6 Simple Design Tips That Make Any Website Look 10x Better
There are six very simple design techniques that you can use to build websites that not only convert, but also cause someone to stop scrolling and go, "Hey, that's actually awesome." The best part is you can apply them right away on any site you are working on, without needing a ton of experience or a full degree in web design.
This is the playbook I keep coming back to whether I am working on a landing page, a SaaS product site, or a portfolio. If you want the bigger picture on where modern interfaces are heading, the UI/UX design trends of 2026 post pairs nicely with this one.
Let's get into it.
Who this is for (and who it isn't)
These tips are a strong fit if you are:
- A designer or freelancer trying to push a portfolio past "fine" and into memorable
- A founder building a landing page, marketing site, or SaaS homepage
- An engineer who has been handed the website and needs it to not look like every other Bootstrap template
- Anyone using Webflow, Framer, Figma Sites, or a custom Next.js stack and wants a quick aesthetic upgrade
They are probably not for you if:
- You are running a 10,000-page enterprise site (information architecture matters more there)
- You are publishing a high-volume editorial site where speed of authoring beats visual polish
- You have never picked a font in your life and are looking for the "one trick" version of design (nothing here is that, sorry)
If you are in the first group, keep reading. Each tip below has the what, the why, real examples to study, and a quick action you can take today.
The six tips at a glance
| Tip | What it does | Time to apply |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Typography past level one | Sets the personality of the entire page | 30 minutes |
| 2. A "star of the show" | Earns enough attention for visitors to actually read | 1 to 2 hours |
| 3. Visual rhyming | Makes the whole site feel like one universe | 30 to 60 minutes |
| 4. Depth | Bridges the gap between flat browser and real world | 20 to 40 minutes |
| 5. Opacity for hierarchy | Tells the eye what to read first, second, third | 10 minutes |
| 6. Try something totally different | Pushes you out of "first idea" into "best idea" | 1 to 3 hours |
1. Fix your typography (past level one)
You have probably heard the advice, "only use one font on a website." I have said it too. It is not bad advice, it is just level one of typography.
For websites, there are two more levels worth knowing.
| Level | What it is | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Level 1: One font | A single typeface for everything | Beginners, super minimal brands |
| Level 2: Super families | One family that ships with a sans, serif, and sometimes mono, all designed to gel | Brand consistency without thinking too hard |
| Level 3: Font combos | Two or more families from different foundries, paired for contrast and personality | Sites that need to feel custom and memorable |
The trick that makes level 3 much easier is starting with what I call your anchor font. Most people will tell you to anchor everything around your body font. I do the opposite. I start with the headline.
Why? Because the headline is the first thing anyone reads, and the anchor should set the personality of the whole page. Modern. Technical. Warm. Editorial. Whatever the brand is, the headline should declare it. Once that is dialled in, every other font you add should feel like it came from the same world but adds enough contrast to keep things visually interesting.
Be careful not to pick fonts that are too similar. Georgia and Times New Roman are basically twins, and pairing them feels unintentional rather than considered. You want enough contrast that the eye notices, without making the page feel chaotic.
🔧 Free resources that make this easy
Fonts in Use: search your anchor font and see what other designers have paired it with in real projects.
Google Fonts: the largest free type library, full of pairing-friendly options like Inter, Geist, Instrument Serif, and Fraunces.
Vercel's Geist: a polished free sans plus mono super family that works as a level-2 default if you do not want to think about it.
Quick example. If your anchor is Instrument Serif (free on Google Fonts, beautifully condensed, looks great large), Fonts in Use will surface combos like Geist, Mona Sans, or Anton. Geist works particularly well because its character widths are much more open than Instrument Serif, which gives you the contrast you want without fighting the headline.
Action you can take today: open your homepage, identify your anchor font, then test one alternate pairing for the body or subheadings. Even one swap usually unlocks the page.
2. Pick a "star of the show"
You have probably also heard that boring, plain sites are better for business. As a designer, you are not trying to impress other designers or win awards. That is fair advice, and it is half right.
But a website is not just a checkout machine. It is often the first and only meeting someone has with your brand. If it does not make them feel something, you do not get remembered, and a forgettable site does not convert.
Every website that genuinely captures attention has one element you notice almost immediately. It might be a font, an image, an animation, or a 3D object. I call this the star of the show. It is one thing that earns enough of the visitor's attention that they actually stick around to read the rest of the page.
Here is where most designers go wrong: picking a star just because it looks cool.
Your star should be a seed, in the same way author Brandon Sanderson talks about seeding a novel. Pick one idea connected to the story of the business, then let the rest of the design grow around it. If the product turns messy operations data into clean dashboards, the star can abstractly reference that idea, like vertical lines or a gradient that hints at a chart, without literally putting a chart on the homepage.
Real examples to study:
- Linear uses a glowing, animated product surface as its star. It signals "fast, native, real software" without saying it.
- Arc leans on a single playful 3D object that is impossible to ignore on first scroll.
- Stripe pairs a soft animated gradient with crisp product mockups, giving every page a single visual anchor.
If you are designing for a SaaS product specifically, how to design a SaaS product (the right way) goes deeper into picking visual metaphors that match what the product actually does.
Action you can take today: finish the sentence "this site is about ___ ." Then sketch three visual ideas that abstractly reference that one word. The strongest of those is your star candidate.
3. Use visual rhyming to tie it all together
Once your typography and your star are in place, the next move is making the whole page feel like it lives in one universe. The technique for that is visual rhyming.
Visual rhyming is when you take small details from one element and repeat them, in different ways, across the rest of the site. Think of it less like copy-pasting a shape, and more like remixing the same melody in different keys.
It does not have to be shapes. It can be:
- A gradient from the hero showing up faintly in a card background
- A texture from the star reused on a button hover state
- A curve from the logo echoed in an arrow next to a link
- A specific corner radius repeated across cards, inputs, and modals
A great example: a site whose logo has a key-shape motif. As you scroll, you start seeing key shapes appear in cards, in dividers, in the background of testimonials. Nothing screams "look at me," but the whole page feels deeply intentional.
Look at how Pitch reuses a single rounded-rectangle motif across cards, illustrations, and even hover states. Or how Vercel bounces the triangle from its logo through icons, decorative accents, and section dividers. Same trick, different decade.
Action you can take today: pick one shape from your logo or your star, and find three other places on the page where it can quietly repeat. A bullet icon. A divider. A masking shape behind an image. Done well, this is the difference between a page that "looks fine" and a page that feels designed.
4. Add depth so the site feels tangible
A lot of websites stand out now because you feel like you are walking into them, not just scrolling up and down. The trick behind that feeling is depth.
Depth is anything that bridges the gap between a flat browser window and the real world. A few easy ways to add it:
- A subtle noise or grain texture on the main background
- Soft shadows that make cards feel like they sit slightly above the page
- A 3D element or rendered object that the user can almost reach out and touch
- Glass or frosted effects on overlays, navigation, and floating cards
- Parallax on the hero so the star drifts at a slightly different rate than the text
The key word is subtle. Depth should never compete with the star of the show. Think of it like real-world detail: you notice it, but it is not asking for attention. A little noise on the hero, a soft glass effect on the nav, and the page already feels a hundred times more physical.
Apple is the masterclass here, every product page uses scroll-driven depth without ever feeling busy. Linear and Notion both use frosted glass surfaces and layered shadows to make their navigation and floating cards feel premium.
🛠️ Tools that make depth easy
The Noise & Texture plugin inside Figma, search the Figma Community for it. Adds film grain and paper textures without bouncing into Photoshop.
Unsplash for free hero images. Search "gradient", "abstract", or "studio light" to find pieces that read as depth without feeling like stock photography.
The 7 Best AI Design Tools in 2026 covers a few that generate depth-friendly assets in seconds.
Action you can take today: add 4 to 8 percent noise to your hero background and a soft 24px shadow to your top-most cards. Two changes, big difference.
5. Use opacity to create hierarchy
Early on in my design career I went deep on other companies' design systems. Nerdy, I know, but useful. One thing that stuck with me from Google's Material Design is that they do not put all of their text at 100% opacity.
They literally spell it out:
- 87% opacity for high-emphasis text (the important stuff)
- 60% opacity for medium-emphasis text
- Lower again for disabled or supporting text
There is some debate about exactly why those numbers, but the idea behind it is gold: opacity is one of the cheapest, most overlooked tools you have for hierarchy. Your eye instantly knows what to read first, what to skim, and what to ignore unless you really need it.
You can steal this directly. Keep the headline at 100%. Drop the subheading to around 70%. Push captions and small print lower again. Side by side, the difference looks subtle in isolation but the page suddenly reads as intentional instead of flat.
This pairs beautifully with tip 1. Strong type plus thoughtful opacity is most of "good hierarchy" in a single move, and it is one of the moves we lean on most heavily inside the UX design process for startups.
Action you can take today: open your Figma file, select every non-headline piece of text, and drop opacity to 70%. Adjust from there, but start by giving the page a hierarchy at all.
6. Force yourself to try something totally different
This last one is the one most designers will not do, and it is the one that makes the biggest difference in the long run.
I picked it up when I was producing music. The best producers will hear an artist's first take and then ask them to speed it up a lot, slow it way down, sing an octave higher, change the key, anything to break out of the original idea. Not because the first take was wrong, but because you cannot find the best version of a song by tweaking the first version harder.
Web design works the same way.
After your first draft, do not just polish it. Try a totally different cut:
- A light mode if you started in dark
- A different layout, even one you do not love on paper
- A completely different "star of the show"
- A different typographic personality
- A radically different colour palette using a tool like Coolors
I once shipped a site after going through 12 different versions of the same star. Version one would have been fine. Version eight was the keeper. You only get to version eight if you are willing to throw work away.
If you are setting up a project for a client and want to bake this kind of exploration in from day one, how to plan and prepare for a successful design project walks through how I scope this without blowing up the timeline.
Action you can take today: duplicate your current homepage frame in Figma. Set yourself a 45-minute timer. Build a version that is intentionally different, not better. You can always come back to the original.
5 websites that nail all six (and what to steal)
Bookmark these. The next time you are stuck, open them side by side and ask which of the six tips you can steal.
| Site | What to steal |
|---|---|
| Linear | Glass nav, animated product as star, opacity-driven hierarchy across the entire page. |
| Vercel | Triangle motif visually rhymed everywhere. Tight typography with the Geist super family. |
| Stripe | Animated gradient as the star, paired with quietly disciplined type and dense product mocks. |
| Arc | One singular 3D star. Brave colour. A masterclass in tip 6, multiple bold variants. |
| Notion | Depth via soft shadows and layered cards, plus playful illustrated rhyming throughout. |
If you want a steady stream of references like this, Mobbin, Cosmos, Awwwards, and Land-book are the four I check most often.
Common mistakes that quietly kill websites
Even with all six tips on a sticky note, these are the traps I see most often:
- Pairing fonts that are too similar. Georgia and Times New Roman, Inter and Helvetica. The eye reads it as a mistake. Pair for contrast, not vibe overlap.
- Picking a star that has nothing to do with the brand. A cool 3D shape that does not connect to the product is just decoration. Decoration is forgettable.
- Treating visual rhyming as repetition. Slapping the same shape five times is not rhyming, it is wallpaper. Vary scale, position, and use.
- Letting depth compete with the star. If your noise texture, glass nav, and 3D hero are all shouting, nothing wins. Pick one loud layer and keep the rest quiet.
- Skipping the "totally different" step. First-take design is rarely your best work. The cost of one extra exploration is small. The upside is enormous.
Save this checklist
✅ Run any homepage against this list before shipping
Have I picked an anchor font that matches the brand personality?
Does my type pairing have real contrast (not "Times vs Georgia")?
Is there one clear star of the show that connects to the brand?
Have I rhymed at least one element from the star or logo three times across the page?
Is there subtle depth (noise, shadow, glass) that does not compete with the star?
Have I dropped non-headline text to 70% opacity for hierarchy?
Have I built at least one totally different version before locking the design?
Frequently asked questions
How many fonts should I use on a website?
One to three. One font is fine for minimal brands. Two is the sweet spot for most sites: an anchor for headlines and a complementary body font. Three only if you have a strong reason, like a separate accent font for quotes or numerics.
How do I find good font pairings without being a typographer?
Use Fonts in Use and search your anchor font. You will see real-world projects that paired it well. Cross-reference free options on Google Fonts, and you can usually nail a pairing in under 20 minutes.
Do I need to be a designer to apply these tips?
No. Each tip is a single decision, not a skill. Pick a font. Pick one star. Repeat one shape. Lower opacity on one block of text. The skill builds as you make the decisions, not before.
What is the cheapest single change that makes a website look better?
Dropping every piece of non-headline text to 70% opacity. It takes 30 seconds in Figma or in CSS, and it instantly creates the hierarchy that 90% of "okay" sites are missing.
How is visual rhyming different from just being consistent?
Consistency is using the same button style on every page. Rhyming is taking one detail (a curve, a texture, a colour) from a key element and remixing it elsewhere in subtler ways. Consistency keeps a site clean. Rhyming makes it memorable.
What tools do you actually use for this?
Mostly Figma for design, the Noise & Texture plugin from the Figma Community for grain and paper textures, Unsplash for free imagery, and Coolors for fast palette experiments. Once the design is locked, the top design handoff tools in 2026 covers the build-side stack I lean on.
Tips will only take you so far
Use these six and almost any website you touch is going to look noticeably better.
But they are still tips. If you want to be the kind of designer who can walk into any project and know exactly what to do, you have to move past tactics and build the underlying skill set: research, hierarchy, type systems, layout, motion, and the design process itself. That is the longer game, and it is the one that compounds.
If you are running a project and want help, I take on a small number of design engagements each month. You can book a free consultation and we can talk through your site.
Keep Reading
- UI/UX Design Trends of 2026: the bigger picture on where modern interfaces are going, so your "tips" sit on top of a real point of view.
- The UX Design Process for Startups: From Zero to Launch: how to apply these visual moves inside an actual product process instead of one-off pages.
- How to Design a SaaS Product (The Right Way): if your "star of the show" is a dashboard, this one goes deeper on getting that surface right.
- 7 Best AI Design Tools in 2026 (Ranked and Tested): the tools I actually use to move faster between concept and high-fidelity.
- Top Design Handoff Tools in 2026: once your visual moves are dialled in, this is how you get them built without watering them down.
- Pitch Deck Design Tips for Founders: the same six ideas, re-applied to the deck you will pitch the site with.
About the Author
Sanjay Tarani is the Head of Design at DoxAI, helping entrepreneurs and business owners build scalable, user-focused digital products. Sanjay has led design system initiatives behind 50+ successful projects and has been recognised with the Website Wizard award. Sanjay brings experience from high-growth startup environments, including learning within the Startmate ecosystem, and shares practical insights on design, product strategy, and building profitable apps. Connect with Sanjay on LinkedIn.
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