You may have particular features which you know you want, and in some cases (larger, more expensive sites only) these features may have to be programmed especially for your site. However in most cases, standard features can be assembled and tweaked for you to give the result you want.

Widely used features include: the ability for you to update the site yourself (with regular news items for example), an email contact form, a map of your location, online sales, user interaction through a forum, posting videos or other media, and a frequently asked questions (FAQ) area.

For almost all (except the very smallest) projects, we will recommend using a Content Management System (CMS). Don't worry if you don't know what that means -- explaining it would take a whole new article! The CMS we generally use is called Drupal.