When designing a website, your choice of colours, fonts, graphics and page layout should present a visual theme that matches your content. Ask yourself what kind of impression you want to give to your readers when they arrive at your home page. Hosting company, joyent has a strong visual theme.

Here are three ways to build a strong visual theme,

Create an Identity - Choose one or two colours and one or two fonts to give your web design a ‘look and feel’, but be consistent in their use throughout the site. For example, you could use a sans serif font for headers (Helvetica) and a serif font for body text (times new roman).

Navigation should be in the same place on each page, unless you intentionally want the page to look different. And only use graphics to support your message. Ask yourself what value the image adds to the design. Don’t just use them to decorate the site. Pageflakes has a simple, unmistakable message.

Use a grid - An invisible grid organises your page into rows and columns, so organises your content into related sections or blocks. The BBC has a clear grid structure to their webpages. Align your text and graphics to the grid. Invisible, or visible, a grid provides consistency, structure and gives your page a professional look.

White space - This is the web designers killer technique. It makes a big difference to a design without the visitor ever realising how it’s been used. Use white space deliberately so it clearly separates your content. It will make your content much easier to read and should be an integral part of the design. Notice how effectively plaxo uses whitespace in their homepage design.

Using all of these techniques will give your web design a strong visual theme and impress your visitors with a professional looking, credible website.