This all sounds like you’re making it very high stakes early on. I would slow down and strategize first. Wait on the website and start building out your social media channels instead. This will help you find out who exactly your target audience is. Focus on creating a community that will eventually become customers. This will give you actual data to take to a brand designer who can develop all of things you are currently struggling with. Hire a professional photographer, THEN go to a web designer with your brand guidelines and photos ready to go. Although as some mentioned above, Shopify is relatively easy and if you have brand guidelines you could do this yourself.

But for now I would just start my business on social media. You can sell on there for now and the community can grow with you. This helps them feel like part of your brand and then when your website launches they will celebrate with you! Right now you’re creating a website but it sounds like there may not be any traffic once it’s complete.