Are you unhappy with the website you had designed by a friend or one you designed yourself? Does it look out of date? Maybe you are not comparing it with the right sites, or it is just too amateurish.
That would not be a surprise because there are millions of websites out there and they have all sorts of purposes. The thing is that you are probably not looking at corporate website design. Many of the sites you see, like tiscali.co.uk, are really news sites. News sites are filled with too much stuff and just put you off, and are no use for a business eite.
You see, marketing 101 states that you should not let prospects who come to your site be confused. You should point them at one message and make sure the message works. There are various solutions. One is to have a different website for each product type. Another is to make sure that if they search for ‘black shoes’ they go to a page about black shoes only. So don’t make the site too busy, and keep the message simple.
So if you know what you want where do you go for design? Of course, you could go to the design firm that does your brochure design. That might work, but they are probably better at brochures than websites. In fact they may know very little about website design. You are probably better going to a specialist website design firm, who may just be good at other design as well – but do it that way round.