Actions matter because actions have different results, i.e. consequences. But suppose an action strictly reduced the happiness and increased unhappiness in the world relative to before it was done. How could that action possibly be considered good, regardless of what it was in and of itself? That's usually where intent comes in. The regardless of the result the action shows an intent. Well, first of all, an action doesn't definitely show us an intent, we just interpret one. If you think figuring out how whether or not someone is happy is hard, try figuring out exactly what someone's intentions are. But even if you could, intentions only have value because of how they relate to consequences. Because I see someone has a certain intention, I can make at least a rough prediction about what they might try to achieve, meaning I may guess what kind of actions they will take, and I might know what kind of consequences they have, and whether those are good or bad on the whole. It's just a rather fuzzy predictor of the future. It all winds back to the consequences.