Building a great looking website is a lot easier that building the Golden Gate bridge. Especially, if you select a content management system with a good themeing engine.
When you use a CMS as the foundation of your website, you need to select a user interface (UI) template for the site design. Most of the CMS platforms have bare bones theme templates that you can use as a starting point.
However, for most businesses the decision will come down to either hiring a designer or buying a quality template. If your budget is tight, consider purchasing a Drupal, WordPress or Joomla design template from Templatemonster.com or one of the other online template vendors for as little as $65.
A word of caution, installing and configuring an off-the-shelf template is more complex than described the sites hawking cheap templates.
If you decide to go with a designer, make sure they have experience creating templates for the CMS you plan on using. During the evaluation, be sure to ask the website designer the following questions:
If you want quality, expect to pay $10,000 for a basic custom website template design in a CMS. Moderately complex designs will run $10,000 to $40,000.
Want to learn more? Download our Ultimate Guide to Building B2B websites