How to Plan a Website Project
Eight guides covering the decisions a website project asks of you, in the order they actually arrive. Start at the top if you are at the beginning, or jump to the one you are stuck on.
Where to start
Most website projects go wrong before anyone writes code. They go wrong at the point where a budget was set without knowing what the work involves, or a developer was hired before anyone defined what they were being hired to build. By the time the problem is visible it is expensive, because it is structural.
The order below is not editorial. It is the order the decisions genuinely depend on each other: you cannot sensibly choose between a freelancer and an agency until you know the scope, and you cannot scope the work until you know what the site has to do. Each guide ends where the next one begins.
Every figure in these guides is US-market pricing, stated as a range. The ranges are wide because the market is, and narrowing them would be inventing a precision that would cost you money to trust.
Read in this order
8 guides, about 69 minutes in total.
How Much Does a Website Cost in 2026? A Complete Price Breakdown
Settles the budget question first, because every decision after this one is constrained by it — including which of the guides below still apply to you.
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How Much Does an Ecommerce Website Cost in 2026?
Read this instead of the one above if you are selling online. Store pricing has a second number: the platform and transaction fees charged on every order, for the life of the store.
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How Long Does It Take to Build a Website?
Tells you whether your launch date is realistic, and which parts of the delay will be caused by you rather than by the developer.
Read the guide
Website Checklist: 12 Essential Elements Every Site Needs
Turns a vague brief into a specific one. This is the list you hand to whoever quotes, and the reason three quotes become comparable.
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Web Designer vs Web Developer: What's the Difference (And Who Do You Need)?
Decides which role you are actually hiring. Getting this wrong is why some projects arrive with a beautiful site nobody can update, or a working one nobody wants to use.
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Freelancer vs Agency: Who Should Actually Build Your Website?
Decides the engagement model, once you know the scope and the role. The right answer depends on your capacity to manage the project, not only on price.
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How to Hire a Web Developer: 15 Questions, 10 Red Flags and a 90-Second Test
How to shortlist and vet candidates, including the portfolio test that removes most of the field in about ninety seconds each.
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Website Design Contract: 12 Clauses You Must Include Before Signing
The last decision before money changes hands: what the agreement has to say about ownership, payment and what happens when something goes wrong.
Read the guide
When you are ready to brief it
If you work through all eight you will have a written brief, a realistic budget and timeline, a shortlist, and a clear view of what the contract needs to say. That is the point at which quotes become comparable and a project becomes predictable.
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