Website Inspiration
What makes a website feel expensive
People judge your business by your website in less time than it takes to read this sentence. That judgement isn't about how much you spent. It comes down to a few specific things.
Space
The clearest difference between a cheap-looking site and an expensive-looking one is how much empty room it's willing to leave.
Cramped pages feel like a market stall. Generous space feels like a gallery. It costs nothing and it's the first thing most people get wrong, because empty space feels like waste when you're the one paying for it.
Consistency
Two typefaces, not five. Three colours, not nine. The same corner rounding on everything. Buttons that all behave identically.
Nobody consciously notices consistency. Everybody feels inconsistency, and reads it as carelessness.
Real photographs
One honest photograph of your actual workshop, taken on a phone near a window, beats any stock image of models in a meeting room.
Stock photography quietly tells visitors there's nothing real to show. Your real premises, however modest, tells them the opposite.
Nobody has ever trusted a business more because of a stock photo. Plenty have trusted one less.
Restraint in movement
Good animation is almost invisible: things fade in gently as you scroll, buttons respond softly, transitions are unhurried.
Cheap animation announces itself: things spinning, bouncing, sliding in from every direction. If you notice the effect rather than the content, it's working against you.
Speed
A page that appears instantly feels well-made before anyone has read a word. A page that loads in pieces feels broken regardless of how it looks.
This is the one that actually takes engineering, and it's the one most people skip.