I believe we need to start by sitting down together and coming up with answers to the following questions:

1. What is the purpose of your site? What are your goals? Are you just providing information to your site visitors or are you trying to sell a service or a product? What do you want visitors to take away from your site?

2. Will the site be "static" or "dynamic?" A static site is often fine if you are just providing information that won't change often. If the information changes often or if you require visitor input to the information process or to purchase your service or product, then you will need a dynamic site with hooks into a database.

3. Who's your audience? For example, you would design a different look for your site for casual surfers with older browsers than you would for fellow web designers interested in the latest imagery or web display technologies.

The more completely and clearly we can nail down your requirements, the faster we can finish your site. This phase of web design usually entails several meetings, often depending on how fully you have defined your needs to yourself. It is often the most challenging phase of a Web site's development.

At the end of this phase, I should know what you are looking for in a web site and I'll be able to completely cost the effort for you.