1. decide on a budget, and how much you can adjust your budget or your needs1
2. look for a few designers to compare (search and ask friends)2
3. get an idea of their pricing for your needs3
4. pick at least 2 or 3 with pricing in your range4
5. look at some of the sites they have done5
6. look at the source code of a couple of pages they did6
7. find out a little about each person or company7
8. find out what their terms are8
9. if you don't have at least 2 possibilities at this point, go back to step29
10. contact the possible people or businesses and ask some questions10
11. choose one and get your work started

Easy, isn't it?
If you don't want, or don't have the time, to look for a few to compare, you could take a shortcut and hope you get lucky. Look for one designer, see if their prices sound good to you, do as much or as little investigating/interrogating as you want, then have them do the work.

1 Decide BEFORE contacting anyone what your spending range will be. If you don't, pushy sales people can convince you to spend more than you planned. You can get a whole website done cheap if you want it done by someone who does design in their spare time, or you can pay an arm and a leg if you want it done by a company that will have someone giving their full attention to you for the duration of the design. We believe we are a good balance for those who aren't rich, but want to see their needs fulfilled.
2 Ask friends, do searches, even contact of owners of websites you like to ask who did theirs, if they don't have a link on the site somewhere. If you have time, you should compare a few.
3 Any decent web designer should have pricing, or at least an idea, on their site somewhere. Some are hard to find, and some will only give you a price if you contact them. That either means they think their price will scare people away, or they want to make sure they have the chance to "sell".
4 If you have time, you really should find at least 2 or 3 possible designers to choose from. That way you have a better chance of ending up with one that is to your satisfaction.
5 See what kind of design work they do. Do their sites look good? Do they have variety, or are all sites very similar? See if the site works on different browsers. (use browsershots.org if you only have 1 browser) Many designers make their site work in their preferred browser, and don't care how it looks in others, or don't think there's a difference.
6 Even if you know nothing about web design, just take a quick look at the source code, right-click and view source, and see if it looks neatly organized. You might want someone else, or even yourself, to make changes later. If you know a bit about html, see if it contains a lot of gibberish. That can be a sign of making the site with a poor quality web design program.
7 Do a search on the person or company name and see what others say. Contact some of their website owners and see what they have to say. Do a whois on their domain name to get an idea how long they have been in business. A recently registered domain isn't necessarily bad, but some claim to have been doing design for years, yet have no evidence of being around for more than months.
8 Make sure they have terms and the terms are satisfactory to you. If you can't find any terms, they probably aren't a real business, and you may run into trouble.
9 If you're down to only one option, you're probably fine, but it'll depend on whether the next step makes or breaks your decision.
10 By now you probably have at least one question for them. Are they easy to contact? Do they have a phone number in case you have an emergency? Email them and see if you hear back within a few hours, or the next day. The next day means either it's a side job, or they are too busy to take on another job. Either way, their work may be slower than you want.

These methods cover most web design work. There are other methods, but most of them will fit into one of these categories.
see notes and disclaimers below

1. Start with premade templates
• Pre-made template systems come in a large variety. Some are easy to use. Some are easy to customize. Some have a nice variety of templates to start from. In general, the more control you want over the final product, the more complicated it gets. Most pre-made template systems make it relatively easy to do the linking between pages, (set up a menu).
• require little, if any, html knowledge
• very quick and easy way to put a site together
• very little time and work needed for graphics
• not unique - even with adjustments, there will be other sites that will obviously have been made by the same program - unique enough for most
• harder to "personalize" the look and feel
• usually ends up with code that's not very easy to manually edit later
• This is the simplest option for those who want to do their own design; or for those who claim to be web designers and can design a site practically for free.
2. WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) program
• You insert text and graphics where you want, add functions or special effects if the program has those options, create links to go between pages, then "publish" your new site. Most WYSIWYG programs make it relatively easy to do the linking between pages, (set up a menu).
• require little, if any, html knowledge
• fairly quick and easy way to put a site together
• unique because you're designing the site as you go
• you need to either create, or get, graphics for the site
• you need to figure out how to use the program
• usually ends up with code that's not very easy to manually edit later
• This is an easy option for those who want to do their own design with their own style; or for those who claim to be web designers and can design a site for a very low price.
3. conversion from another program ("save as" option)
• Some programs, like Microsoft Word, let you put together a web page in the program you're used to using, then when done, use a "save as", "create", or similar option to save the file as a web page.
• require little, if any, html knowledge
• fairly quick and easy way to put a site together
• unique because you're designing the site as you go
• you need to either create, or get, graphics for the site
• generally a bit more complicated setting up your menu and page links
• almost always ends up with code that's a real mess with a lot of unnecessary coding, and is not very easy to manually edit later
• This is the simplest option for those who are used to using a program that has this option. It works fine for doing your own site at first, but in my, (webmaster's), opinion, is not a very professional approach. A true "web designer" does not do it this way.
4. raw hand coding using plain text editors
• When you right-click on a web page and "view source", you will see what looks like garble unless you know html. Hand coding is when people make the web page by manually writing all that code. With plain text editors, like notepad, every character you see in the code is typed in manually.
• definitely unique, unless you're copying code from another site
• easy to make future changes or updates because you understand what each piece of the code does
• best way to really learn and understand html code (and others like php, javascript, perl, etc.)
• very slow process
• hard to picture just what you're putting together, until you get to really know what you're doing
• you need to either create, or get, graphics for the site, and of course, do the menu system with linking between pages
• This is very, almost too, professional - it's how I, (webmaster of this site), was doing sites when I started in 1999. A couple years later I started using advanced text editors, and now do most of my work that way.
5. hand coding using advanced text editors
• This is just like using a plain text editor, but makes the tedious task of typing go a little quicker. It also helps reduce code errors.
• definitely unique, unless you're copying code from another site
• easy to make future changes or updates because you understand what each piece of the code does
• quicker than plain text because much of the code is inserted either automatically, or with "hot keys" or "code snippets"
• takes longer than the first 3 options, most of the time
• hard to picture just what you're putting together, until you get to really know what you're doing
• you need to either create, or get, graphics for the site, and of course, do the menu system with linking between pages
• In my, (webmaster's), opinion, this is the most professional method of designing a website, or at least doing the final coding. Sometimes I use one of the first 2 methods to get an initial look for a site, then finish the site with my favorite text editor, Edit+, with occasional help from a couple other text editors that have different features. (CuteHTML - discontinued and NoteTabPro)

Notes and disclaimers:
Some template builder systems and WYSIWYG editors are free, while some can cost several hundred dollars.
Any opinions expressed above are strictly that, opinions. Others are free to agree or disagree.
Premier Website Solutions is free to use whatever method they prefer, unless explicitly agreed upon for a particular job. We do most of our work using advanced text editors, but do, from time to time, use a WYSIWYG program, or a template, to put together the site look. When we do this, we ALWAYS go in to the raw code and clean it up to make it more browser friendly, and easier to update or modify later.

Here are some of the things we can do for you:

• Help you put a website together.
• Put a site together for you from rough plans, or from scratch.
• Manage the site for you, or put it up and let you take over.
• Help you make improvements to an existing site.
• Help you repair an existing site if something isn't working right.
• Register a domain name for you.
• Help you find a suitable domain name.
• Provide you with web hosting for your site.
• Get you going with E-commerce for online shopping.
• We can even help you with business startup, logos, banners, stationary, and more.