My father and I have a company that does HVAC as well as metal fabrication. Here's our current website: http://waltermork.com/ Pops is 77YO and backing out of the business. I'm in the process of shutting down the HVAC department so that I can take over fab full time, and now is the time to do a new website.
The old one was made by my cousin who has since moved to New Zealand and no longer does that. I've looked at three options so far for the new website:
-The cheap guy: About $1,200 for a custom site not using templates. I actually started working with this guy, and he was pretty responsive, but found myself writing all the copy, because what his "team" put together was trite and generic. That's currently on hold.
-The high-end gal: Roughly $1,500 per page. Ouch! I'm not a Mercedes dealer.
-DIY: There are some pretty impressive templates out there that I could populate fairly quickly with pictures and text. Once the site was live I could continue to hone it.
Concerns:
-Effectiveness. Given that our business is pretty specialized, I don't know that we need to do something too fancy or strategic. In fact, looking at my competitors, the fancy ones are kinda pretentious and annoying. Arguably my most successful competitor has a site that looks like it was designed in 1990. But then, I want to increase my sales volume to make up for the lost HVAC revenue, so it can't just be a lump of crud. It also has to be work on all platforms, and be formatted properly.
-Changeability. All templates seem to be setup for blog posts, but what if I want to add larger features such as price pages?
-If I DIY - which could also be fun and interesting, is it the best use of my time?
So it sounds like you're looking for someone to write all the content as well as develop the layouts and graphics etc? How often will changes be made to the site and who do you expect to be doing it?
I used to do web development (well I guess I still do, I slapped together my current business site in about 15 minutes) and I'm out of work right now so maybe I could do it, I have maybe handyman-level HVAC knowledge though.
Aside from an Anglefire website I hammered out when I was 19-years-old, I've exactly zero website experience. When I was asking the same question, I decided to use GoDaddy and attempted to hammer our a site of my own.
Here's how it looks: https://DniproExpress.com/
Using the template I selected, it was stupid levels of easy to get this far, but if I'm honest it's also very "amateur looking" to me (it might just be because I know I'm the one that made it). I had similar goals as you (not pretentious, throw it against the wall and hone it out as I go.... that sort of thing). Unfortunately I'm also trying to run 4-different social media accounts so the website kind of falls to the back burner a bit.
If time is not an issue, I might be able to make a quick video or something of what's involved, what templates I used, and how the editor works. I just need the weekend to get caught up on things first 
Going through this myself, just starting to put this together. Note that a lot of the text is kind of gibberish until I get things going, have been more focused on structure and things as I learn how to set up the site. I got the URL through Porkbun, hosted through A2, and everything I'm using is free so far. It's pretty easy to do if you have basic computer skills, though this is all static website with no logins, transaction capability, etc.
Paying someone else to do it does probably help keep things up to date and secure, though. And there is a bit of a learning curve, so it depends what your time is worth to you.
https://tunedconcepts.com/
Edited to say - what I started out with also was intended for blog posts, but there are wordpress addons that let you do more or less whatever you want. In this case I use an add on that I believe is called Astra.
Effectiveness has a lot more to do with the design, layout, and content than it does anything else. You have more control doing it yourself, but at the end of the day that content is up to you regardless of what path you take.
