When you create your own website you can look like a big, well-established operation. Just because you aren't a professional web designer, you can still create a professional-looking website. With the tools available on the web, even a beginner can look like a professional

Here are some things to consider before you sit down at your computer and begin creating your site.

---What is your website's name? This may seem like the easiest part of web design, but what you name your site can be one of the biggest decisions you make. Your website's name should be easy to remember, have something to do with your business, and be fairly simple. To determine whether someone else has already used the name you've come up with, go to any domain search site and you'll instantly know whether the name you want is available.

---What do you want your website to look like? You want it to look good, don't you? It's time to cruise the net. Find websites that appeal to you. What do they have in common? Do you want your site casual or corporate? Pick and choose the things you like about certain websites and try to incorporate them into your website. Pick fonts that are easy to read, and pick layouts that are simple and clean. A cluttered site screams unprofessional.

---What will it say? It won't do much good to begin creating your website if you don't know exactly what you want to put on it. Have you thought about the number of pages you want and what they will look like? Do you want a picture of your product on your homepage? Or a picture of yourself? Do you want the ability to have a chat room? Do you want customers to be able to purchase merchandise directly from your site? Will you want your customers to be able to use credit cards or a shopping cart? These are all questions you have to answer before you sit down to create your website.

Now you are ready to go looking for all those neat free website building sites. Some free website building sites also offer free hosting. Unless you want the most basic of websites, it might be best to steer clear of these sites. Some come with banner ads that you cannot control, or a website address that includes that site's domain name. Some do not offer the ability to have chat rooms or use shopping carts.

Instead look for the free website development sites which allow you to develop a website and then charge a nominal web hosting fee. These websites are pretty customizable, down to text and pictures and are simple to put together; anyone with limited computer knowledge can likely use these sites.

Most sites are fairly simple to use and you do not need to know htlm language to build them. One of the complaints of these free websites is that Google will not recognize them. But some website-building sites offer search engine submission---for a fee. However, you can do this yourself for free at Google and any other search engine where you want your website listed.