dull & boring

It is a well-known fact that just plain text and default settings are just dull and boring. So why use them? HTML has many, many different tags and attributes that were created to make your page exciting and interesting, take advantage of this!

use some FONTS!

As mentioned above, plain text is just very boring to look at. Learn how to make text look better and appeal to your viewers. Use a different font too, as the default font generally gets quite boring. When you need to emphasize things, try making your text bigger, changing colors, changing faces, or styles. Make certain that you use a font that is easily readable, and widely distributed, so that almost everyone on the internet will have it.

now introducing...technocolor!

Colors are everything. Looking at the default colors on a webpage is a sure-fire way to loose the reader's attention. Make your page colorful, and use colors that contrast and go together well. Make your colors readable, so that they will show up well against your background. I recommend using soft pastel colors on a webpage, so it is easy to read text and see graphics. If people can't read the text, they will become bored and will most likely decide to go somewhere else.

plain text

The most often used way to liven up a webpage is using graphics. Great! Graphics can both serve a good purpose and give the reader something nice to look at. Instead of using just plain text for headers, links, etc. use some graphics. Don't take me wrong here though and put 50 animated GIFs on your page; use only enough graphics so the reader will still be interested in your actual content.

don't go past the limits!

Whatever you do, don't try to go crazy and put every single one of these things in your site. Keep it simple, don't use 100 different fonts, colors, and graphics! Keeping our attention is easy, try to add some comedy-relief or funny sayings somewhere in your page instead of just "another graphic file."