My first recommendation is do not go the do-it-yourself route unless you cannot afford any other option. Even mediocre web designers  can put together a workable site for around $3,000 (you still need to screen them very carefully) - I myself know of a couple inexpensive "web designer" for low budget projects.If you have a background that encompasses graphic design, copywriting and are a serious computer hobbyist, you can probably put together an acceptable site. Otherwise, if you're budget is very small, try contacting a local college to find a teacher of graphic design or computer courses. The teacher may help you find a talented student who would love to design a basic web site inexpensively. 

Your site is your public face to the world. If it is poorly designed, visitors are likely to assume your company's product and service quality is also poor. So, my best advice is, if your web site will look amateurish, you're better off without a site. Okay, so that ends the lecture portion of today's class.

If you are going to put together your web site on your own, there are a number of very good web site building tools on the market. I have personally worked with several of them. My top pick for a beginner who knows a bit about graphic design is NetObjects Fusion. If you are more of the computer tinkerer, check out Allaire's Home Site. If your budget is absolutely next to nothing, try AOLPress. It is completely free, and while it is not at the same level as the other two programs I mentioned, it is a good beginner level WYSIWYG editor.

For clip art, I strongly recommend against the "royalty-free" web sites. Those are fine for personal fun pages, but the clip-art is often not truly royalty-free. You can find some great prices on some very high quality, pre-made web clip-art from Xoom. They also sell pre-made web page layout templates. If you are inexperienced or design-challenged, this is a great way to still pull of a professional looking site.

Xoom Web Site Templates

Web Clip Empire 250,000

Peter De Legge is an Internet Marketing Consultant and Developer with over 10 years of Marketing/Marketing Communications experience, primarily in the business to business arena. Prior to the advent of the commercial Internet, Mr. De Legge worked mostly with print advertising, direct mail, trade shows and collateral pieces. He presently lives in Chicago and handles both business to business and consumer Web sites. To learn more about his services, visit his Web site at http://www.businessmarketing.net. 

© Copyright 1999, Peter De Legge. All rights reserved.