The most challenging aspect of building a website for a jewelry store would be the design. I have seen many people waste their time trying to figure out the best design for their website. Months of wasted time. Technology and website usefulness changes with every season; yes every 3 months. If you start designing you website today with one concept in mind you will find yourself out of date if it takes more than 3 months to launch the site.
Don't get wrapped up in the design aspect. Ask your website designer to suggest pre-made templates that can we tweaked, or go online and search for "jewelry website templates" to find your own. Just pick one and move on. In 6 seasons you will need to change it anyway.
The second challenging aspect with creating a website is the technology you build your website with. Do not become frustrated in what language your website is using. It should not matter to you if your website is in .NET, PHP, WebDNA, ColdFusion, Perl, ASP... the "tech" is unimportant. Just find something that will create an unforgettable interactive experience and your website visitors will turn into loyal customers. When interviewing your website programmer, make sure they are going to give you a Content Management System (CMS) so you can edit the website on your own. Also make sure that they are going to train you to use that CMS. The CMS should come with some built in with features for customer interaction. Before you are locked into the suggested CMS you should review it's features and determine if they will be useful. If your programmer can't qualify why something is useful then you need to find another programmer or investigate your competition and figure it out for yourself.
Design is only important insomuch as to give your customers an ease of use experience. Technology that drives the site is unimportant, just find something that you feel is easy to use, yet gives you the tools needed to create what your customers will perceive as a unique customer experience.
