Website Review

I have recently started making enquiries about creating and maintaining my own web page.
A friend of mine put me in touch with a two web designers and was quoted from between £120 and £380 the assessment was automatic.
With web pages you get what you pay for.
That is not to say expensive is better or that being good looking is better than functional.
Each come with their own unique pro's and con's
I will compare and contrast 3 different websites, the first one I am going to look at is Benjamin Wachenje's online studio. http://www.benjaminwachenje.com/home.php
This website is brilliant, an 80's theme bedroom desk setup, using the same artistic style that defines much of Benjamin Wachenje's work.
Navigating through his various portfolio's and clearly labelled sections by using a roll over amstrad style joystick, bright and functional, with relevance to the artist and his work alike.
It is a fun place to be speaking in terms of online, in opposed to say the direct.gov website which is all very uniform and to the point and a chore to operate but also relevant to its task.
A website should be personal and have a streak of the owner throughout it especially one belonging to a creative mind.
Many leaves could be taken from this website's book in terms of design, personality and originality if that is way I feel to develop my website into
While researching for a previous post, I was looking for images and information regarding Noma Bar, the highly published illustrator so visited his webiste, which I must say, I had allowed myself to expect something mind blowing, and here it is http://nomabar.com/
Disappointed? yeah so was I. Nice imagery but unless I couldn't work out how to get beyond the contact details and everybody else did, its not a very exciting experience, there is however other web sites that do have galleries of his work, but I am concentrating on personal domain names not sections of other department store style websites.
One would expect Noma Bar to exhibit work on the website bearing his name, but to just have contact details, on a jpeg with albeit a nice image just seems slightly pretentious, and even though it contained contact details it made me he was more inaccessible.
If simple and efficient is the way I am compelled to take my own website then this, http://www.lizlomax.com/ would be an ideal example of simplicity meeting creativity but not to an excess.
Liz Lomax's website, is bright, clean, crisp and light hearted, made fun by the nature of her cheeky 3d artistic caricature sculptures of celebrities.
There is a feeling of welcome with this website, an excited eager feeling of 'come in and look around',
but with an air of gratitude, 'of thanks for visiting' when in contrast to Benjamin Wachenje's
site which leaves you feeling satisfied after play.
Fun and playful or simple and effective, both good choices I could see myself adopting for a website, I m not sure which maybe both?.
One thing is for sure, it wont be just my phone number, that what business cards are for.
I want my website to be an extension of my personality, something that stands out, its functional but not boring, I know what I wont do and that is set myself a budget as that instantly limits my options, plan and design then present the idea to a designer and then ask how much it would cost to bring that to life I understand money is a factor for many people and who knows what opportunities may come along because of owning my own web space,
An exciting prospect.