You can pay a computer artist or graphic designer a whole lot of money to put together your website and they will probably do a good job if they are skilled and experienced. You can also do it yourself and use one of several very difficult and expensive software programs to do a professional quality job. People wanting a pro looking website can also go to several sites that will help you to build your site for you for free using their free online template software. The choice is yours really and any way you do it you will end up with a working site.
Several major agencies offer website design online but unless your budget has thousands of dollars reserved for it, the cost can be high and prohibitive for most entrepreneurs. These agencies and top design firms usually have a highly paid and award winning staff of copywriters, computer graphics specialists, and art directors in-house to service clients. For complicated, high-end websites this is really the way to go, especially if you have a product or service that will generate very large revenues. You dont want to skimp on your website design online as it is one of the most important aspects of your marketing and consequently, your gross sales.
You can also hire freelance graphic designers to create your website design online. You need to make sure that they are actually artists and not just computer guys because the difference in artistic quality will be instantly discernible, if not to you, certainly to your clients. Freelance graphic designers in your area can be found with a simple online search. You need to see their portfolios and actually check out the links provided and go to the actual published websites they have designed online. You can save a lot of money over an agency by going this route and still get a terrific looking website design online.
The other way is to sign up with an online website hosting company like www.godaddy.com or www.register.com or even yahoo small business. They all have free online software and templates that you can use to create your own awesome looking site. Some of these sites are very simple but you can buy additional packages that make them as complex as you want. The free sites are very simple usually but effective. These are great when you are building pay-per-click or blog sites. You usually get four or five pages free but you may need to pay for a Shopping Cart feature or other features like chat forums, flash animations, etc.
You can also buy expensive and hard to use software like Dreamweaver but it is not the best route for website design online for most lay people with no art background. Going with the free services detailed above can save you time and lots of money if done right.