If you are not a professional designer and don’t want to look stupid

I have a few tips for you:

1. Stick to simple white design.
2. Use no more than 4 colors other than grey scale (white, black, grey). Actually 2 would be perfectly enough for text information intensive sites.
3. Design the site as if it’s a chapter in a print book.
4. Plan blank areas.
5. Be goal oriented and GET RID of EVERYTHING that’s not closely contributing to the goal. You achieve perfect by having nothing to peel off instead of the other way around.