Once you have the idea for your site, the idea has to be developed; this determines whether the idea is worth pursuing.

The first thing to do is to research the market for your idea, use search engines to search for competitors, review their sites, their traffic and the services they offer. If you find you would be entering a market with many sites, each competing for market share it probable isn’t worth pursuing unless you have revolutionary concepts (or a big bank roll!).

If you find there is little or manageable competition, research how users would currently perform the tasks your site is offering. You should ensure the user would benefit (either in terms of money or time). If it makes it harder or more expensive to perform a task, it probably isn’t worth pursuing.

Conduct a feasibility study to ensure your idea is possible. If you do not have the relevant expertise to perform this, speak to someone who does ensuring you trust them or you have taken sufficient measures to ensure they cannot steal your idea. This is a crucial step, many people have come up with ideas for sites, later to find parts of the functionality is not feasible, consequently they have then stripped functionality from the site causing it to not meet the initial requirements.