Website developing questions

[vergilla]

We are jewelry and diamonds sellers and've been planning to built a website for a very long time now. We doing vry well on ebay but we want to explore other channels. Actually in the past few years we build 2 websites that were good for nothing .....we hired developers who promised us best websites in the world. Of course we didnt buy it (nest site in the world) but thouhgt we'd start somewhere. 6 motnhs later a site was done. I showed it to few people and ask them for their honest opinion and they told me they would never trust that site nor buy from it. So later on somebody recommended us someebody esle who said that the old site needs to be rebuilt. So few motnhs later the site was done but very slappy. It wasnt shapr, there was no crisp in it. (sorry for these terms:-)
We dont know much about webdeveloping and I guess thats why we were taken advantage of. My questions is (if anybody can help with few tips) where do we start, how do we looks for a right web developer, who is usually running websites? We want to build a webiste that will truly be amazing (something like ice.com, b2cjewels.com and others) but dont know where to start.
Any help will be greatly appriciated
thank you in Advance

[WebJoel]

craigslist.com, or *****.com is a place to start looking.

[MikeOS]

It's difficult to know what advice to give but one thing I would do is ask to see the developers work. Ask for live sites that the developer has claimed he/she built and then, when the developer has gone, contact the people running those sites and ask them if they know the person and if they did indeed build the site for them. Of course let them know that you are considering using that person which is why you are calling. Also ensure you call more than one of the sites to ensure he/she hasn't just given you sites he/she built for friends as they'll always be nice. Also it is important to know if the person built the entire site, if not then what parts did they work on.

Also before calling check the whois record of the web addresses you have been given as they could just be fake sites by the developer in order to create a portfolio, and again he/she may not have developed them entirely.