There's been many posts lately over on the JOS forums from new ISV's asking for opinions on their new websites. Most of the time these sites are bad. So listen up newbs here's your problem. You're fricking cheapskates!

You've spent all these hours building your application and now in the last mile you're getting cheap. Don't make this mistake, hire a professional designer. All the time you, a programmer, are wasting trying to be a designer is actually costing you money. You could be making your 1.0 better if you'd just spend the $500-$1000 and let someone else do your design.

Any "normal" person can spot a programmer designed website a mile away. You can usually tell because it's full of gray boxes. Programmers are scared of color so you'll find that a programmer designed site is full of gray and black since those are safe and don't clash with anything else.

Unfortunately, the normal people who are going to be buying your products like to feel they're buying from a professional organization. Slapped together programmer designed sites don't exactly inspire confidence.

Oh and asking a bunch of other programmers on a programmers forum if the design looks good probably isn't going to get you much great advice either since they're all in the same boat as you. So if you're serious about starting a company put aside $500 and find a decent designer to do your templates. I assure you that you'll find it to be money well spent.