If he wants a cheap effective tool for website design, I recommend Namo WebEditor. It has everything on one package that's necessary to build a simple (or not so simple) website, including some halfway decent templates.
The best feature (IMO) is the WebCanvas image editor package. This supports vector graphics with a really good range of fills/blends/styles which produced good looking graphics. These can then be rendered as GIF/JPEG/PNG.
The advantage is that you can create page elements which look good and be able to edit them quickly if necessary. I find this very useful for designing buttons for example where the text on the buttons changes.
Other than that, as others have said keep it simple and preferably look at some good websites to see how they are laid out before starting.