I lead a mid-sized services business that needs to develop a new web
site. I want to learn about current, best-practices for site
development and maintenance.

General scope: The purpose of this site is to aid in marketing our
services. It's not an e-commerce site (we don't intend to sell
anything online). We expect the site to contain approximately 20 pages
include only basic interactivity (e.g. sign-up form for newsletter and
an information request form). It's important that we achieve optimal
search engine performance and have a means to track activity. It's
also important that we can easily update copy, add resources (like
links to white papers, podcasts, other web sites, news releases,
etc.), and add 'ad boxes' highlighting special offers and new
developments. Finally, since our business is marketing related, it's
important to us to present a clean, modern design. Our budget for this
project is $10,000,including the copywriting and graphic design.

Our resources: We've retained a copywriter and have written most of
the content. We have a relationship with an advertising agency with
excellent graphic design talent (not yet retained for this project).
We have an R&D department with a small team of software engineers (who
I'd prefer not spend too much time on building a web site).

Ideal solution: In my mind (and I'm no expert on web design!), I'd
like to select a a 'web site builder' application (a CMS solution?)
and find a firm that hosts it (an ASP model) and also helps us make it
work (a service piece). I'd work with our ad agency or another
designer to create a template(s), including color schemes, menu
options and page layout (or maybe we should buy a pre-designed
template?). Our copywriter would provide the copy. Then, someone else
would put these pieces together and publish and host the site. Our
marketing department would be provided with simple tools/training to
maintain the site (adding an removing content as required) and monitor
performance.

Bottom line; I'm trying to create a professional web site that we own
and control (as opposed to hiring an expensive agency to do
everything) without having to invest in technology and the specialized
resources to do everything inhouse.

Questions:

1. Is this a sound strategy for approaching the development of a
mid-size business web site?

2. What are some of the top tools/ASPs/Service providers we should consider?