I recommend the Non-Designer's Design Book as well. However, there are a few little hacks that seemed to work well for some sites I had to put up.

1. A nice compelling photograph is a little easy on the eye and seems to make up for a lack of content on the front page.

2. Use sIFR (http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/sifr/) to add fantastic typography to your site, and make it more visually appealing.

3. Using wordpress as a frontend for your website (even if you don't have a weblog) allows you to swap in one of thousands of fantastic themes.

Whenever a friend asks me to put together a website, I just ask him/her to pick a theme, and host wordpress with static pages. It's a lot more easier to maintain and has more choices as far as visual content is concerned.

[edit: formatting]