Then I discovered that technology had left me behind. Other people were creating pages with frames and tables and great graphics, and mine was still simple, a handbill trying to compete in a world of Jumbotrons. A few weeks ago, I found a Web authoring tool that makes it easy, and I have started to play with redesigning some of my pages. A few of them already have new graphics and links. Downloadable backgrounds and icons and buttons are all very nice, but my pages have remained principally text.
Readers get bored with just words.
On Web pages, colorful backgrounds and icons and rules and animated gifs often have little or nothing to do with the subject matter. They are a distraction, drawing the reader away from the written material, not into it. It's sort of a Catch-22. You need visual elements to keep people reading, but visual elements can distract people from reading. The answer is visual elements that are directly related to the text.