Design is entirely personal preference. Therefore information-first is a good bet if you want to absorb as large of a demographic as possible. Keep the layout and page design simple. Load times should be fast or nearly instant for that sleek professional feel.
Minimalist modern design, sans any kind of framework (like Bootstrap for example) is the name of the game.
Fast, "simple" and minimalist are hard things to do right.
People spend their lives studying things like typography and design. There's a lot of value there and its NOT entirely a matter of taste. Tossing out a framework means you're wading out into hit or miss territory and creating a lot more work for yourself.
Knuth/Norvig/Kernigan can easily get away with naked HTML (although I see that Knuth has really gone bonkers and added a short stanza of css).
Normal folks who dare create a website will fare better if they stand on some shoulders for their visual styling.
Minimalist modern design, sans any kind of framework (like Bootstrap for example) is the name of the game.