Start with a professionally designed template.

For as low as $10 US, you can purchase a beautifully designed, professionally designed template for your web site from services like Template Monster. Template Monster has 1,000s of web templates to choose from and offer them in common formats such as html and Flash. If you want a unique look that no one else has, you can pay more to purchase exclusive rights to the template.

If you want an all in one system, Atomic Shops enables you to quickly build and update your own professional website, complete with hosting, 1500+ templates, email, 2000+ stock photos, newsletters, shopping cart, message boards, forms and much more. Very affordable at under $20 US per month INCLUDING hosting. And it even connects into eBay.

You can either edit these templates yourself using software we will talk about later in this guide, or you have your web designer edit them to add your own content. This will save a lot of time and expense.

An additional benefit is that you know exactly what you’re getting. Because web design is a creative process, you may not like the first few versions your designer comes up with. With 1,000s of templates to choose from, you will be able to get the look you want.

If you still want a custom look, you can use Template Monster to find out what you like and then have your web designer set up something similar.