I got similar complaints about my designs, (which can be super frustrating..."i gave you a website...now you want it to be gorgeous too...sheesh").
So I started taking note of what I liked and didn't like about site designs. I made a delicious list and tagged the sites i liked with "webdesign-inspiration" if they have something that specifically stood out to me. Design is an art, and every artist learns by imitating. Find a feature you enjoy and try to duplicate it. Firebug is your friend.
But never get too attached. Just because a child spends hours on a macaroni picture doesn't mean everyone will love it. Listen to your users/friends and take their advice with a grain of salt. Re-design, is just part of design.
Find a few design blogs that you can relate to, i like css-tricks, and check them every once in a while. If you like sparten designs, read http://www.alistapart.com/ . A typography based webpage design takes more skill and patience to make look good than just throwing some blue web 2.0 buttons on your nav bar.
Keep a folder of screen shots of web designs you like and constantly ask yourself what makes you like them, and how can you incorporate those features in your site.
Finally, if you have any limitations (mine is colors) there are plenty of resources to help you out, just search for them. Such as http://www.colourlovers.com/ Good luck!
I forgot to add, the best way to focus on design for me is to use photoshop (or gimp...whatever) create a mockup and get that 'perfect' before you implement your CSS. It is much easier to think about design separately from the method of the design (css, html), that way you can quickly test out several designs on paper, and pick the best one to implement.
Actually, that would be really awesome if more sites did that. I usually ctrl+ = my browser to reduce eyestrain, and a lot of graphics look ugly that way.
So I started taking note of what I liked and didn't like about site designs. I made a delicious list and tagged the sites i liked with "webdesign-inspiration" if they have something that specifically stood out to me. Design is an art, and every artist learns by imitating. Find a feature you enjoy and try to duplicate it. Firebug is your friend.
But never get too attached. Just because a child spends hours on a macaroni picture doesn't mean everyone will love it. Listen to your users/friends and take their advice with a grain of salt. Re-design, is just part of design.
Find a few design blogs that you can relate to, i like css-tricks, and check them every once in a while. If you like sparten designs, read http://www.alistapart.com/ . A typography based webpage design takes more skill and patience to make look good than just throwing some blue web 2.0 buttons on your nav bar.
Keep a folder of screen shots of web designs you like and constantly ask yourself what makes you like them, and how can you incorporate those features in your site.
Finally, if you have any limitations (mine is colors) there are plenty of resources to help you out, just search for them. Such as http://www.colourlovers.com/ Good luck!