Web design – the skill of visually presenting the content that is delivered to a visitor to your website, in an appealing, and pleasing way that aids in the sites usability – again, in the pursuit of increased traffic and/or exposure resulting in (generally) sales (of some form or another).
During the design phase I use the following online tools
Mockingbird
Mockingbird is an online tool that makes it easy to create, link together, preview, and share mockups (or wireframes) of your website or application.
Kuler
Kuler is a web-hosted application for generating color themes that can inspire any project. No matter what you’re creating, with Kuler you can experiment quickly with color variations and browse thousands of themes from the Kuler community.
Once the layout (or wireframe) has been signed off, along with an appropriate colour scheme, we then proceed with the development phase.
I use Right Signature to the approval/sign-off process.