Jul 10, 2025·8 min
Modern Website Design for Non‑Designers: Sections, Spacing & Fonts
Learn practical 2025 website design basics—how to structure sections, use spacing, and pick readable fonts—without needing design training.
Learn practical 2025 website design basics—how to structure sections, use spacing, and pick readable fonts—without needing design training.
“Modern” doesn’t mean trendy animations or a totally unique look. In 2025, modern website design is mostly about clarity, speed, readability, and consistency—so visitors can understand what you offer and what to do next, quickly.
A modern site makes the important things obvious:
If someone lands on your homepage and has to “figure it out,” the design isn’t modern—it’s just confusing.
You don’t need artistic instincts to make a site look professional. You need a simple system you can repeat:
This approach beats “designing each page from scratch,” which often leads to mismatched fonts, uneven padding, and pages that feel random.
Modern sites tend to share a few practical patterns:
The takeaway: you can look polished without being a designer. Modern design is less about decoration—and more about making good decisions, repeatably.
Before you think about layout, colors, or fonts, decide what the page is for. Most “messy” pages aren’t messy because of design—they’re messy because they’re trying to do five jobs at once.
Choose a single primary action you want a visitor to take. Common examples:
You can still support secondary actions (like “learn more”), but they shouldn’t compete with the main goal. A quick test: if someone only reads the headline and the main button, would they understand what to do next?
Open a blank document and write the page structure in plain text. Keep it simple. You’re aiming for clarity, not cleverness.
A basic outline that works for many small business pages:
If you’re building a product page, swap “How it works” for “What’s included.” If it’s a service page, add “What you’ll get” and “Typical timeline.”
Most people scan top-to-bottom and (in English) left-to-right. Put the highest-value information first: what it is, who it’s for, and why it matters. Save deeper detail for later sections.
A simple rule: one main message per section. If a section has two different points, split it. This makes the page easier to read—and later, much easier to design.
If you’re not a designer (or you’re short on time), it helps to start with a consistent set of sections and components instead of improvising.
Tools like Koder.ai can help here: you can describe your page in chat (“hero + benefits + testimonials + FAQ + CTA”), generate a working React-based layout, and then iterate on spacing, typography, and copy—without losing consistency. If you need more control later, you can export the source code and continue in a traditional workflow.
When your goal and outline are clear, your design choices become obvious: every section earns its place, and your main button stops getting lost.
Visual hierarchy is simply the order your page is “read” at a glance—what people notice first, second, and third. If everything looks equally important, visitors have to work harder to figure out what to do next (and many won’t).
Most people scan before they commit. They look for:
You can control this with a few simple levers: size (bigger feels more important), placement (top and left get attention first in English), contrast (stronger color or darker text stands out), and spacing (more space around something makes it feel “primary”).
A page that reads well is usually a page that scans well.
Use one strong headline at the top of a section, then break supporting points into subheadings and short paragraphs. Keep paragraphs to 2–4 lines where possible, and avoid packing multiple ideas into one block.
If you have a key sentence—like a promise, guarantee, or differentiator—give it breathing room. One line with extra spacing often gets more attention than a paragraph with bold words sprinkled throughout.
Don’t hide reassurance at the bottom. Put proof right where someone might hesitate.
For example:
This is hierarchy in action: you’re answering questions at the moment they appear.
Everything is the same weight. If headings are similar sizes, buttons look the same, and every section is equally dense, nothing stands out.
Long blocks of text. Even great writing becomes invisible when it looks like a wall. Break it up with subheads, spacing, and shorter paragraphs.
Too many “primary” actions. If every button is bright and loud, none of them are. Pick one main action per section and make the rest quieter.
Most modern pages are built from a small set of repeatable sections. You don’t need to invent new ones—you need to choose the few that help a visitor understand, trust, and act.
Hero: The first screen. State what you do, who it’s for, and the main benefit. Add one clear primary button.
Features / Benefits: Explain what you offer (features) and why it matters (benefits). Keep each item short and skimmable.
Social proof: Reviews, testimonials, client logos, case study highlights, or numbers (e.g., “Trusted by 2,000 teams”). This reduces “Can I trust you?” doubt.
FAQ: Answer the objections people are already thinking: pricing, timeline, support, refunds, compatibility, delivery areas.
Footer: The “everything else” area: contact, address, important links, legal, social profiles. It’s also a trust signal.
Hero → Quick benefits → Social proof → Details (how it works / what’s included) → FAQ → Final call-to-action → Footer.
For services, swap “how it works” with “process” (Step 1, Step 2, Step 3). For products, add “what’s in the box” or “specs” after proof.
Add a section only if it adds clarity (explains something essential) or reduces doubt (answers a fear or objection). If it doesn’t do either, it’s usually noise.
A quick test: if you removed the section, would someone be more confused—or less convinced? If not, cut it.
Aim for one promise, one proof, one action per section.
Example: A “Fast setup” section makes one claim (“Launch in a day”), backs it up (short explanation or mini testimonial), then offers one next step (“See setup guide” or “Start free”). This keeps the page feeling calm, not crowded.
A “grid” isn’t a complicated design tool—it’s just an invisible set of guide lines that helps you line things up. When elements share the same left and right edges, your page feels calm and intentional. When edges drift, it feels messy even if you can’t explain why.
Columns are simply vertical lanes that content can sit in. Many websites use a 12-column grid behind the scenes because it divides nicely (1/2, 1/3, 2/3, etc.). You don’t need to do math—you just need consistency: choose a structure and keep using it.
Alignment is the biggest “free upgrade” you can give your design. If your headings, text blocks, buttons, and images share the same starting edge, the page instantly looks cleaner.
For most non-designers, these two patterns cover almost everything:
If you’re unsure, default to one column. You can still add interest with spacing, headings, and a few well-placed visuals.
Very wide paragraphs are tiring because your eyes have to travel too far. Put a cap on the width of your main text area—roughly 60–80 characters per line is a solid target.
In practice, that often means keeping the content container around 600–750px wide for body text on desktop, while allowing full-width backgrounds (or a wider content area) when you want a section to feel bigger.
A few issues make pages feel off even when the colors and fonts are fine:
Pick a small set of layout rules, then repeat them. Repetition is what makes a site feel designed, not assembled.
Spacing is the “silent design tool” that makes a simple site feel intentional. Good white space doesn’t mean empty or wasted space—it means giving your content room to breathe so people can scan, understand, and click.
Think of an element as a framed picture:
A quick mental shortcut: padding = comfort inside, margin = distance outside.
Consistency matters more than “perfect” numbers. Pick a scale and reuse it everywhere, like:
4 / 8 / 16 / 32 / 64 (pixels)
Use 4–8 for small gaps (icon-to-text), 16 for normal spacing (paragraphs), 32 for bigger separation (between blocks), and 64 for major section breaks.
Add space:
A common mistake is adding too much space inside one component, then not enough between components—everything starts to feel uneven.
Do a 30-second scan:
When in doubt, adjust spacing in one-step increments on your scale. That alone can make a beginner site look polished.
Good typography is mostly about comfort. If people can read your content easily, your site instantly feels more polished—no fancy tricks required.
Start with the font you’ll use for paragraphs. This is where visitors spend the most time, and it needs to look clear at small sizes.
Aim for a body text size around 16–18px for most sites. If the font looks cramped or “thin” at that size, choose a different one. Many clean, simple sans-serifs work well for beginners, but the best choice is the one that stays readable on a phone.
You don’t need ten heading styles. Set a small, repeatable system:
A practical starting point is: H1 36–48px, H2 28–32px, H3 20–24px, Body 16–18px, Small 12–14px. Adjust by feel, but keep the steps consistent.
Two quick rules make paragraphs easier to read:
Keep an eye out for these:
If you simplify to one solid body font, a clear scale, and comfortable spacing, your typography will look “designed” even if you’re not a designer.
Fonts can make a site feel confident and clear—or messy and hard to read. The trick is to stop treating fonts like decoration and start treating them like a simple system.
If you want an easy default: use one font for headings and one font for body text.
If you don’t want to think about pairing at all, use one good font everywhere and create contrast with size, spacing, and weight.
For non-designers, it’s hard to go wrong with modern sans-serifs. They’re usually clean on screens, flexible across devices, and work for most industries (services, SaaS, personal sites, portfolios, local businesses).
A reliable approach is:
Don’t judge a font from a single word like “Hello.” Test it with the stuff your website actually uses:
If the font looks good in headlines but struggles in paragraphs, keep it for headings only.
A “professional” look often comes from restraint, not variety. Try this simple limit:
Too many weights (Light, Regular, Medium, Semibold, Bold, Black) can make your site feel inconsistent because every section ends up with slightly different emphasis.
If you remember one rule: pick a small set of font choices and repeat them consistently across pages.
Color is most useful when it helps people move through your page. If everything is colorful, nothing stands out—and visitors hesitate.
Treat color like a highlighter pen: you use it on the parts that matter most.
A simple check: if you remove color and the page becomes confusing, your layout needs clearer hierarchy. If you remove color and it still works, you’re using color in the best way.
Choose one primary action color for your main call-to-action (CTA)—for example “Get a quote,” “Book a call,” or “Start free.” Then apply it consistently:
Consistency reduces cognitive load: people learn what’s clickable in seconds. When every section invents a new button style, visitors have to re-learn the interface over and over.
Good contrast is less about “being bold” and more about being legible.
If you’re unsure, test quickly: view your page on a phone outdoors or turn your screen brightness down. Weak contrast shows up immediately.
Too many accent colors: If you have three “primary” colors, you have none. Keep accent colors limited, and assign each a job (primary action, success, warning).
Low-contrast gray text: Light gray body text may look “modern,” but it often becomes unreadable. Use gray for metadata (captions, timestamps), not paragraphs.
When color is restrained and contrast is strong, your content feels clearer—and your design instantly looks more professional.
If you only do one “designer” thing, make your interface repeat itself on purpose. A small set of reusable components—buttons, cards, form fields, badges—makes a site feel calm and intentional even when the content changes.
Start with 4–6 basics you can reuse everywhere:
The goal isn’t variety—it’s predictability.
Pick a few “defaults” and stick to them:
When these details match, your site feels cohesive without extra decoration.
Use icons when they speed up scanning (search, menu, download) or reinforce meaning (warning, success). Avoid icons when the label needs explanation anyway. “Contact” or “Solutions” is usually clearer as text; if you use an icon, keep the word next to it.
Open your key pages and look for mismatches:
Fixing these small inconsistencies often makes a bigger difference than adding new design elements.
A site can look “finished” on a laptop and still feel frustrating on a phone. Responsive design isn’t about creating a second website—it’s about letting your layout adapt so the same content stays clear, readable, and easy to use.
Before you worry about fancy layout, decide what must be visible before scrolling on a phone:
If those three are hard to find, the mobile experience will feel broken no matter how nice the desktop version looks.
On mobile, long lines and cramped sections are the usual problems.
Use slightly larger body text (often 16–18px) and a comfortable line height. Reduce “side-by-side” layouts: two or three columns on desktop should usually stack into one column on mobile.
For spacing, aim for fewer giant gaps, but don’t squeeze everything. Consistent padding inside cards and sections makes the page feel intentional.
Touch needs bigger targets than a mouse.
Small fixes here often improve conversions more than a full visual redesign.
Accessibility isn’t just “nice to have.” It usually makes your site clearer, calmer, and easier to use for everyone—especially on small screens, in bright light, or when someone is tired and skimming.
Start with the basics: body text that’s comfortably sized, has enough line height, and sits on a background with strong contrast. If people have to squint, they’ll leave.
Structure matters just as much. Use headings in order so both humans and screen readers can understand the page:
Avoid “fake headings” made by just bolding and enlarging text—real heading levels help navigation and scanning.
If an image explains something (a product photo, a diagram, an icon that carries meaning), add alt text that describes the purpose, not every detail. If an image is purely decorative, it should have empty alt text so it doesn’t create noise.
Buttons and links should tell people what happens next. “Click here” and unlabeled icons are easy to miss or misunderstand.
Good:
Not great:
Before you publish, do this quick pass:
If you want to speed up the build after you’ve nailed the outline and checklist, you can prototype the page in Koder.ai from a chat prompt, iterate quickly, and then export the code when you’re ready to ship—without sacrificing the consistency that makes a design feel “modern.”
In 2025, “modern” mostly means clarity, speed, readability, and consistency.
A modern site quickly answers:
Start by choosing one primary goal per page (buy, book, subscribe, contact).
Then do a quick test: if someone only reads the headline + main button, can they tell what happens next? If not, simplify until the main action is obvious.
Write a plain-text outline before touching fonts or colors.
A reliable structure is:
This makes design decisions easier because every section has a job.
Visual hierarchy is the order people notice things at a glance.
You control it with:
Place proof near the decision point, not buried at the bottom.
Examples:
Use repeatable section types:
Add a section only if it or . If removing it wouldn’t confuse anyone, it’s probably noise.
Alignment is the fastest “free upgrade.” Use an invisible grid by keeping consistent left/right edges.
Two safe patterns cover most needs:
Avoid 4+ tiny columns—especially because they collapse awkwardly on mobile.
Set a max text width so lines aren’t exhausting to read.
Aim for roughly:
You can still use full-width backgrounds or images while keeping paragraphs comfortably narrow.
Pick a simple spacing scale and use it everywhere, such as 4 / 8 / 16 / 32 / 64 (px).
Quick guide:
Adjust spacing in one-step increments to avoid random, messy-looking gaps.
Keep typography simple:
Also avoid low contrast (like light gray body text on white), which is a common readability killer.
If everything looks equally important, visitors have to work harder—and many leave.