What to prepare before ordering a website

Web projects do not stall on the design. They stall on content — on the “About us” copy nobody has time to write, on the photographs of the premises that keep getting put off, on the vector logo that cannot be found anywhere. The design is approved, the build is half done, and the project sits there for three months.

This article is the complete list of things to prepare before you start. If you have them gathered in the first week, a business website can launch in four or five weeks instead of three months. You can use the checklist at the end as it stands.

Contents

• Why web projects stall
• Company documents and details
• Content: what you write and what we write
• Images
• Logins
• Decisions to make up front
• What do I need in order to start a website
• What happens if you do not have everything yet

Why web projects stall

Three causes, in order of frequency.

1. Content. Writing is hard, it is never urgent, and it falls to someone who already has a job. It slips a week, then another.

2. Deferred decisions. “We’ll see as we go” is the most expensive sentence in a project. A deferred decision blocks the work downstream and, once taken late, requires redoing what was built in the meantime.

3. Too many decision-makers. When four people have a veto and none has the power to approve, every round of feedback produces contradictory requirements.

The first two are solved by the list below. The third is solved by one decision: agree at the outset who approves.

Company documents and details

These are the simplest to gather and, oddly, the ones most often missing at the end.

• The full legal name, exactly as it appears in the company documents.
• The company tax number.
• The trade register registration number.
• The registered office address, in full.
• The trading address, if it differs and if it matters to customers.
• Share capital, if you want it shown.
• Phone number, in the form you want it displayed.
• The email address the form messages go to.
• Opening hours, if applicable.
• Map coordinates — checked, not assumed.

Why it matters

Complete company details on the contact page are not bureaucracy: they are the simplest signal that the firm is real. The same details feed the structured data search engines read in order to identify the company as an entity. An error here propagates everywhere.

Check them against an official document, not from memory. Figures misremembered end up in print.

Content: what you write and what we write

What only you know

• What you actually do, in plain terms rather than presentation language.
• What the services are, and what customers call them.
• What customers ask most often before buying.
• Why the people who choose you choose you.
• Who you are compared with, and where you consider yourselves better.
• The company’s history, if there is anything relevant in it.
• Projects you are proud of, and what made each one special.

What a writer can do with that raw material

The structure of the pages, the headings, the phrasing, the short button labels, the descriptions for search engines, a consistent tone.

The three options

Option	What you supply	Duration	When it works
You write it all	the final copy	unpredictable	you have someone who genuinely writes
You supply the raw material	notes, a conversation, old material	1–2 weeks	most often
It is written from an interview	2 hours of your time	1–2 weeks	you have no time at all

The second option works best. You know the trade; the writer knows how to write for the web. A recorded two-hour conversation produces more usable material than three months of putting it off.

What to prepare, as a minimum

• A list of all the services and, for each, three to five sentences on what it involves.
• An honest paragraph about the company: when it started, how many people, what it does.
• Five to ten questions you get asked often, with the answers.
• Three to five projects for the portfolio, with context and outcome.
• The legal text, if you already have it from an adviser.

Images

The systematically underestimated part. Poor photographs undo good design.

What you need

Category	What exactly	Notes
Logo	vector file: .ai, .eps, .svg or .pdf	a PNG is not enough
Logo variants	on a light ground, on a dark ground, monochrome
Premises / workshop	5–10 frames, natural light	landscape, not portrait
Team	portraits, or a group photograph	optional, but it persuades
Products / work	3–5 frames per project	high resolution
Work in progress	people doing something real	the best kind of photograph

Rules for photographs taken on a phone

It can be done, if you observe four things:

1. Natural light, from a window, never against the light.
2. Landscape, not portrait. Websites are wide.
3. Maximum resolution, and do not send the images through messaging apps — those compress them and lose quality. Send them through a file transfer service or by email, as original files.
4. A tidy frame. A cluttered desk in the background shows.

What to avoid

• Generic stock photographs — people in suits shaking hands, glowing globes, charts going up. They make the site look like every other site.
• Screenshots used as product photographs.
• Images taken off the internet without a licence. That is a real legal problem, with real costs.
• Photographs with the photographer’s watermark still on them.

Fonts

If you use a commercial typeface in your identity, you need the web licence, which is separate from the print one. Check what you own beforehand, not after the build.

Logins

Worth gathering in advance, because finding them always takes longer than it seems.

• The domain — the registrar account, or at least confirmation that it is registered in your company’s name. See why that matters in How to choose a .ro domain.
• Hosting — the control panel login.
• The DNS zone — where it is managed, if that is somewhere other than the hosting.
• The current site — administrator access, if there is one.
• Google Analytics / Search Console — the existing accounts, not new ones.
• Google Business Profile — access to the business listing.
• Social networks — the accounts that will be linked from the site.
• Email — where it is hosted and who administers it.

The check nobody remembers

Open the registrar account and check whose name the domain is in. If it is in someone else’s — an old agency, a former associate — sort it out now, while the relationship is a good one.

Decisions to make up front

Every one deferred blocks something.

1. Who approves? One person, with the final say. They can consult whoever they like, but one person signs off.

2. What do you want to happen on the site? A call, a form, a booking, an order. Choose one as the main action. A site with five equal objectives has none.

3. How many languages? It is not a translation; it is a second complete structure, with its own content, its own addresses and its own upkeep. The decision is taken at the beginning.

4. Who administers it after launch? If you want to edit the copy yourself, it gets built differently from a site where you would rather ask for changes.

5. What happens to the old site? Are the addresses kept? Archived? Redirected? That decision has direct consequences for your position in Google — see How we migrated a site without losing rankings.

6. Budget and deadline. As a range, in writing, from the start.

What do I need in order to start a website

To begin a web project you need three things: the company’s full details, the logo in vector format, and a list of services with a few sentences about each. With those three, the architecture stage can start. The rest — final copy, photographs, portfolio material — can be gathered in parallel, as long as it arrives before the build stage.

In other words, you do not need everything ready in order to start. You need a plan for what is missing.

What happens if you do not have everything yet

Nothing serious, as long as you know what is missing and when it is coming.

Work can start without

• The final copy — the build works on placeholder text of roughly the right length.
• Your own photography — spaces are reserved and filled in later.
• Portfolio material — it can be added after launch.

Work cannot start without

• The company’s legal details.
• The logo in a usable format.
• The list of services.
• Who approves.

The best investment of time

One day. Gather everything on the list below into a single shared folder, before the first meeting. It shortens the project by weeks and all but eliminates delays in the middle.

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Checklist

DOCUMENTS
☐ Full legal name
☐ Company tax number and trade register number
☐ Registered office address
☐ Trading address (if different)
☐ Phone number, in the form to be displayed
☐ Email address for the form
☐ Opening hours
☐ Checked map coordinates

CONTENT
☐ Complete list of services
☐ 3–5 sentences on each service
☐ A paragraph about the company
☐ 5–10 frequently asked questions, with answers
☐ 3–5 portfolio projects, with context
☐ Legal text, if it exists

IMAGES
☐ Vector logo (.ai / .eps / .svg / .pdf)
☐ Logo variants: light ground, dark ground, monochrome
☐ 5–10 photographs of the premises, landscape
☐ Team photographs (optional)
☐ 3–5 images for each portfolio project
☐ Web licence for any commercial fonts

LOGINS
☐ Domain registrar account — and checked whose name it is in
☐ Hosting control panel
☐ DNS zone management
☐ Administrator access to the current site
☐ Google Analytics and Search Console
☐ Google Business Profile
☐ Social network accounts

DECISIONS
☐ Who approves — one person
☐ The main action on the site
☐ How many languages
☐ Who administers it after launch
☐ What happens to the old site
☐ Budget, as a range
☐ Deadline, if there is a real reason for one

Got the list filled in? Send it to us and we will come back with a concrete proposal, with stages and deadlines. See also what the business website service includes, or The stages of a website project.