A friend of mine that works from Microsoft the other day asked me about developing a website for him. I was surprised that he asked me but also flattered. He is very sharp and and very technical, but I guess building websites is still an art form. To be honest, I get asked the question a lot by friends thinking about starting a home based business, “Can you develop my website?”
Since the success of my youth football coaching blog at http://CoachParker.org, I recommend a WordPress blog for first time websites. Many times, a technical saavy business owner can operate a WordPress blog either hosted by Yahoo or another ISP or a free WordPress blog , hosted by WordPress. It beats paying web developers a few thousand dollars to develop a site, plus Google loves blogs. The Blog’s SEO is usualy above average right from the start.
The key to a successful website is not the design, but the content which must be readable by the Google search engine spider and others so your website will be indexed and found within the search results of Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask, AOL and others. As long as your design looks like a legitimate website, which most base blog templates do, content is the key to your success. Since blogs are very easy to update with content and are mostly text, blogs are almost perfect beginner websites.
I recommend a free blog at WordPress.com, choose a template that matches your needs, buy a domain and domain pointing and verify your site with Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Once your business takes off and you have a “real” web design budget, you then should consider upgrading your blog with a fancy design or adding a “corp” website to your blog. 
Good luck. If you cant figure it out, please contact me, and I’ll be glad to help.
