Id be heading in the Macromedia direction.....

Ive built a web site before and used a combination of Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash MX, and Director. To be honest i only used cracked trial versions or demos of each program but they were superb. Quite easy to use and using all of them produced really good effects.

Theres alot of things to consider when making a website though as im sure u'll find out, but i found it quite straight forward when using the above.