There are several steps involved in creating a web site for your business.
Will it serve a purpose? Can you afford it? Do your competitors have a web site? It is becoming an expectation with customers that any legitimate business will have some kind of a web site.
What should you call your web site? Check your web browser for possible names. If it is taken you will see that web site. Otherwise you will probably see a site trying to sell you the name. The name of your site should be similar to your business name.
You may decide against buying a domain name. You can still have a web site but it would be a subsite. For example your site would be www.yourcompanyname.tripod.com instead of www.yourcompanyname.com. Several companies including tripod, yahoo, verizon, and comcast allow you to have subsites. Some provide this service along with your internet connection and others provide subsites but insert banner ads at the top of your web page.
If you decide to buy your domain name just go to www.register.com or another domain registrar. The cost is usually $35 per year, but can be less if you also buy hosting services from the same company.
Once you have bought your domain name then you need to find a host for your site. The costs vary widely. For a small, simple site, the cost should be around $20 per month. Look for a host that provides a few levels of pricing. If you want to expand later to include PHP, MySQL, CGI bins, Guest Books, Counters, etc., you can upgrade later.
Decide whether to design the site yourself or pay someone else to do it. If you do it yourself you can use one of the pre packaged templates that the hosting companies give you. The resulting web pages are often horrible but it is the cheapest option. You could do it yourself by purchasing Front Page or Dream Weaver. The costs are $200 and $600 respectively. You will get a much better looking site if you use these. The down side is the cost and the fact that they do take a considerable amount of time to learn. Finally, you could hire someone to do the design for you.
NOOOOO... The biggest mistake is people jumping into designing the site as soon as they get their site hosted. There are many sites out there that are very poorly done for this reason.
Use Word or a Text Editor. Type a 3 or 4 page letter to a prospective customer. Tell them about your business, the history of the business, why someone should do business with you, why you are better than your competitors, questions that you are commonly asked, etc.
Now get together any graphics, images, pictures, etc. that you want included on your site. Review your other marketing materials for inspiration.
Now that you know what to include, you can design your site. Determine how many pages you will need. Determine what content should go on what page. Fine tune the wording and be consistent with your message.
At this point you can hand everything off to a web designer or you can try to put it together yourself.
Make sure everything looks they way you want it to. Check out the site on several computers with several different browsers. Have friends and family check it out.
Once everything is perfect, upload all the html files and images to the hosting company.
Add your web address to your stationary and business cards. Submit your site to search engines.
Every once in a while, change some content or add new images.