You may be considering building a new website or re-designing your current site. When done properly, planning for a new website requires that you make a number of decisions.

One of the most fundamental questions to ask yourself is: how much website do you need? Of course, the answer will be affected in part by your needs, but just as equally by your budget.

Here are the factors that typically influence the cost of a website:

a. Uniqueness of design: will a template do the trick or do you require a custom-built site?
b. Page count: most basic sites are 5-7 pages long; however, e-commerce sites and other sites with heavy content can be signficiantly more
c. Blog: adding a blog costs extra, but having freshly-updated content on your site can be a huge benefit
d. Content Management System (CMS): allows you to easily update the site’s content and images once it is live
e. E-commerce: do you plan to sell products on your site?
f. Image gallery: static images usually do not cost more, but you may want a slideshow or image gallery
g. Flash: the use of Flash goes in and out of popularity; still, some sites do use it and it usually adds to the cost of developing your site

Consider which of these items you will want or need for your new website; then, plan accordingly.