20 years ago when the web was still new and special, the buz was for things that were flashy, roared around with lights and did clever things. Basically we are over that stuff now. Sure we have the bandwidth to deliver it, and we can watch movies, an videos, play music. listen the question time in the house, etc etc. What we realised was that we were calling it the information age and yet there was very little information being presented. The rise of the content management systems underline the focus on content delivery. The purpose of the design is to be the servant of the content.
The current design fashions are retreating from imagery and using words, (search engines are better at reading words that looking at pictures). Pictures help, explain the text, hight the content, and make the content easier to understand. They are important, however words are very important.
Of course people skim read, so headings and shorter paragraphs will help them.
This focus on content means it needs to reliable, accurate and up to date. You should be doing something on your website every week, or at least twice a month.