I think the main problem is the green color chosen for the website. It gives a "matrix" vibe and makes people think it's for hackers and stuff like that. It's okay to have green accents but I think most of the color should be replaced by something else. White color should be more permanent.

Also I noticed that the performance on firefox Android is pretty poor.

How about the instance selection wizard (click “join a server” on the homepage), which lets you select topics and languages to select instances. Do the current options make sense?

I do think the "topic"/"language" selection screens make sense overall.

Also what i noticed is that on http://join-lemmy.org/ when you select certain topics (like "Art/literature" and "german speaking"), then the resulting instance list is empty. It might be wise to show at least one instance for every search query, even if it's not 100% fit. For example, at least display one generic-topic instance for your language or one english-language instance for your topic.

One user told me they got to https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/01-getting-started.html when they tried to sign up instead of to https://join-lemmy.org/ so maybe it would be good to have an easily-visible link there that brings you to the main landing page?

Also it would be neat if instance admins could automatically set a certain set of "subscribed instances/communities" and "blocked instances/communities" for each new user that signs up on their instance. That would make it easier for instances to give themselves a certain "flavor" so users have an easier time finding interesting stuff.

On the new UI i'm not sure what is the difference between "country" and "language" (btw "Country" isn't translated in the french version, the translation would be "Pays"). What I can guess is that "country" is the country where the server are hosted, but I'm far from sure with the current wording (and I'm a technical person, most peoples would definitively not guess it). If that is the case, I would rename it with "hosted in" or something similar.

Concerning the language selection I also find it disturbing to not be able to select multiple language (in my case I speak both french and english, so I would want to select both but not "all language" as I don't speak german for example). If you allow multiple language selection then instances speaking both language should be displayed before the ones where they speak only one of the language (I don't know if instances with multiple language exists right now ? but we could imagine it in the future).