I always like to ask why somone wants a website so that I get an adea of the real reason as sometimes the initial motivation for getting one designed is not what I expected. It is of course in many people's minds that they would like to make money directly from the site. This is more involved than is often thought, as the full process and support mechanism for administering a site needs to have been thought about and the essential processes put in place. After the site is up and running it then needs to be promoted and marketed. This can be done through Search Engine Opimisation (SEO), advertising and traditional marketing techniques.

Some site are there to promote the company or service and not to deal with money transactions but the same criteria still apply.

The design can be done in several ways:

1. The client comes to me and I ask loads of questions and then come up with the idea and recommendations.
2. The client has ideas of their own which I advise on and implement.
3. The client has already designed the look of the site and I then put it in to html. 
4. The client comes to me with the job finished and ready to load onto the server.

I am happy to do any of these and am also happy to just point them in the right direction if they just need a little help.

At the moment I use different methods of producing a site depending on the requirements.

1. Straight html with ssi and css with perhaps some Perl scripts.
2. A content management system (CMS) such as Joomla. This site uses Joomla.
3. An application framework such as Catalyst.
4. A mixture of different disciplines.

Whatever the requirement I will advise you as to the best way to achieve what you are aiming for.