Graphics quality can be a key factor in improving the appearance of your web site. One of the reasons that it's so important is that it is fairly subtle...one site just looks better than the other, and a lot of people won't recognize why.

Try to find a decent graphics package, such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Photo-Paint or Microsoft Image Composer (there are also various freeware, shareware, and demo packages around). One important requirement is that the software allows something called "anti-aliasing" of graphics. This removes the jaggies from diagonal lines, and makes images look smoother and more professional.

Once you have a good graphics package, you can create customized graphics to use with your site, which helps to keep your site design more coherent. Instead of searching the web for an icon, use a clip-art library to create your own. Instead of having a text heading at the top of a page, create the heading as a graphic using special fonts, colours, or effects such as shading.

If you have a special background colour or image, you can create graphics using that background colour, so that when they get anti-aliased, they are blended naturally into the right colour. This is a common professional technique, which, when combined with transparent .GIF's, helps to eliminate fuzzy borders around graphics, and makes graphics look like a seamless part of the design.